The only thing a locked door achieves is making the uneventful campaigns even longer.
Occasionally, a locked door will bar the way, but keys are always clearly marked and can be picked up without having to overcome any obstacles. The squad moves one node at a time, and only rarely is there anything on them. There’s just a hint of RPG-like exploration and party choices, but it’s all so underdeveloped that it barely even feels like a prototype.
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Plot missions and random encounters are loosely connected via a no-frills campaign map full of paths that end up being mostly linear. There are a lot of talking heads, and a big chunk of it will be largely indecipherable unless you already have at least a passing familiarity with Game Workshop’s grimdark universe. They’ve been brought in to stop one of the titular Space Hulks from crashing into a Forge World with the help of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Ordos Xenos alien hunters. It’s the first Space Hulk since a 2005 mobile adaptation that I didn’t know existed until now to put them on an equal footing.īoth campaigns can be played right from the get-go, but as a boring Space Marine player, I went with the Terminators first. The Genestealers and Terminators both get their own campaigns, while various chapters and hives can be set against each other in multiplayer skirmishes. They missed a trick, but not Space Hulk: Tactics. It’s not surprising: Space Marines always get all the attention. While Space Hulk (2013) made Genestealers playable in its cursory multiplayer, the aliens have been largely overshadowed by the Terminators in previous games. It’s not so much a battle as it is a nightmarish journey through dead ships, all horror and tension. Like its progenitor, it’s a straightforward, asymmetric, turn-based brawl with one player methodically advancing through tight corridors and small rooms, trying to complete missions, while the other relentlessly assaults them with hidden squads of terrifying alien monsters. Space Hulk: Tactics should be right up my street, then. I’ve also gained a new appreciation for the tabletop spin-offs and video game adaptations that strip away a lot of the obstacles inherent in setting up a regular battle - the time, the exorbitant costs, the hassle of clearing away all the crap on my dining table.
I caught the 40K bug hard with the launch of 8th Edition, filling my flat with paints and models and increasingly elaborate polystyrene battlefields. It’s not quite a combo-breaker, but it gets very close. And here comes Space Hulk: Tactics, once again throwing gruesome Genestealers against stompy Terminators in derelict spaceship corridors. Plenty of chances to get it right, you’d think, though the first three attempts suggest otherwise. In the last five years alone, there have been four video game adaptations of the Warhammer 40,000 spin-off, Space Hulk.