Get Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War for free from GOG.com. Free for the next 34 hours.
And if you feel like donning Space Marine Terminator amour and smashing hordes of Tyranids in a first-person shooter, check out Space Hulk: Deathwing. Now available DRM-free on GOG. Among other Warhammer 40,000 titles, you can get Space Hulk: Deathwing on sale over the weekend too.
Space Hulk: Deathwing is a Warhammer 40,000 first-person shooter that puts you in the shoes of a Space Marine donning Terminator armour. March through narrow passages as well as grand hallways as you shoot, burn, slice and smash your way through a space hulk infested with Genestealers.
The Special Missions section is the single-player skirmish version of randomly generated missions available in multiplayer mode. On the plus side, it does add something extra to do if you have finished the single-player campaign or you just feel like hammering xenos outside of the campaign. Your exploits also contribute to getting upgrades for multiplayer. Unfortunately, there are many minuses to how the Special Missions section was implemented (see cons).
I have completed all 9 chapters in the single-player campaign and I reckon the story was quite interesting. I guess it should not be a surprise since the developers got Gav Thorpe to work the plot. Although good, it did feel a bit short. Maybe expecting Horus Rising was too much as it was more like The Wolf of Ash and Fire.
The best way to introduce the story is to watch the introduction video.
The sounds are awesome. The guns sound powerful. Whacking with your fist or sword gives a very satisfying contact sound, even when hitting walls or railings. The ambient sounds and that of the Genestealers also sound awesome.
Although the Space Marines do not speak much, what little speech the game has, does sound very good.
The graphics are Warhammer 40,000 wonderful. Your fellow battle-brothers, the enemies, the space hulk interior, the details on weapons, the exploding sparks from your Power Fist when you pound a Genestealer into oblivion – everything in the game looks awesome.
The levels are very well designed. Although not open-world, they are quite large and you have to figure out how to move through the space hulk maze to get to your objectives. It is not all narrow corridors either. There are big halls, engine rooms and everything else you would expect inside derelict ships of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
The game tends to randomly crash to desktop with fatal errors when playing campaign missions. This happens both in single-player and multiplayer. I have not encountered the error with special missions yet. Playing roughly half campaign missions and half special missions, the crashes have happened around once every ten hours of game time. It would be interesting to see if the game crashes roughly every five hours if I only played campaign missions.
Multiplayer is a lot of fun… if you can find someone else online. Even on weekends, there are very few people playing online.
It also doesn’t help that multiplayer games do not have drop in/drop out AI replacements like Payday 2. I am sure more people would host multiplayer games if the AI buddies start with you when no other humans are around. Right now, it is just you, alone, by yourself until another human joins your game.
Another minus is you only get 2 AI buddies so your team is short by 1 member compared to playing multiplayer. Your AI buddies also work identically to the ones in the single-player campaign which severely limits how you can arm and use them. It does not make sense to me why the AI apothecary only has limited heal uses AND can only heal 1 person at a time when a human apothecary has unlimited uses with a cool-down timer and can heal an area as well as individuals.
According to the Steam timer, I have only played 17 hours and I have already finished the single-player campaign. I did play on the easiest difficulty of disciple and although I was not exploring or relic hunting, I was not rushing through the game either. This 17 hours also included dying quite a bit, playing a few multiplayer games and some special missions as well. There is no denying, the single-player campaign is very short.
Sometimes special HUD overlays get stuck permanently. The perk/buff is no longer in effect, but the overlay just stays on the screen. It will only disappear if you quit to the main menu. The extra stuck clutter is most annoying when you have just started a multiplayer game.
There is the bug where sometimes when a chapter is completed, the speech would stop working. Restarting the game would fix the problem, but it is still annoying.
You cannot see your own feet! Space Hulk: Deathwing is one FPS that has a good excuse for not being able to see your own feet. The game is like a Space Marine in Terminator armour simulator. The armour is so big that it is constantly blocking your view of things.
I had to think long and hard as to whether to put the team-mates AI as a con. In the end, I decided not to place it as a con. It is true that your AI team-mates are not autonomous for most things. So, healing anyone automatically is out. Opening, closing and sealing doors are also out. One thing that they are very good at is killing xenos, at least on the easier difficulty levels. The other thing they are good at is following your orders. Order the apothecary to heal and he will. Order the heavy weapon specialist to seal a door and he will. Order your troops to move back from the horde (ie go to a position) and they will. Although not the smartest teammates in the world, I do think they are one up on the AI of Payday 2.
Within the game, the single-player campaign story is presented via mission briefings, audio dialogue, ships’ logs and psychic vision scenes. Most of the time is spent walking around and beating the bones out of Tyranids though, so if you are after a strong progressing narrative, Space Hulk: Deathwing is NOT for you.
Character upgrades in the single-player campaign are attained by performing certain actions in the game like finding relics, making melee or psychic kills and hacking stuff. At the end of a chapter, you are given fervour points to upgrade your abilities.
In multiplayer and special missions, upgrading is completely different. When you complete or fail missions, experience is awarded. Get enough experience and you level up. Upon levelling up you get renown and a random freebie to upgrade your character. Upgrades can also be bought with the renown you earn.
To change the difficulty level of special missions, you must first start the special mission of your choice. Once in the arming area of the mission, you can press ESC and go to the options menu to change the difficulty.
Ammo is unlimited. It is a good thing too as the hordes of Genestealers just keep coming. The real challenge comes in the form of when to reload your weapon or to use a different attack type.
There are no manual saves for the single-player campaign. Your progress is saved at checkpoints which include activation of the Psygate. In a way, the Psygate activation can be used as a manual save, but there are only a limited number of activations available for each chapter of the campaign. Only your last 9 saves can be reloaded. Your progress is also saved at the end of each chapter.
I found it strange that there is a purchasable soundtrack for Space Hulk: Deathwing. I have not heard any music in the game! It amazed me that the game has such a strong Warhammer 40,000 atmosphere, all without music.
Space Hulk: Deathwing is available DRM-free from GOG.com.
I have been a fan of Warhammer 40,000 since Dawn of War.
Payday 2 is the only other co-op multiplayer game I have played and I enjoyed that game a lot, both in multiplayer and single-player.
Warhammer 40,000 brought to the PC in a very nicely packaged real-time strategy(RTS) game. Lots of WAAAGH, lots of fights and lots of races. This package incorporates Dawn Of War and all of its expansions Winter Assault, Dark Crusade and Soulstorm.
Very good animations of everything from building construction to gun fights and artillery fire.
Sounds great too. Everything from the gunfire to the screams of dying soldiers.
The melee special kill animations are quite entertaining to watch.
Infantry go flying when artillery shells hit or when they get whacked by a big unit.
Some units are customizable in terms of what weapons to arm them with. Unlike The Moon Project though you do not design your units before summoning them. Instead, you summon a base model of the unit and then buy add-ons for them individually.
Army painter! Put your own badges and banners and paint your own colour schemes.
It has nine different races to play and they are quite different.
Very easy to get into including very good tutorials to get you started. Each race has their own tutorial. Although most of the things are the same, it is worth going through each race’s tutorial to learn the unique characteristics of each race. The tutorials are also slightly different between the different expansions.
Plain Dawn Of War, Winter Assault and Dark Crusade does not need the CD in the drive to play.
The Orks’ dialogue is funny. I wonder if using the Orks in the table top game is just as entertaining.
Mods! Mods! Mods! Get some from Mod DB or FileFront.
This game requires a lot of micromanagement. If your guys are in a fight and you look away for too long, they can disappear real quick! There are no auto retreat or auto use abilities. I guess I got spoilt by Sins of a Solar Empire.
Soulstorm needs the CD in the drive to play. Quite disappointing since all the other ones do not need the CD.
The camera is quite flexible but cannot zoom out far enough.
This is the bloodiest real-time strategy game I have ever played. That can be a plus or a minus depending on whether you like this kind of stuff.
The main campaigns for plain Dawn of War and Winter Assault are static story driven missions. But for Dark Crusade and Soulstorm the campaign is played on a risk style turn-based map similar to that of Rise of Nations. And when your army attacks an enemy’s territory, a standard Dawn of War battle is played. You cannot influence a battle from the campaign map as much as in Rise of Nations though.
The campaign missions for Winter Assault felt a bit unbalanced. I was going through the campaign on easy difficulty and sure enough, it was easy enough on the first three missions, but the final two missions became very difficult. This applied to every race. Each of the race’s final two missions took me several goes before I could complete them.
I did not know anything about Warhammer 40,000 until playing this game.
I have only completed the vanilla Dawn of War and Winter Assault campaigns and only on the easiest difficulty of normal. I also played skirmish games at various difficulties.
I really liked Dune 2, Command And Conquer, C&C Tiberian Sun, C&C3 Tiberium Wars, Act Of War, Sins of a Solar Empire and Rise of Nations.
I also liked Empire Earth 2, Dark Reign, Warcraft 1 and 2, Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation.
I did not like Homeworld.
I look forward to winning my first multiplayer game.
Soulstorm needs the disc to be in the drive to play. The others do not.
All the games require an activation key to be entered to play the games.
The Steam version requires Steam (oh der!).
Dark Crusade 1.11 – Patch for Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. This must be installed before the 1.20 patch.
Dark Crusade 1.11 to 1.20 – Patch for Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.
Soulstorm 1.00 to 1.10 – Patch for Dawn of War: Soulstorm. This must be installed before the 1.20 patch.
Soulstorm 1.10 to 1.20 – Patch for Dawn of War: Soulstorm.
Car brands and Mr. Bean banners and badges for the army painter. Download Dawn of War badges and banners .
Not really a creation but here is a recording of me emulating the commando from Command & Conquer, humans and orcs from WarCraft 2 and the Chaos Marines from Dawn of War.
