Space Hulk: Deathwing - UE4, Focus Home Interactive

We’ll be here to catch you when you fall. ;)

Seriously though, I hope it’s good. Spidey senses are definitely tingling on this one, though, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for your impressions.

You and me both! I was already recently let down a bit by a new game I was looking forward to (The Dwarves) so I’m hoping this will redeem my faith in humanity. If not, I have an actual good game lined up for the holidays (thanks secret santa!).

Fixed it.

Better to die playing a bad Warhammer 40K game than live playing another mediocre Early Access survival crafter.

PC Gamer’s initial impressions sound promising. Space Hulk: Deathwing is out now and it is quite good so far

In the singleplayer campaign you play as a Librarian hunting for ancient Space Marine artifacts while you give your two Terminator buddies basic orders such as “go there” and “heal Bob he’s lost an arm”. In multiplayer you can roll with friends in co-op, and I have a feeling that’s where the most fun will lie. As you move through the space hulks the Tyranids come at you in hordes, much like Left 4 Dead’s zombies.

I’m reviewing it at the moment, and so far it is quite good at capturing the feeling of battling incredible odds with absurdly big guns. The real star so far has been the hulk itself, which is suitably dark and skull-ridden. It looks as though Alien’s Nostromo has crashed into a cathedral, which is perfect. They are more interactive than I expected too. You can shoot gas pipes and spurts of flame will incinerate Tyranids who charge through it (the Genestealer melee variants have proven to be a dim so far) and you can seal doors a la Killing Floor to manage the flow of enemies. If you’re into Warhammer 40,000 there are some nice lore insights to be found in the terminals hidden about the place as well.

There’s definitely some truth in this statement! :)

Some reviews linked on Reddit mention bad performance and some tedious level structure issues (go here, now go way the hell back there, etc.)

10 mins testrun, looks cool, I like the atmosphere, the gun however felt a bit wimpy in sound, ,but did however gore good.

Just tried the first campaign mission and found a couple annoyances. Apparently there are no in mission saves or check points. So die, during say the final battle of the level and you have to start completely over, which is how a co-op level would go sure, but in the campaign? And this lead to the second annoyance, you can’t skip the 2-3 min opening mission cut-scene.

Other than that, the weapons feel pretty good. It’s not too bothersome to order your team around. I did have some fairly significant FPS drops but fiddling around with the settings seemed to clear up most of that. At least until the final battle of the mission where they dumped every genestealer and its cousin up your butt all at once. Positioning is going to be key for those big rushes and I’m already thinking I may drop it down to easy ( played on normal) for the campaign. It just gets too hectic trying to order your guys while also doing most of the killing. At least the AI in vermintide can act on its own. For example your apothecary won’t heal on his own, you have to order him when and whom to heal.

I’ll be going back to the campaign (have to start over anyway!) but I’d say this is another game where if you’re not going to be doing the co-op it’s probably not worth picking up above a real deep discount. That being said, if anyone did pick it up and wants to try out the co-op, let me know!

Failure is a fate worse than death.

I hear coop resets any unlocks/progression/however they do it every mission, unlike the campaign. If you get a chance to try coop out let me know how it feels, because it’s an area of the game I’ve seen generate some complaints (and I’m only interested in this for coop).

That 51% positive reviews score on Steam isn’t making me want to keep it on my wishlist. :|

That’s weird. I’m playing on normal and I see the “autosave” icon pop up every 10 or so minutes. Plus, if you find one of the large screens, when you activate it, it saves the game. I’m only a few hours in but I’m finding the game to be a lot of fun. The atmosphere is pretty amazing.

It is ok. For $30 i don’t regret buying it really, but neither is it really an AMAZING purchase.

I think i liked the strategy game more.

Also with a 1080 on max settings i get 40-60 fps.

Are any of you guys playing with a mouse and keyboard? How on earth are you managing the frickin’ radial menu? It’s obviously designed for a gamepad, but I want to play with a mouse and keyboard. And while I’m seeing some hotkey prompts, I can’t figure out how to use them. F1 and F2 do what exactly? Is there a way to use the heal hotkey, which is “H” as a command to heal the other guy instead of me?

Am I just going to have to resign myself to not using the features on the radial wheel (i.e. teammate interaction)?

-Tom

G key places your dudes , radial menu is just poor at giving feedback, but letting space go on the right button does activate stuff. The AI buddies are mostly in the way to me

Nah, choose “Load Game” and you’ll see that it auto-saves every few minutes. Most notably, for me it saved just before the final battle, which was good because that just seems to be a ridiculous zerging.

Badly. The radial thing with the M/K is terrible.

As for the rest of it, I think it’s a reasonable FPS game for the price. I enjoyed the WH40K aesthetic, and the opening mission was nicely atmospheric with sensor-blips and an occasional glimpse of a genestealer adding to the tension. I’m hoping that the more advanced weapons add something to the actual shooting game-play.

It’ll be really interesting to see how it handles in multi-player. It seems to me that the tight corridors and relatively ponderous movement of the terminator-armor isn’t well-suited for a L4D-style co-op.

Thanks for letting me know about how the saves work, not sure how I missed that one!

I replayed the first mission and was able to finish by positioning my team a little better up on the walkway over the target area. It was interesting that playing on easy the second time around and I had way more enemy spawns as I moved through the zone. Are they location based or did they add in some sort of AI director? I did take a different route. But I apparently missed 3 out of the 4 relics on the level, so at least there is a reason to go back and try again. I’m looking forward to unlocking the rest of the weapons and trying out the co-op. All in all I’m pleased with the purchase so far. The levels sure are gorgeous to look at and it’s a view of the 40k universe I haven’t had yet, so it’s great in that respect.

I going to give the 360 controller a go tonight and see how that feels. The keyboard setup is odd and if the controller doesn’t feel good I’ll just set up my Logitech G13 and use that instead.

I still haven’t finished the first mission - got pulled away for dinner after I got minced in the final battle the third time.

Three of four relics? I only found ONE… I guess I might want to replay the whole mission and go down some of the side-corridors.

I am about 1.5 missions in.

the 0.5 is explained by a couple things:

  • Messing with different weapon combos
  • EXTREMELY poor healing UI

So healing, it is the most important thing in this game. You have 8 heals and 4 gate things (which refresh your heals). This is your lifeline and it is your longevity.

The healing UI sucks. If you can heal a party member with a key press, i must have missed it. Have fun healing with the command wheel while 20 xenos are swarming you. Then you need to hope that the medic can get to you.

Speaking of the AI, it is decent, but not great. It is kind of typical party member AI in these kind of games which is not surprising as VERY few games do party member AI well in basically any genre. The AI does make healing harder though and it can be hard to retreat through a door and lock it off. It also makes certain weapon choices less viable i think.

So the weapons… I am only on the 2nd level, so most are locked off, but it seems like choice is limited. You have 3 people total.

One is the medic. You MUST take the heal kit. This means you can’t choose lightning claws. I don’t know if the hammer works with the medkit but you probably dont want your medic running away from the group since the heal is melee range.

On the assault guy, i feel the plasma gun isn’t good enough to use. Yes, it can be a good support weapon, but with only 3 people, one locked in to a basic storm pistol, you can’t afford to have a pure support assault. Hopefully later weapons are worth using.

On the hero, i feel kind of forced to use the sword. Magic is pretty strong and 40% off my cooldown sounds great.I really think the hero weapons is going to be where you can customize the most. HOWEVER, because of the AI, i do believe you want to be able to accurately snipe enemies from long range.

I’m not sure how melee weapons would be viable. I think you need at least two strong shooters so you can watch multiple angles BUT i do not think the medic is strong enough to be one of these. Also AI party members tend to be a bit behind you when moving, so i’m not sure how well a melee assault would do. Maybe the hero could go melee, but then you would have trouble with your party members not killing ranged (read: missile launcher) enemies.

I REALLY wish they had at least some of the following:

  • Medkit is ranged
  • Midkit is either completely baseline or baseline but enhanced by the actual item
  • Ability to use a single lightning claw and a medkit (or just the ability to individually select lightning claws as single hand weapons)
  • Ability to select class of party members
  • A 4th squad member to allow weapon diversity

I’m not sure there is any point to hacking turrets. They die in 2 seconds (at least in the first two missions), so i don’t even care about disabling them. If the enemy has any ranged, they will die just as fast to them. Maybe 1/3 turret types actually are AT ALL effective against enemies. Half the time after i get back from killing 8 enemies in the turret, my party is nearly dead because 40 xenos are on them.

The game feels a lot like the strategy games. There are a lot of moments where you’re standing back to back with your battle brothers (or whatever term they use in warhammer 40k) firing at mobs of xenos rushing you. Lots of things explode too, so you’re firing wildly and there are explosions all around you.

Overall i enjoy the game but it is rough around the edges and it is priced appropriately. This is not a game i would be happy with for $60. My kingdom for a AAA warhammer 40k game with high production values and polish. The upcoming RTS kind of scratches this itch, but i really want a game like space marine.

Anyone else finished this yet? Kinda tempted.