Looking for Warhammer 40K video games that are good.

[happyninja42]

So, I picked up the WH 40K Space Marine game on steam sale, and I've been enjoying it a great deal. It's got some nice meaty combat, and definitely makes the player feel like a total badass, stomping Orks by the thousands with a chainsword.

So I find myself slightly interested in the setting, but I have no interest in the figurine aspect of the game.

I've heard very mixed opinions about the video games, and so I'm basically asking if I should bother with any of them?

I'm assuming the others are either turn based, or RTS games that let the various factions battle each other, like the tabletop figurine game.

Are any of the games good quality and worth my time/money? I did a casual skim of the Warhammer wiki, and found the Tau collective to be fairly interesting, and possibly the group I could stomach actually playing, on a moral standpoint. xD

So yeah, any of them actually good? If so, which ones, and what kind of game are they? I know basically nothing about the setting, other than "Lots of factions kill each other for control of the universe. And the universe is Uber-Ultra Grimdark Gritty". That's pretty much it.

 

[someguy1231]

The Dawn of War games are definitely what you're after. Of the first games, Dark Crusade (a standalone expansion) is by far the best.

I haven't played Dawn of War 2, but from what I've heard it plays very differently from the first Dawn of War games. Basebuilding is gone, resource-gathering is simplified, and there's a much bigger emphasis on cover and tactics.

There's also the upcoming MMO Eternal Crusade, which is looking pretty good from the previews I've seen.

By the way, all the Dawn of War games are currently on sale on Steam, so if you want to get them, now's the time!

 

[The Madman]

Dawn of War 1 and 2 are pretty much it really aside from Space Marine, which you've played. Most other 40k games range from mediocre to outright bad while Relic is the only company that seem to have ever really gotten it right.

Dawn of War 1 is more of a traditional rts while 2 takes on more of a tactical approach with small squad management and no base building, personally I love em both but a lot of people tend to prefer one over another. As for which to get, I'd say Dawn of War: Dark Crusade is the best of the first games releases, it's a stand alone expansion with a neat singleplayer total-war style campaign and tons of content to enjoy. You can play as any race included and the campaign will have a unique story. For DoW2 in terms of singleplayer Chaos Rising, the expansion for the base game, did it best with a surprisingly great rpg-like campaign playing as space marines while Retribution has the most active online community but a comparatively boring campaign.

You can play Tau in Dark Crusades campaign but that's about it. There was a thoroughly mediocre and forgettable shooter some years ago where you play as Tau but it wasn't very good, go figure.

 

[Benpasko]

There was a thoroughly mediocre and forgettable shooter some years ago where you play as Tau but it wasn't very good, go figure.

I don't know, I'd say it's pretty unforgettable. WH40K: Fire Warrior is very possibly the worst first person shooter I've ever played. Bonus points for it butchering the source material, your Tau fire warrior ends up teaming up with a bunch of Space Marines halfway through. And they're fine with that!

 

[happyninja42]

There was a thoroughly mediocre and forgettable shooter some years ago where you play as Tau but it wasn't very good, go figure.

I don't know, I'd say it's pretty unforgettable. WH40K: Fire Warrior is very possibly the worst first person shooter I've ever played. Bonus points for it butchering the source material, your Tau fire warrior ends up teaming up with a bunch of Space Marines halfway through. And they're fine with that!

Interesting, even with as little as I know about WH 40k-verse, I know that's just silly.

Ok so, general consensus so far, (of 3 posters xD) is that the Dawn of War games are actually worth my time/money? But ignore the others? Ok, I can work with that. Thanks.

 

[The Madman]

Interesting, even with as little as I know about WH 40k-verse, I know that's just silly.

Ok so, general consensus so far, (of 3 posters xD) is that the Dawn of War games are actually worth my time/money? But ignore the others? Ok, I can work with that. Thanks.

Yep. The Dawn of War games are all thoroughly fantastic and totally worth playing, even if you're only casually interested in the rts genre. Again DoW1 is more of a traditional rts while 2 is a blend of rts and rpg with a more heavy focus on tactical gameplay, both are excellent additions to the 40k setting with some amazing art, style, music, and hilariously amazing voice acting that is just... amazing. Seriously, there's even a guy on youtube who made these little videos composed of just the voice acting from the DoW series and they're *great*.

Spoiler: For Example

There's a video floating around of some of the voice actors recording their lines and you can tell everyone is just having so much fun. Anyway great games. I tend to alternate between playing as either the Orks of Eldar myself. Orks are just so damned much fun, and having a giant horde of them in an online match all yelling WAAAAAGHHHHHHH!!! as you swarm your opponents is amazing, meanwhile I love the Eldar's hit & run style gameplay and find myself feeling sympathetic for their more tragic background.


...I love listening to these things. Thanks OP for giving me reason to look them up, I haven't listened to them in ages.

 

[DrOswald]

Space Marine is the best 40K game to ever be released, but Dawn of War 1 and 2 are also good. 2 is better than 1, and the single player campaign is really fun. I would get Dawn of War 2 to start, and then maybe get Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising, and go from there.

 

[Weaver]

Basically, if Relic made it it's a good game. If Relic didn't make it, it's either bad or "okay".

 

[happyninja42]

Yep. The Dawn of War games are all thoroughly fantastic and totally worth playing, even if you're only casually interested in the rts genre. Again DoW1 is more of a traditional rts while 2 is a blend of rts and rpg with a more heavy focus on tactical gameplay, both are excellent additions to the 40k setting with some amazing art, style, music, and hilariously amazing voice acting that is just... amazing. Seriously, there's even a guy on youtube who made these little videos composed of just the voice acting from the DoW series and they're *great*.

It's not a newness to RTS's or turnbased strategy games, I'm familiar with those genres. It's the unfamiliar with WH 40k stuff. I never found it terribly interesting, when I'd see friends, or people at my local comic shop talking about it. It seemed to be a figurine based strategy game, and while I can appreciate the appeal of it to people, it's not my thing. One, because I don't want to drop the cash needed to buy the damn pieces, and two, I just don't like those type games in real life. Video games though, I find them much more enjoyable to play the strategy/commander style games.

...I love listening to these things. Thanks OP for giving me reason to look them up, I haven't listened to them in ages.

Glad to be of service. xD

 

[Aeshi]

The "Relic Three" (the Dawn of War games & Space Marine) are basically the only good 40k games out there, sadly.

 

[BarryMcCociner]

Dawn. Of. War.

Seriously, if you even have a passing interest in Real Time Strategy and Warhammer 40K you owe it to yourself to play at least one game in that series.

 

[baddude1337]

Dawn of War 1 also has a huge number of mods that add full on extra races like Daemonhunters, Tyranids, Steel Legion etc... You can combine them easily too. I myself an currently running with about 20+ factions to choose from for skirmishes, and hundreds of maps to boot.

 

[Fat Hippo]

Besides the games already mentioned, there was also a turn-based Warhammer 40k game called Armageddon recently. I enjoyed it thoroughly, although the presentation is nothing fancy. Gameplay is fairly straight-forward tactics, and it's really just one scenario after another, although you get to carry your units over from one mission to the next, and they also gain experience. When you get complete a mission, you get points, which you can use to purchase new units, so you have a lot of control over the way your army is put together, in terms of how much infantry, tanks, artillery etc. you have. I actually had a lot of fun with it, though I wouldn't blame anyone who found it dry. I'm not a WH40K aficionado, but it seemed like they tried very hard to be faithful to the lore and get the atmosphere right.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

DoW 1&2 as every man and his dog have said, steam have the entire series on sale for for £30 for everything with all DLC etc. Plus some awesome mods for DoW1. DoW2 is pretty hard multiplayer (or maybe I'm just exceptionally shit), but the replays on youtube of the Elite mod look so awesome.

Space Hulk Ascension is actually a decent evolution of the board game, much better than the previous Space Hulk game by the same developer. It is a fairly niche turn based tactical game though, won't be for everyone. Plus no multiplayer unless you want to fork out for the original, which was pretty bare bones. All heavily discounted at the moment.

If you happen to have a PC running XP then Chaos Gate is very highly recommended, it's a lot like the original X-com, but without the strategic element, mostly it's just about the battlefield. Final Liberation was close to a PC version of the Epic tabletop 3rd ed, lots of tanks and stuff. Both very old though, neither particularly good looking even for the late 90's when they were made.

 

[cleric of the order]

chapter master and final liberation
the former is fan project by /tg/, no really it's real.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Chapter_Master_%28game%29
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Commissar_Holt

 

[Lightspeaker]

There was a thoroughly mediocre and forgettable shooter some years ago where you play as Tau but it wasn't very good, go figure.

I don't know, I'd say it's pretty unforgettable. WH40K: Fire Warrior is very possibly the worst first person shooter I've ever played. Bonus points for it butchering the source material, your Tau fire warrior ends up teaming up with a bunch of Space Marines halfway through. And they're fine with that!

Interesting, even with as little as I know about WH 40k-verse, I know that's just silly.

Not exactly. It depends on circumstances. The Imperium and the Tau can definitely act as allies either when its convenient for them or when they're in dire straits and the situation is desperate (when Tyranids turn up, for example). In fact as I understand it there are great big "Ally charts" for the tabletop game to give players ideas on how they can combine forces. It happens periodically in the books, a pretty good example being when Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!!) worked with the Tau somewhat to prevent a gigantic unnecessary and costly war from breaking out.

Though as I understand it in Fire Warrior it goes a bit beyond the mutual interest/mutual exploitation which is the norm.


Anyway on topic as pretty much everyone said the absolute must-haves are the Dawn of War games and...not much else honestly. Dark Crusade is by far the best. In theory Soulstorm is similar but just with more stuff. In practice its rather poorly put together and has several incredibly frustrating things that make it less enjoyable. The DoW1 games have rather archaic RTS gameplay but they're still very good for all that. The DoW2 games are a bit weird, I think the engine is based on Company of Heroes but they removed base building and all sorts of stuff. The campaigns aren't really traditional RTS at all but the multiplayer is. From what I remember of CoH DoW2 multiplayer is almost literally Company of Heroes 40k but without base building, very similar territory control gameplay. There's also an arena battle thing called The Last Stand, basically a horde mode with you controlling one hero unit which can be a ton of fun.

 

[happyninja42]

So I picked up the two DoW games on steam. Haven't played them yet because I have other games in my queue to play first, but I picked those up for later.

Thanks everyone for your input.

 

[kingthrall]

Id assume get the gold otherwise its not worth getting the single playable stuff so this is it.

Dawn of War 1, has more basebuilding less combat tactics more races and different kinds of units
Dawn of war 2 has no basebuilding, more combat tactics and choices to flesh out your gear but at the cost of less amount of playable races.

Space Marine; like you say its good smash shooting game with checkpoint

Fire Warrior; Probally the closest thing your going to get to space marine but its quite dated, I enjoyed it but a lot of people said it was average or buggy (but bugs prob fixed by now)

Space hulk; turn based stuff, doesnt really appeal to me (turn based for warhammer id rather play a real warhammer game) but assuming its like space crusade the board game you have units and you move around a space station shooting random aliens doing missions.

Mordheim; Warhammer Fantasy, heard good things its very tactical and kind of like space hulk but a lot more interesting, assuming its done correctly.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Dawn of War. And 40k Armaggedon isn't half bad. If you can find an old CD of it Chaos Gate is well worth a look. And Relic is pretty good if you have a few drinks to hand. And you already have Space Marine.

So yeah, basically those games and the entirety of the Dawn of War series.

 

[Leg End]

Well, looks like even fewer people knew about it than I thought.

Warhammer 40k: Squad Command is a pretty fucking good turn based strategy game from my memory, though it's been years. I believe the 93 Spacehulk game was pretty good too, the 2013 one I've heard mixed things about and other than that, it's basically Kill Team or the small list of terrible games, apart from, of course, Dawn of War.

40k hasn't gotten as much vidya love as it should.