So, I bought Space Hulk Ascension the other day after watching some of Indrid's lets plays on Youtube to get an idea of the changes, and I thought I'd go on some sort of ramble about what I think, about 3/4 overview and 1/4 moaning. I feel that the 3 views this thread will get will make it worthwhile.
It's definitely an improvement over the original, it's still the same basic concept but more developed. Terminators gain XP and level up and have different specialities, like X-com. As they level up you can increase attributes which affect chance to hit, action points, detection distance etc, gain access to a bigger choice skills to equip and the ability to equip more skills at once, and the same with equipment (skills are passive buffs to existing gameplay but equipment has to be activated and generally does something new-ish). Finally they gain access to better weapons. The terminator type determines advances they can take and at what level they can take them. Librarians gain access to a bigger choice of psychic powers and can equip more at once as they level up.
There are allegedly 100 missions (I can't confirm that, not played enough) with a choice of 2 or 3 missions each time, although you can't go back and complete the ones you miss. These are divided into 3 campaigns, Ultramarines, Blood Angels and Space Wolves and each chapter has slight differences in terms of hit chances in hand to hand vs shooting and a couple of other things.
Gameplay is the same except hit chance is % based and you have different fire options, eg aimed fire cost 2 actions rather than 1 but has a bonus to hit, flamers have a choice of templates that spread differently down corridors and can't hit the square in front of them.
Storm Bolters now have ammo and each shot also causes heat buildup and they jam once their heat bar is full. Some actions cool them down, so jams are now not random and you have more control over when they happen. However, Command Points are no longer in the game so if you run out of ammo or jam during the stealer turn you're boned. Assault cannons can fire if overheated but might explode.
Being attacked on a side or back facing in hand to hand is instant death for a marine or a stealer.
Ducts now exist, genestealers can use them to get around but only flamers can shoot down them and no marine can move into them.
There's no longer a minimap and terminators only see a blip when it gets within their perception radius, which means it's easier for the stealers to sneak up on you, especially as the map is so dark, which makes it easy to miss things like ducts and even revealed genestealers and blips and you can't really plan your route properly. I get the feeling they're trying to invoke, but to me it goes against the point of the careful tactical planning of Space Hulk, you can get round it but it just comes across as needless irritation (although I do like perception radius idea).
They took out the killcam too. Boo!
The UI is kinda crappy, the symbols for overwatch & jams are too small and blend in with the rest of the game too much and it's easy to miss them. The hit chances are sometimes obscured by lights. It is easier to tell which facing you're moving to than the 1st game, but there's no back button anymore (I assume as it could help you circumvent the perception radius mechanic). You will bump into situations where there's a genestealer in your face, you need to reload, cool your weapon and fire and your marine decides to do a 180 and present his butt to the stealer instead. Ragequit, restart mission.
When 1st out the game panned to terminators taking overwatch fire, but this caused a jarring screen freeze of about a second or two, so the devs have now cut it entirely, you can see it on the action cam but it gets very difficult to keep track of which terminators are doing what and you have to spend time flicking through them all at the start of your turn to work out who needs to unjam, reload, run screaming, etc. Not game breaking in any way but just really irritating.
Otherwise, I've not noticed any bugs.[edit: just noticed another one to do with hit chances after taking a second aimed shot]
"Tutorial" is shit as ever, no explanation of LOS, efficient use of actions (never mentions you can move and shoot a door for example and in game the computer "pathing" will often do the least efficient thing possible unless you guide it step by step) and the extra instructions in the menu don't explain much more either.
No multiplayer.
So.....a better effort than previously, much closer to being worth the £23 asking price, buuuut....it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I only paid £7 for the original on steam sale and was happy enough with that, but if you'd paid the full £23 it's increasingly looking like you paid for what was, at best, a proof of concept alpha for the second game.
The dev has said on the forums that you should think of Ascension as the single player and the original as multiplayer. Which would mean they've sold you what is at best a budget title for about £45 in a time when you can get most decent new releases for about £30 and even expensive "AAA"'s usually top out at £40. Why is it that pretty much anything associated with GW seems to do it's level best to piss off it's customers?
On that note, 40K Armageddon is out on the 26th and looks suspiciously like a reskin of Final Liberation designed for mobile. Hooroo.
Not really sure what the discussion is er...anyone want to scream incoherently at Games Workshop/Full control? Add a 50 point rebuttal about wrong I am? WTF are you talking about idiot, get off my forums?
EDIT: Wow, ok, that turned out longer than expected. I suppose I should add TL;DR to the list of response options.
It's definitely an improvement over the original, it's still the same basic concept but more developed. Terminators gain XP and level up and have different specialities, like X-com. As they level up you can increase attributes which affect chance to hit, action points, detection distance etc, gain access to a bigger choice skills to equip and the ability to equip more skills at once, and the same with equipment (skills are passive buffs to existing gameplay but equipment has to be activated and generally does something new-ish). Finally they gain access to better weapons. The terminator type determines advances they can take and at what level they can take them. Librarians gain access to a bigger choice of psychic powers and can equip more at once as they level up.
There are allegedly 100 missions (I can't confirm that, not played enough) with a choice of 2 or 3 missions each time, although you can't go back and complete the ones you miss. These are divided into 3 campaigns, Ultramarines, Blood Angels and Space Wolves and each chapter has slight differences in terms of hit chances in hand to hand vs shooting and a couple of other things.
Gameplay is the same except hit chance is % based and you have different fire options, eg aimed fire cost 2 actions rather than 1 but has a bonus to hit, flamers have a choice of templates that spread differently down corridors and can't hit the square in front of them.
Storm Bolters now have ammo and each shot also causes heat buildup and they jam once their heat bar is full. Some actions cool them down, so jams are now not random and you have more control over when they happen. However, Command Points are no longer in the game so if you run out of ammo or jam during the stealer turn you're boned. Assault cannons can fire if overheated but might explode.
Being attacked on a side or back facing in hand to hand is instant death for a marine or a stealer.
Ducts now exist, genestealers can use them to get around but only flamers can shoot down them and no marine can move into them.
There's no longer a minimap and terminators only see a blip when it gets within their perception radius, which means it's easier for the stealers to sneak up on you, especially as the map is so dark, which makes it easy to miss things like ducts and even revealed genestealers and blips and you can't really plan your route properly. I get the feeling they're trying to invoke, but to me it goes against the point of the careful tactical planning of Space Hulk, you can get round it but it just comes across as needless irritation (although I do like perception radius idea).
They took out the killcam too. Boo!
The UI is kinda crappy, the symbols for overwatch & jams are too small and blend in with the rest of the game too much and it's easy to miss them. The hit chances are sometimes obscured by lights. It is easier to tell which facing you're moving to than the 1st game, but there's no back button anymore (I assume as it could help you circumvent the perception radius mechanic). You will bump into situations where there's a genestealer in your face, you need to reload, cool your weapon and fire and your marine decides to do a 180 and present his butt to the stealer instead. Ragequit, restart mission.
When 1st out the game panned to terminators taking overwatch fire, but this caused a jarring screen freeze of about a second or two, so the devs have now cut it entirely, you can see it on the action cam but it gets very difficult to keep track of which terminators are doing what and you have to spend time flicking through them all at the start of your turn to work out who needs to unjam, reload, run screaming, etc. Not game breaking in any way but just really irritating.
Otherwise, I've not noticed any bugs.[edit: just noticed another one to do with hit chances after taking a second aimed shot]
"Tutorial" is shit as ever, no explanation of LOS, efficient use of actions (never mentions you can move and shoot a door for example and in game the computer "pathing" will often do the least efficient thing possible unless you guide it step by step) and the extra instructions in the menu don't explain much more either.
No multiplayer.
So.....a better effort than previously, much closer to being worth the £23 asking price, buuuut....it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I only paid £7 for the original on steam sale and was happy enough with that, but if you'd paid the full £23 it's increasingly looking like you paid for what was, at best, a proof of concept alpha for the second game.
The dev has said on the forums that you should think of Ascension as the single player and the original as multiplayer. Which would mean they've sold you what is at best a budget title for about £45 in a time when you can get most decent new releases for about £30 and even expensive "AAA"'s usually top out at £40. Why is it that pretty much anything associated with GW seems to do it's level best to piss off it's customers?
On that note, 40K Armageddon is out on the 26th and looks suspiciously like a reskin of Final Liberation designed for mobile. Hooroo.
Not really sure what the discussion is er...anyone want to scream incoherently at Games Workshop/Full control? Add a 50 point rebuttal about wrong I am? WTF are you talking about idiot, get off my forums?
EDIT: Wow, ok, that turned out longer than expected. I suppose I should add TL;DR to the list of response options.
