Warhammer Games Pile of Shame

[Zykon TheLich]

Inspired by Samtemdo's Star Wars thread, I thought I'd post a warhammer game pile of shame with a few thoughts on them. Anyone wants to chip in with their thoughts on any, please do.


Battlefleet Gothic 1&2:
Great base gameplay, my surprise GotY when they came out. Campaign in 2 wasn't bad (1 was very basic), but the game didn't really have legs. I think they were going for online multiplayer market, but while it's fun to play with lots of micromanagement, it's a bit slow and boring to watch so didn't really take off in the way they wanted. Great atmosphere and the factions really felt like they played differently which was nice in some respects but was a bit of a problem in competetive games against human players, some gametypes were incredibly hard to win playing as certain factions. Orks vs eldar on a keepaway gaemtype? Good luck! Still go back to it occasionally for a few rounds of giant space catherdral action.

Blood Bowl 1&2:
Great fun once you "get" it. Since it is basically the exact same game in both iterations I didn't buy 2. Campaign and building up your team is a big draw, makes you invested in your star players. The RNG factor could make it pretty rage inducing though until you built up players with skills to mitigate that.

Mordheim:
While it was well received, I found the risk/reward balance was too sharp, it was too easy to either be too poor to upgrade your guys because you were playing cautiously or risk going for the cash and then have a bunch of them fucked over and lose all your money on medical bills and replacement fighters. The gameplay wasn't entertaining enough to carry it over that and "git gud"

Space hulk & ascenson:
Original was just too basic and expensive for what it was. Literally space hulk the boardgame on the PC. The campaign was the same as the original space hulk boardgame I bought in 1991.
Ascension was good, actually did some new things, much bigger campaign and was what the first should have been. Except no multiplayer, so to get a "complete" game you needed to buy both, which would set you back about £50 without sales.

Total Warhammer 1&2:
YES!!!

Armageddon:
Pretty decent if overpriced, but it's a niche game based on panzer general, no surprise there. Once you've played through the campaign there isn't much reason to go back to it though.

Dawn of War 1 & 2.
Had great times with 1, but I find the gameplay tired now, I don't go back to it. 2's campaign was great, the mix of story and RPG elements. Multiplayer is great fun to watch, closest we'll get to seeing a live action 40K battle IMO. But a bit hard to play, especially given how shit I am at games. Rumours of a 3rd are completely unfounded.

Deathwatch: Meh. Cheap title, very much a $10 game.

Eternal Crusade: Garbage online multiplayer. Quite rightly died.

Gladius:
4X 40k, one of those that you could see the potential, but was just a bit too small with most focus on combat. Still, can't expect every 4X to be Civ.

Inquisitor Martyr:
They really tried, I wanted to like it but once you get past the story at around level 30 the gameplay isn't there to keep you going and it becomes a boring repetetive slog. I occasionally play an extra mission or 2 then give up.

Kill Team: I honestly have difficulty remembering this one. I think it was some sort of top down shooter using dawn of war 2 assets.

Mechanicus:
Not played much of this yet, but seems like a very solid TBS with some good upgrade mechanics etc. Very atmospheric music. It's decently priced for what it is, but like a lot of Warhams games you can see the potential for it to have been a lot more if given the time and investment. Can't complain though.

Sanctus Reach:
Looks good in the screenshots, but once you get into the game you can't hide that it's another fairly simple turn based game with little to make it stand out.

Space Marine:
Good to play through a well rendered 40K forge world battlezone and engaging enough gameplay to carry it through. Falls off towards the end when it becomes more shooty based and a shitty final boss quicktime battle. Well worth a go on steam sale.

Vermintide 1&2:
Another lovely rendering of the warhammer world. Would like to ba able to wander through without any enemies to bother me. If only I had friends who played it, bots just don't cut it. If had been a bit more of a single player action game rather than a left for dead type I'd have played it quite a bit.

Final Liberation:
MFin' Commissar Holt! The quintessential political officer! The FMV sequences were an absolute gem. Very full list of 1st-3rd ed epic units. Being old it suffers from 90's graphics and UI drawbacks, playing it again now is a bit of a chore.

Chaos Gate:
The tactical gameplay of old X-Com without the base building strategy. RPG like progression mechanics on your dudes, cool music.

Shadow of the horned rat: Probably good at the time, but 90's RTS drawbacks. WTF am I looking at in terms of UI and what's actually going on on the battlefield?

Space Crusade: It's the boardgame. Significantly less entertaining when you're not 12 playing against a friend

Fire Warrior: An FPS that felt dated even on release

Age of Reckoning: Supposedly a good game in the WoW mould that couldn't get over WoW dominance and a few flaws. Would have given up straight away if not for the warhammer licence. Definitely showed me how games like woW probably wouldn't have taken off if not for the social element. Fortunately I plyed on the private reborn server after it closed so didn't waste any money on it. Couldn't imagine paying a subscription to play, but I suppose if you're into that type of MMO and had friends playing it might have been alright.

Space wolf: A game. I think. definite $10 phone material.

Space Hulk vengeance of blood angels etc: Probably would have been ok on PC but console controls didn't help it.

Games I Haven't played: Mosly very basic $10 games you'd be better off avoiding
Heroquest
Deathwing
Space hulk
Rites of War
Necromunda
Dark Future
Chainsaw Warrior
Talisman
Chaos and conquest
Underworlds online
Chaosbane
Regicide
Quest 1&2
Manowar
Age of Sigmar champions
Titanicus dominus
Aeronautica Imperialis
Betrayal at Calth
Dorn Herald of Oblivion
Eisenhorne

 

[Samtemdo8]

Space Hulk Deathwing is not as content rich and deep as Vermintide, (especially that I kinda think pure melee combat with a Sword and Shield kinda sucks in that game)

But its really fun especially when played with friends. And the athmosphere and dread of being swarmed by Genestealers is true. You FEEL like your are in a Space Hulk.

Chaosbane is a bit of a dissapointment. Lets just say that this should have been a 20 dollar game then a 50 dollar game.

Regicide is just Chess with Cheating. But man its the best themed Chess game out there. I got it on a Steam sale for like 1 dollar.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Can't get Final Liberation or Chaos Gate to work on my computer nowdays, but liked both of them.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Can't get Final Liberation or Chaos Gate to work on my computer nowdays, but liked both of them.

GOG.com is supposed to have them be compatible with a lot of computuers?

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Can't get Final Liberation or Chaos Gate to work on my computer nowdays, but liked both of them.

Yup GOG versions work, Chaos Gate had to cut out the heretic death animation for some reason as it causes a crash on modern machines, but you can still play them.

Chaosbane is a bit of a dissapointment. Lets just say that this should have been a 20 dollar game then a 50 dollar game.

Regicide is just Chess with Cheating. But man its the best themed Chess game out there. I got it on a Steam sale for like 1 dollar.

That's the thing with so many GW games, they just feel overpriced for what they are. Knock $10 or regional equivalent off a lot of them and they'd be a lot more appealing. They wouldn't exactly rock your world, but they'd feel like decent little titles for the price.

$50 for chaosbane? Ouch!

 

[Chupathingy]

For 40K games I love playing and watching Dawn of War 2 with Elite Mod. I only wish that game got more factions, particularly Tau and Necrons who both got a hero for Last Stand. I also consider Fire Warrior to be one of my guilty pleasures. There's just something so right about that game's atmosphere, and I have fond memories playing it with my mates when we were young (it was one of the first FPS games we ever played).

The only Warhammer Fantasy games I've played are Blood Bowl 1 and 2, which I love.

 

[Worgen]

The Dawn of War series is one of the best RTS series around.

Space Marine was awesome, too bad we won't get the sequel it deserves.

I played a ton of Final Liberation when I was younger, it probably holds up, but I'm not sure.

Verminetide is a really good co-op 4 player hack and slash, not quite up there with Deep Rock Galactic but pretty close.

I liked Blood Bowl but just haven't gotten around to getting 2.

Warhammer Total war- I mean visually its really impressive but I just don't really get into the total war games.

Chaos Gate was really cool, at some point I need to grab it from gog since my disk broke.

Shadow of the Horned rat was pretty bad on playstation, it was a neat concept but with really weird execution and when the squigs showed up they would just fuck your shit up.

I need to play more Mechanicus, its a nice solid game, but its also kinda easy once you start getting your tech priests upgraded. I got probably halfway or more through it and just haven't touched it since.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Though I played WHFB & WH40K on tabletop for years, I don't have that much playtime (in terms of game diversity) for their video game adaptations, mostly just the big single-player titles.

Total War: Warhammer II is one of my favourite games now
WH40K: Space Marine was fun, functional and pretty well realised
Dawn of War 1 & 2 were good and it was refreshing to see them mix it up a lot across the franchise (except Soulstorm, which could've been so much better)

And that, unfortunately, is it. Most of the other adaptations, especially the 40K strategy ones that try to big themselves up as largescale games, just don't have that scale that I want from them and I'm not a fan of TBT even if it hearkens to TT mechanics more (I have Mordheim, but I don't like it much).

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Shadow of the Horned rat was pretty bad on playstation, it was a neat concept but with really weird execution and when the squigs showed up they would just fuck your shit up.

Ah, ok, wasn't just me then. It was crap on PC too. Though I only played it ten years ago

(I have Mordheim, but I don't like it much).

Yeah, I was really disappointed when I heard Necromunda was being made by the same people.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Yeah, I was really disappointed when I heard Necromunda was being made by the same people.

One of those 'great idea', bad execution cases. Could've gone the BloodBowl route, but they decided to adapt the mechanics for a more VG 'feel', but it came off as horrendously janky and skewed (basically what you mentioned having re-read the OP).

Mild rant time: now I think on it, I got into GW related stuff mostly from a 40K perspective and when I was a wee nipper, reading battle reports in WD and running through theoretical battles with a couple friends was the coolest thing ever (I know, how sad, but w/e). Very quickly I became an Eldar main (whatever meta implications you can take from that), but as far as the video games are concerned, it really pisses me off that with very few exceptions, the games stick to their xenophobic Imperium dick-stroking exercises (only Fire Warrior comes to mind as a game in which you don't/can't play as an Imperial in any way shape or form). I know, I know, it's safe territory and the most relatable, but it strikes me as a lack of confidence on everyone's part that they display little to no willingness to adapt anything with xenos-centric narrative. Given their practise of drip feeding the licence out to studios, it's like they go 'there you go, here's the stuff you can screw up the least with' or something.

There's a lot of debate over how/whether it can be done (I think it can, but that's a discussion for another time, with a proper rant about how some people shouldn't be paid to write articles, but nevermind), but I'm hoping for Total War: Warhammer 40K in the foreseeable future (Dawn of War: DC/SS will do for the time being with broadly analogous gameplay, which it really isn't tho(!)).

 

[Trunkage]

GOG.com is supposed to have them be compatible with a lot of computuers?

Chaos Gate was a buggy mess without worrying About modern systems. Is that still a problem?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Very quickly I became an Eldar main (whatever meta implications you can take from that), but as far as the video games are concerned, it really pisses me off that with very few exceptions, the games stick to their xenophobic Imperium dick-stroking exercises (only Fire Warrior comes to mind as a game in which you don't/can't play as an Imperial in any way shape or form). I know, I know, it's safe territory and the most relatable, but it strikes me as a lack of confidence on everyone's part that they display little to no willingness to adapt anything with xenos-centric narrative.

Black Library has put out an entire zillion 40k novels, and up until very recently they were almost all Imperium (or sometimes chaos) centred. Nowdays it's only almost almost all. Alien mindsets seem to be too hard. For that matter, the number of times they completely forget that marines or even guard aren't exactly the same as modern humans in their outlooks...

 

[meiam]

I played a lot of Mordheim but I can't say I really like the game overall. I like the basic gameplay (moving your character on the map in sort of tactical/3rd person hybrid) but the game was super repetitive after awhile. Big problem was also that enemy team would always mirror yours, both in composition and power level, so you never felt like you were actually progressing since the stronger you were, the stronger the enemy were. This meant that after getting a couple of key skill for your character you were better off not leveling them anymore since at that point you'd have to grab sub par skill which wouldn't be worth the increase in enemy power. The game would also punish failure extremely harshly, where losing one map might wipe out most of your team, even just having some character lose all their health in a fight could screw them up. Also I found that starting position was by far the most important aspect that determine success or failure in combat. The map were you'd start split up were way harder than the one where all your guy where grouped up (the decription of one of the fight scenario says your team is "split up to ambush the enemy" but this is literally the worst way to start a map, I avoid that scenario like the plague). Still the unit and skill variety was pretty good across all faction, wish there were more way to mix and match unit from different faction to make your perfect groups.

I liked battlefleet gothic 1 because they were a lot of way to thinker with your ships, but all of that was stripped away from 2 and I just couldn't get into it because of that.

Dawn of war 2 was a lot of fun, one of the few RTS that tried to capture the warcraft 3 campaign magic. DoW2: retribution was cool since you could play as other group than space marine, but all the mission were identical anyway and there actually wasn't that many difference between the various units, so it was a pretty big waste imo.

I finished mechanicus not too long ago, the game needed some serious balancing, it's starts a bit too hard but becomes ridiculously easy over time, you eventually get strong enough that you're character can kill multiple enemy every time they act. The last boss only acted once in my game (and that was because he starts far from you and teleport to you on his first turn), was expecting some kind of second form, but nothing.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Chaos Gate was a buggy mess without worrying About modern systems. Is that still a problem?

It may not help you much, but I got chaos gate running perfectly from a ROM on an old dual core windows XP machine. Not a single crash, error or hangup.

I played a lot of Mordheim but I can't say I really like the game overall. I like the basic gameplay (moving your character on the map in sort of tactical/3rd person hybrid) but the game was super repetitive after awhile. Big problem was also that enemy team would always mirror yours, both in composition and power level, so you never felt like you were actually progressing since the stronger you were, the stronger the enemy were. This meant that after getting a couple of key skill for your character you were better off not leveling them anymore since at that point you'd have to grab sub par skill which wouldn't be worth the increase in enemy power. The game would also punish failure extremely harshly, where losing one map might wipe out most of your team, even just having some character lose all their health in a fight could screw them up. Also I found that starting position was by far the most important aspect that determine success or failure in combat. The map were you'd start split up were way harder than the one where all your guy where grouped up (the decription of one of the fight scenario says your team is "split up to ambush the enemy" but this is literally the worst way to start a map, I avoid that scenario like the plague). Still the unit and skill variety was pretty good across all faction, wish there were more way to mix and match unit from different faction to make your perfect groups.

I liked battlefleet gothic 1 because they were a lot of way to thinker with your ships, but all of that was stripped away from 2 and I just couldn't get into it because of that.

I finished mechanicus not too long ago, the game needed some serious balancing, it's starts a bit too hard but becomes ridiculously easy over time, you eventually get strong enough that you're character can kill multiple enemy every time they act. The last boss only acted once in my game (and that was because he starts far from you and teleport to you on his first turn), was expecting some kind of second form, but nothing.

Yeah, Mordheim had conflicting gameplay elements. Split up and your guys get double teamed and taken out since enemy reaction to seeing you is to immediately move in as many guys as possible. The safest thing was to just put your guys in a ball and dogpile the split up enemies as you get to them. But then you never make enough money. You had to try to run them all up the middle to the biggest pile of warpstone and then break off 2 or 3 to grab any big warpstone piles you see on the way as a compromise. But then as soon as you had killed all the enemies the game ended. You could be sitting next to a giant pile of warpstone and no, can't pick that up, the enemy is dead, round over. I failed secondary missions because the guy with the thing I needed to nick was on the last enemy and the round ended when they were killed. It's right fucking there! Next to me! I can't bend down and pick it up?! Fucking idiotic design. I'm beginning to remember how much I disliked that game, which is a shame a few changes could have made it at least tolerable.

It was a shame they took out all the mission variety from BFG 2, I get the balance issues in multiplayer but it added a bit more interest, the AI wasn't so good at cheesing missions so it wasn't as bad as playing against human players. Keeping the customisation would have been cool too, but overall I really liked it.

I'm on my first playthrough of Mechanicus, about 1/3 way through and yeah, my guys are turning into beasts. The arrival of deathmarks was a bit of a jolt but didn't take long to realise how squishy they are and carry on unabated. It feels like a well crafted small game. Makes me hope for another one with a bit more to it.

 

[Agema]

I liked Shadow of The Horned Rat and Dark Omen from the 90s. They're obviously pretty primitive now, but I liked the unit-based combat. I like unit based combat generally. Warhammer: Total War and I were never going to agree because I want to run a battle between armies, not a bunch of souped-up heroes with some chaff to make the screen look busier. Although tbh, I was struggling with the TW series already because of many, many flaws - last one I bought was Shogun II (which was quite a pleasing return to basics).

I've played Sanctus Reach, which is kind of dull, but passes muster as a baseline strategy to while away the hours.

And I'm sure I played Dawn of War all those years ago in the early 2000s. Didn't particularly enjoy it, but I was falling out of affection for that sort of RTS by then (I only played Starcraft II out of nostalgia).

I find GW's limited quality control on leasing its IP slightly odd, personally. But hey, obviously it works for them.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Warhammer: Total War and I were never going to agree because I want to run a battle between armies, not a bunch of souped-up heroes with some chaff to make the screen look busier. Although tbh, I was struggling with the TW series already because of many, many flaws - last one I bought was Shogun II (which was quite a pleasing return to basics).

Given the nature of the source game, there was little chance of hero-centric gameplay not being involved. That said, because of the base game, Call of Warhammer: Beginning of the End Times might be more your speed (overhaul mod for Medieval 2).

I find GW's limited quality control on leasing its IP slightly odd, personally. But hey, obviously it works for them.

I think it's more a case of there's little opportunity cost or risk associated with this strategy rather than it working for them. Aside from a small number of particularly big productions (given the sheer quantity of games adapted from GW IP's), as best as I can tell, they've invariably had low sales figures and middling reviews.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Hawki]

which went from fairly minuscule from a handful of trusted writers to dozens of books released every year by pretty much anyone who wants to write some slightly above average 40k Fan Fic.

They never accepted my fanfiction.

Bastards.