I've pre-ordered the collectors edition on pc, if only for he magnetic purity seal it includes (fanboy squees!).

Kasatka said:

Nice to know your fridge is finally going to be able to show it's devotion to the Emperor.

I've got a standard edition on pre-order. Some friends of mine are waiting for details of the co-op, I've bought it regardless but I DO need to know whats going on with that.

I have plans to attach my purity seal to the royal-blue case for my Grandfather's over 100 year old violin that I play.

It's cool because it's relic. See what I did there?

I wonder if we will see stats for the cast...

Alex

Overall, the games fun.

*Spoilers*

But seriously, at least from my personal DH experience, that inquisitor is quite possibly one of the dumbest guys around. "Oh I let my mental guard down while traveling in the warp, but its ok, I made this new friend, its all cool"...........

Also, does Titus not actaully hear the recordings he picks up? If he paid any attention he would put a bolter round right through the inquisitor's eyes when they meet. Much less actually go along with him, knowingly using a highly dangerous warp power source in a weapon system that could have world ending results.

The game is a blast, for the 40k fan in me. If you're a fan of the universe, get it and play it. It's great =) For the designer in me, it hurts. There were a lot of missed opportunities.

Level design is poor. It's a rail road with little choice on my end as a player [or, at least, at the point I've gotten too i've had little choice.] It seems very "Room > Hallway > Room > Hallway." From a designer stand point, you simply get into a room and duke it out, then go through a hallway to the next room to duke it out in. This isn't exciting or interesting after a while. Despite that, there are certainly some incredibly epic and beautiful locations [as beautiful as this war torn universe can be of course But that is beauty too!]

I really wish I felt like my melee weapons were different, and I really wish I had more attacks than XY, XXY, XXXY, and XXXX. I feel they missed a HUGE opportunity with the missions too. It would be great as Captain Titus, that I look at the planet from an overhead and decide "Hey, there are these 3 missions available. The tide is coming in over here that has a choke point I can stop it at... The Imperial Guard need supplies over there.... And funky jazz is going on in this part of the Factorium. Pick which mission you do, here's your requistion, grab the weapons you think you need for the job based on your renown, and go for it!" This would have been a much more interesting approach.

There is also the gripe of no Coop Campaign, but I won't go into that.

That aside. Wow... What a great game. The story delivery is fantastic. I mean, it starts jumping out of a ship and wading through a plethora of other ships to hammer down on the bow of an Ork vessel. How freaking cool is that!?!?!?!? It has some very powerful scenes and settings, and they really portray the awesome that is a Space Marine. You feel huge! Your steps even rattle your screen a little, and the power in your attacks is so well portrayed! So far, I'm really excited and want more =) A lot more!!! I'm not even done and I'm hoping there will be a sequal!

@Chioxin

isn' t 5 player Co-op supposed to come as a free DLC later? That's the last thing I read about it.

1. It's 4 Player Co-op; and

2. It's a "Horde" style co-op, like the one in Gears of War 2 - they aren't doing a co-op campaign.

Oh, well 4 is still good. And I liked Horde mode in Gears, fun times with friends! (horrible with randoms. Emperor preserve me)

Ya, it's just horde. And don't get me wrong, I like that and think it's cool too. Though I was really hoping to play the campaign as coop with my brother =) Horde will last me a night at most I think, and then I'll likely be tired of it.

Bought the game for my room mate. So keep in mind I was watching as he was playing the game.

Visually its stunning. Game play in solo mode gets a bit tedious, you fire a gun, or use a melee weapon, build up fury for rare heals. Npcs basically never miss, you can, and you burn through ammo at an insane rate. Thankfully there are literally piles and piles of ammo laying around. Honestly for easy mode it would have been better to just remove ammo alltogether, but again I am not a fps player.

There is no ducking from fire (which makes sense, sm's do not duck). Cover often seems pointless as npc fire goes right through it and damages your space marine. Squid bomblings can one hit kill you, which honestly seemed a bit overdone.

What amused me though was the text on Easy mode saying your toon will rarely die. That is simply not true. You will die. A lot, often from that npc fire at range you cannot see that never misses, and from squidlings you must destroy before they hit you.

Boss fights even on easy mode caused my room mate, who really enjoys fps games (honest I do not but I love Warhamer 40k), to toss his controller on the ground and turn the game off after about twelve attempts and dying. He got very frustrated and this is a guy who plays these games for fun.

Namely the boss fight against the orc warboss, he just could not get past it. He thinks he might have picked the wrong gun before he entered the room, but basically once you reach that boss fight you're stuck there. Though I think you can redo the entire chapter, he just was too burned out on the gameplay to want to try it again.

Pity. The game looks pretty amazing, but the healing mechanic seems to have a bit of lag, I saw him use the healing mechanic only to die instantly a few seconds later. Lots of one hit kills. I was also at a bit of a loss as to what the back up space marines did to benefit your character. Often they would fire at the same mob doing little if any damage until his player character turned around and killed the mobs for them. Their background banter is nicely done though. You have the grizzled non com and the green new kid who quotes the code over and over.

Storyline wise it's nicely done. There are imperial guard units, an Inquisitor, orcs, heretics and some even nastier baddies (no desire to spoil things though). Though the number of times the npcs shout out "Space Marine!" gets to be a bit of a running joke. Do not make a drinking game out of it, you'll be stone drunk in a few minutes. Sound is very well done and very engaging.

The Prima strategy guide is very light on the walkthroughs, but does offer some nice backgrounds on the main characters and npc's though would be good for Deathwatch players and gm's. Captain Titus would make an interesting npc. Would love to see FFG do some write ups of the characters and npcs -- hint hint!

I guess one thing that I wonder about that I do not see listed anywhere is when exactly the game takes place in WH40k continuity, as in calendar date? Perhaps someone caught that.

Anyways, from what I watched it looks nice, but the gameplay clearly gets very frustrating for fps fans about 2/3 of the way through, with that orc boss fight in particular. Perhaps he'll go back to it when he cools off a bit. I hope so as I would like to see how the game ends. But if not, the game joins the vast majority of unfinished video games people buy and never finish. Which is why I usually stick with the pen & paper games myself, lol.

Just completed the game on hard. Was a fun game, decent game lenght and I haven't even touched the multiplayer yet!

The game breathes with the lore quite a bit, most of the time I don't mind as I understand this is made for a wider public and shortcuts must be made not to mention what works in fluff/tabletop/rpg might not work in a computer game. So that the meltagun was more like a shotgun, the bolter has autofire etc it really didn't bother me as I knew the reasons and they helped diversify the weaponry.

It takes awhile getting used to the healing, knowing when (and later how) to execute has a learning curve but it's so great to actually have an easier time on hard then I did on normal when going through the demo.

The one gripe I really really have about the game though is the dialogue, the actors do a decent job. It's not shakespear but then again it's not supposed to be and they seldom sound flat or boring. The problem is WHAT they say, it's not very 40k'ish. People in warhammer do NOT say good luck, they'll say Emperor protect you or something along those lines and I really really missed that! The guardsmen mostly call them lord, but there are...inconsistencies. Anyway, it's a bit nickpick'ish but it would have made it alot more immersive.

Gameplay, cover big enough for a space marine is hard to come by and when you do you can bet they'll try to flank (or rush into melee) and ruin the shield regen. But it's part of the game and I think they've done a good job diversifying the game from others in it's genre.

Hoping to have some fun with the multiplayer later, and horde mode with my friends when it comes out.

It's not a game made for the hardcore fans and if they expect this to be canon they'll be dissapointed, if they however expect to run around like an Ultramarine captain killing the enemies of man fun times will ensue.

And I LOVED seeing the other chapters, wish they'd gotten more screen time.

Okay, the room mate took a break, read through some boss hints and finished the entire game today. The ending is pure Warhammer 40k, and makes it clear there is another game coming. Or some dlc, personally I am hoping for some dlc first. No spoilers here, but now that I have seen the game, especially on easy mode I (a person who has never gotten through a fps in my life, lol) am seriously thinking about giving it a try.

As I watched the room mate play to the end, I really have to say Relic got the visual tone of Warhammer 40k and the Space Marines just right. And I really want to add some of these video game characters to my own group's Warhammer 40k rpg pen & paper campaigns, as background npcs. Which is why I am still trying to figure out just when this game takes place in the overall Warhammer 40k timeline. Naturally I can just use gm fiat and say, whenever I want it to, but I kind of wish the game had used dates once or twice.

From what I can tell the only way to gain access to the "paint" mode of the game is to have multi-player, and that in turn requires gold member status (go figure), but I would love to be able to create some space marines, and the room mate wants to shoot chaos marine players, so I guess I will have to buy the gold card. Then again, if I had simply bought the pc version, I would not have to bother with that at all, and I could do screen shots, lol.

This is what I get for getting a fps game for the room mate based on a pen & paper game I have enjoyed for years. Clearly all part of the GW/FFG master plan ;-)

Got it yesterday, played it for about an hour late last night. Beautiful looking game, deeply respectful to the 40k canon, playable and fun, but certainly not in the same league in terms of gameplay quality as things like Gears of War. Combat can get a bit samey, but I love the weapon set, which feels wonderfully meaty and solid. I especially like the chainsword sound effects - I really can't imagine them ever being bettered at any point in the future.

So far the portentous tone of the game is totally setting appropriate, but it does come across as a little humourless compared to some other big budget games... Orky zaniness jars slightly with the stoic marines and the dutiful guardsmen. I don't think it's a particularly hard game so far - I died a couple a of times playing it in about an hour or so, which seems about the right difficulty setting. There are nicely generous checkpoints, so dying doesn't really hamper you too much. This is good, as it encourages you to get stuck in with your chainsword rather than snipe cautiously from a distance!

I finally got to the end and beat it. I won't give spoilers, but that ending sequence is something I felt all the way through the game. That being, "Here's an awesome idea, and scene. It's really freaking EPIC! And it is... but let's not go all the way through with the game play for it."

So many great scenes in that game, so many awesome encounters! Just, the ... gameplaly never fits or feels fantastic. So many missed opportunities =(

Have to say, the game leaves room for the potential of a very nice sequel. Hopefully something with the Deathwatch

*spoilers*

I could see it happening maybe even as a blackshield thing for Titus. It would be really cool though to see a more mission based game (although thats slightly at odds with SM's current focus on cinematic stuff), much like Relic's other games.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I realize that this info is coming late, but figured I'd post it anyway just in case you still didn't know. The RB button detonates the launched grenades in order from last one fired to first one fired. You can detonate "semi-auto" by tapping the button or as a chain reaction by holding it down.

Though I got this last Friday, I've only just got around to playing it as I have had to physically prize myself away from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. First impressions after running through about three levels is that it's surprisingly good. Really good even. I initially feared that a relatively linear structure and repetitive button bashing gameplay might tire rapidly, but actually the mix of shooting and melee is a lot of fun. The bit with the jump pack was a good change of pace too. I would have welcomed at least the option of taking cover, Gears of War style though, because I like that feature but I didn't miss it all that much (and really didn't miss the waist high walls scattered about the level wherever a fire fight is going to take place). A pretty solid effort I thought.

Relatedly the Ultramarines movie soundtrack finally got released.

Alex

Really? Where can you buy it from?

BYE

Lightbringer said:

If there's one thing I can't stand it is a game which tosses you back ten minutes every time you die - thankfully these days developers seem to realize that repeating the same material over and over is not fun and have taken to including tons of save points along the way in games like this.

I have to say, playing it sure makes me feel baddass ... charging through hordes of Orks and demons with a gun and a chainsword certainly makes you feel like a Space Marine. Personally I love the recover health mechanic, as it encourages you to keep in the midst of things rather than rush off to use a potion or whathaveyou. I'm fighting the Ork boss now, and have to say that while I've died a number of times, the battle itself has been so enjoyable that I don't mind it so much.

While the big story revelation isn't that big of a surprise - there were plenty of hints before it occurred - being that deep in the middle of it all made the scene feel a lot more powerful and when your Marine (Titus, right?) admits that what happened is his fault, I could actually feel the weight of the responsibility settle onto his shoulders ... an incredible scene for building an appropriate Space Marine atmosphere.

Too bad the game only runs about 8 hours for the hefty price.

vandimar77 said:

You can still take advantage of cover my standing behind large objects, or inside doorways, and moving in and out to shoot ... it isn't the same as the crouch and roll thing, but I think that would have felt weird in a Space Marine game anyway.

I'm not typically a fan of shooters, but have been having a good time with this one.

I think the real problem they had with crouch is that they modelled so accurately exactly what I think of as how space marines move and fight and how they look, and I just cant think of an image of a power armoured figure crouching that doesn't look silly. ceramite just wasn't meant to bend that way. trying to fit those huge shin pads and massive shoulder pauldrons into as small a space as possible just makes me smirk tbh

Official site, go to shop, then click on buy now button appropriate to your region. You won't buy the DVD but get to a submenu (sensical shop design by the way).

Alex

I think this guy is doing a pretty good kneel:-

And the Gears of War boys are similarly bulky, so I think they could do something.