The “bait”
When I agreed to proceed with the analysis of Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade, I discussed it with a fellow of the foreign press, who proceeded to send me a black and white image in which appeared a fish and a hook and a slogan that read ” This is bait . ”
Despite the warning, we gladly bit the hook. We bit it thoroughly. We did it for our fascination for the 40K universe, for the good taste that other deliveries
based on the franchise have left on the set of gamer memories and because, frankly, we expected something else: maybe something more like a Planetside or even a Space Marinethat,
even with all its imperfections, pointed good manners. The final result has been clearly unsatisfactory and different from what was promised, suggesting
that a few more months of development would have come to the title more than required; and maybe that’s how we would get rid of this feeling of “work-in-progress” that transpires Eternal Crusade patch to patch.
Smell of Warhammer
The 4 races are available at the start: Orks, Eldar and Space Marines and Chaos have different classes and specializations that we can choose when it comes to customizing our avatar, although many of them are basically the same with different names.
There are some concessions made about it – notice needed for the hardcore 40K fan – but in general the game fulfills its goal of portraying the Warhammer universe here. Mapping, technology, general ambience, sound effects …
everything seems to fit in with our common ideology. In this sense there are fewer things to reproach Behavior Interactive , the truth.
Count on my sword
It is not easy to resign yourself to die skewered by an Eldar to melee by means of a sword of enormous dimensions when you have previously drawn the silhouette of your adversary with your not-very-precise automatic rifle several times. When one is a Space Marine those things
hurt a lot, especially in pride. And is that one of the main mistakes that comment the newcomer is to think that weapons at a distance prevail in this
shooter-space arena in the third person; it is to imagine that when seeing that 70% of the players was hitting body to body already it should have made sound some alarm.
And how the game changes once you understand that Eternal Crusade was designed by, from and for close combat.
That is one of the things that the unintuitive tutorial does not just explain well to the new player; As much as many action games have been played, it is always good to explain why and how one’s fundamentals work, especially if it is presumably going to bring
60 people togetherand they will have to interact and confront each other. What are the advantages of the siege, when it is better to appropriate the
vehicles, what compositions go well … none of this is explained. The player is expected to take what he thinks fit, note that he is incapable of absolutely
killing anyone with a remote weapon and ends up going to the massive button press in the middle of a melee that looks more like a rugby melee than a
tactical combat as in principle it seemed that it should be. For practically weeks, the key to victory has been: Eldar (for access to the jetpack), sword ,
assaulting the enemy’s rearguard, becoming Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, winning. A bit limited for those who like to enjoy the, in theory, multiple possibilities that the game would allow us.
That said, when the game works, it works . You have to do the controls, the camera and the animations; we must do to the fact that the games are not level or that at some moments of the day it is impossible to find the full maps; must be made that
although it is a game of payment and not exactly cheap, the store contemplates real-money objects worth € 10 and that some factions, just for the sake of it, have more unlockable content with game currency than others and you
have to make sure that the fact has tons of bugs, like if someone is behind a cover (and still you can see him) you can not write down your
psychic abilities. And you have to do lots of textures that do not look good, that today can not unlock all the skills with certain factions – the Orks, at least – or that you execute an enemy and he does not die. Yes, we must do many things.
To too many things. But for a while, when you can ignore all this, drop on top of an enemy and start chaining deaths by guessing your enemy’s parry, the
game leaves very good feelings. When you can coordinate a battle for your squad to attack a checkpoint from multiple entries, the game satisfies.
When you miraculously survive by escaping through a window while an enraged Ork empties his charger from afar, the game yields.
