Analysis of Space Hulk: Deathwing
Games Workshop, the publisher of board games as important as Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40K or Blood Bowl is not in its best times when it comes to the economy of the company. For this reason, he is making an effort so that the brand spreads by signing
agreements with various studios to take his franchises to videogames; is not that I have not been doing it for many years (there is the Warhammer Dawn of War saga) but this year has left Total War Warmer, End Times – Vermintide, Eternal Crusade and the title that occupies us, Space Hulk: Deathwing .
The title developed by StreumOn Studio brings the board game of Exterminators, Genestealers and space wrecks to a true shooter formula with the
universe and characters it deals with but which fails in its execution partly because it is ascribed to the limitations of a Space Marine and to the rest of Space Hulk mechanics, along with other problems.
Entering a lost space cruiser
In Space Hulk: Deathwing we put on the armor of a Librarian with two other Exterminators who will help us in our missions through the dark corridors in which we have to go to clean Genestealers the Space Hulk and get the secrets that hides the great spatial construction.
The nine missions that make up the Deathwing campaign begin in our base of operations, where we can choose the weaponry and psychic abilities of our Librarian and the weapons of our companions, whose functions, healing and “tank”, are assigned by default.
From there the game teleports portal to us at the beginning of the mission, which consists of ending a Genestealer’s nest or going to a strange signal that appears on the radar, that is, going from point A to point B that redirects us to another location where after some action the mission concludes.
Along the way we will face hordes of enemies that make up an underdeveloped bestiary: some creatures swoop down dozens towards us from any pipe or nook of the stage, the hybrids are left in the second line to shoot us with their rifles or rocket launchers
while we are surrounded by the Genestealers, others are invisible to the eyes of the Librarian and force us to be constantly aware of the radar and finally there are other imposing and hard enemies that can attack both remotely and melee.
With all of them it ends the same way: shooting without stopping with our Bolter, flamethrower or plasma rifle or hitting, hammering or hammering left and right if we have chosen a melee weapon, which complicates the missions in more than one occasion when
having to face distant enemies and that the allied AI does not prioritize, staying attacking the hordes of incessant creatures that arrive.
The artificial intelligence, in any of the four difficulty modes, it is poor: the enemies only run towards you or stay at some point in sight without covering themselves in case they are armed, when they do
not stay blocked in any fence or in an invisible wall ; the allies will only do what we tell them with our command wheel, where we can indicate that they
follow us, defend a position, break a door or heal between them or us, something that is necessary to do constantly and that does not always work, because It can happen that the healer Exterminator can not reach the other partner because it gets stuck with a pile of corpses from the ground or that it takes so long to arrive in absurd detours that it is too late.
Fortunately, a partner dies does not mean we have to continue the mission without him. One of our psychic powers allows us to return three
times by mission (and one more for each relic we find on stage) to the base and we can use it, count down through, at any time of the game, something that allows us to save ourselves from death on many occasions, revive the allies or change our powers if the situation requires it.
At the end of each mission we get points (depending on how well we have done considering the number of enemies defeated, the relics found and other statistics) that we spend on customizing our character through three branches of development.
One of them is focused on the psychic powers, abilities like a blast of fire that sweeps everything, an expansive wave that drives away the enemies that surround us or a ball that absorbs matter (aka Genestealers) nearby; It is strange that some of the most powerful
powers are unlocked before others less useful. Another branch allows us to improve our Librarian at a physical level, giving him more health or the
possibility of running for longer, since by default we can only do it for a few seconds, which means that between zone and zone of enemies we are
walking minutes slowly through monotonous labyrinthine corridors. The last of the specializations serves, basically, to improve the artificial intelligence of our allies
