RPS Feature Boring singleplayer, ace co-op
SPACE HULK SPACE HU.. no, sorry, best not do that again, eh? This latest pixel-flashing rendition of the revered Games Workshop tabletop game is no boardgame adaptation, but rather a squad-based swarm-shooter in the vein of Left 4 Dead.
I played Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] alone and had a lousy time. Then I played it with others and ALL GLORY TO THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND! Oops, I did it again.
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Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site], the new squad-based FPS adaptation of Games Workshop’s tabletop Warhammer 40,000 spin-off, is now out. Our Alec is currently busy polishing his crotchskull but, once he’s done with that and made himself decent, he’ll load Deathwing and play so he can tell us all Wot He Thinks. For now, he sends initial word that “the environments look like concept art and it has the requisite thumpy metal sound effects, but do brace yourself for a whole lot of stomping down long, twisty corridors.” Sounds like Space Hulk all right. Read the rest of this entry »
I mean the 90s EA version, not the boardgame-faithful but divisive recent adaptation. Sure, it doesn’t play so well today, but I think it’s too overlooked in discussions of that great early-90s surge of PC shooters. This was one of all too few which eschewed the Doom model in favour of something altogether more ambitious.
Toll the Bell of Lost Souls. Full Control, the folks most recently behind Space Hulk Ascension and Jagged Alliance Flashback, has stopped making games. The Danish studio ran into financial trouble and will soon only exist as a far smaller company selling and supporting their games. Current plans for DLC, updates, and ports are still in effect, but it’s unclear how much we’ll see from them or how they’ll exist after that.
I am hopeful that Warhammer 40K FPS-RPG Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] will be, at the very least, a weird game. Developers Streum On Studio were behind E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy, another FPS-RPG about an order of warrior monks stomping around a dystopian future in ornate power armour. It was hugely ambitious, baffling and wonky yet fascinating and endearing, which I’ll take over mediocre any day. So a new trailer choosing a soundtrack with mariachi-tinged rap from a Swiss pop band, well, that’s certainly unconventional for a 40K game. I’m quietly hopeful.
RPS Feature Sometimes you SHulk, sometimes you burn
Space Hulk is back. Again. From developers Full Control, who were responsible for last year’s digital release, Ascension is a sequel of sorts, with a new approach to campaigns, with persistent stat progression, and over a hundred missions. It’s an improvement over the company’s first attempt in many ways but there are still plenty of reasons to have a bit of a space sulk.
RPS Feature Full Control seeks Ascension
Space Hulk Space Hulk Space… Hulk? Full Control’s adaptation of the cult classic Games Workshop boardgame turned out to be a divisive experience after early excitement. A buggy launch (though rectified later) didn’t help, but players seemed polarized between enjoying its careful faithfulness and being put off by what some felt was too slow and rudimentary. Rab was very much in the latter camp when he covered it for us.
Last month, the Danish devs unexpectedly announced Space Hulk: Ascension edition, which has a looser, faster, flashier interpretation of the hallowed source material, including adding roleplaying mechanics, revised combat, different types of enemy, many more weapons and a slew of brand new missions. I talked to their lead Thomas Lund about the intent behind this deliberately more ‘videogamey’ standalone expansion, what’s changed both on the surface and deeper down, the critical differences between a boardgame and a videogame, why the two Space Hulks are companions rather than replacements, his response to criticism of the first game, why it had a messy launch and what they’ve learned from it all.
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Full Control’s grand dream for Space Hulk was to recreate the beloved Games Workshop boardgame. It got off to a rocky start. Patching did a lot for bugs (though can’t change that it doesn’t have that cardboard feel), and today They say it’s a fairly solid adaptation. So having made Space Hulk, Full Control want to make a different Space Hulk.
Today they announced Space Hulk: Ascension Edition, a standalone new version boshing in a load of RPG bits, new stuff, and Ultramarines, who do at least bring Cyclone missile launchers to compensate for being so dull.
Shhh! Read this in silence. If Alec catches wind of it, he’ll start babbling “Space Hulk Space Hulk Hulk Space Spulk Hace Spalk Ace Ace Ace Ace” all over again, his face flitting between ecstasy and agony, and we’ve only just got him settled since the last Space Hulk news. Shhh. Quietly round up a few battle brothers and let them know that Space Hulk’s long-promised co-op has arrived in a new patch today. Actually it’s a cooperative-competitive mode, pitting several Space Marines against one Genestealer.
I am faintly aware that a few people have been waiting for me to say something about Full Control’s Space Hulk, which I had been highly impressed by very brief encounters with but then unable to review the thing due to being on paternity leave. Rab, stepping into the breach (possibly the wrong choice of words for that context) was most distressed by what he found. But what of me? Did I love the finished game as much as I’d hoped, or had I sold my soul to the Chaos god of preview hype, and tricked you all?
I’ll reveal all below, along with sharing details of expansion pack stuff.
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Eschewing the often broken International Laws of Highlander and Vampire Slayers, there is another Space Hulk game in development. A surprisingly swift announcement after the miasma of sadness generated by the recently released strategy game, Space Hulk: Deathwing transposes the corridor-set alien masher into a more appropriate format. It’s a first-person shooter by Streum Studios, the makers of the interesting and flawed E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy. A tiny, mouse-sized teaser trailer is squeaking in the undergrowth. Let’s all disturb it, shall we?
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RPS Feature "Grated celeryness"
Emperor, forgive me for what I’m about to write. It’s me, Rab Florence. You know I love Space Hulk. You know I have every edition of the game. You know I am pure.
But it’s three in the morning, and I’ve been playing Space Hulk on PC for six hours, and that’s more than enough. It’s been a painful, heartbreaking six hours, and the thought of a seventh is unbearable. Let me tell you why.
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Deep breath. Take it right in. Expand those lungs, fill them with air until you feel like you’re going to burst. Now exhale. Feel your body contract as your breath heaves out of it. Remember that feeling of clean air, because it was taken in a pre-Space Hulk world. In about an hour the game unlocks on Steam (6pm UK time), and from then on each breath will be tainted with the smell of oil, death, burning Genestealer flesh, and if you live anywhere near a Lush shop, the lingering aroma of boutique soap. Not even death and war can cover that smell up.
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RPS Feature Phwoar, the Emperor
At Rezzed, I managed to say hello to Full Control’s Thomas Lund, who you’ve met in text form before here, and then talk him into dereliction of duty. And so it was that he abandoned the Space Hulk stand on the show floor to let me have a play with and a natter about this new adaptation of Games Workshop’s timeless humans vs aliens boardgame in relative privacy. I now choose to SHATTER that privacy by sharing a half hour of me stomping down corridors and burning the heretic below. Sadly we’d stopped filming by the point that we persuaded Thomas to show us how well they’d rendered Terminators’ ironclad buttocks, but I did manage to grab a cheeky photo.
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Rummaging my empty head for games I was particularly excited about in 2013, I largely came up worryingly blank. I think, though, that’s got a lot to do with the fact that a lot of the most exciting upcomers are happening via Kickstarter, which means ‘twould be foolish to presume any of them will actually happen this year. Also because The Mainstream is all bound up in those new XStation things due out in the back end of the year, and of what we do get from that on PC, we probably won’t be shown much of it until Microsoft starts talking about its next big, ugly, advert-spewing box. One thing my brain did burp up without much prompting, however, was Space Hulk. I want that on my PC and I want it now. (I also want it on my tablet thing, but that’s primarily for when I’m not, erm, sitting on a chair). I haven’t seen it myself yet, but I am so far convinced by dev Full Control’s enthusiasm for it. In the following video Q&A, there’s a bunch more of that, plus some very pleasing hints about what they’ve got planned post-release. Maudlin, semi-traitorous hands in the air, fellow Dark Angels fans!
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As prophesied by the saintly words of the Very Reverend Adam Smith last week, Jagged Alliance is about to make its eighty millionth comeback, this time in the charge of Full Control, they of the new Space Hulk game, and via the medium of Crowdsourcing. I can only advise you to read that interview in the pursuit of fulsome details on the turn-based strategy remakequel, but today the actual Kickstarter goes live. This means more details, and also a video which affords me the opportunity to see the face of a man I have only ever spoken to on the phone before. It’s quite a nice face, really.
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JAGGED ALLIANCE! JAGGED ALLIANCE! JAGGED ALLIANCE! It’s no good. I just don’t have Alec’s endurance when it comes to repeating words for any length of time. I do have a remarkable degree of stamina when it comes to dancing though and I plan to spend the next five minutes doing the Snoopy dance in celebration of the fact that Full Control, who are currently working on a promising adaptation of Space Hulk, are moving on to a new turn-based Jagged Alliance game once Space Hulk has shipped. Hope springs eternal.
Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk See Space Hulk
See Space Hulk
RPS Feature A Good Tonguing
I am on the show floor at GDC, standing next to an unflappable and smiling Thomas Lund of Full Control Studios. He is pleased. He is showing me Space Hulk. He is so excited about it that I can’t help get caught up in his enthusiasm and start feeling giddy, even though I have been taking all of my cynicism medication. He’s been gesticulating and enthusing and SPACE HULK.
It looks pretty great.
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RPS Feature Blood Angel delight
Rejoice, heretics. There’s going to be a brand new, turn-based and faithful PC adaptation of legendary Games Workshop boardgame Space Hulk, and I am really very excited about this. So I had a good old chat with Thomas Hentschel Lund, boss of Full Control, the studio behind this sci-fi strategy game of man versus alien in desperate battle. Inside: the first (and excellent) in-game screenshots, details on how it works, what’s been tweaked, if it’s as brutal as the source material, whether PC or iOS is the lead platform, whether it nods to the old EA first-person games, and how the whole thing happened due to one very happy accident involving a fire pit.
(You can click on the first two screenshots in this post for fancy HD versions, by the way).
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