During the summer I finally sat down and played through the
superlatively fun Warhammer: 40,000 Space Marine. I was all like “whaaaaaa” and it was all like
“yeaaaaaaaaa” and then we were all like “SMAAAAAAAAASH.” It was an amazing game to experience, an
opportunity to inhabit, albeit briefly, the armor of one of the Space Marines
of legend in a way that Dawn of War’s superlative gameplay always made me want
to. Running around, breaking shit,
crushing hordes of orcs… It was
good. Real good. It was a marvelous take on the beat-em-up
that realized one of the more iconic sets of beloved tabletop characters we’ve
been exposed to a lot over the last few in video games in a way that was both
unexpected while remaining solidly rooted in the fiction that generated the
game.
Recently I started using the game’s campaign to de-stress
while grading papers. It’s a well built
set of power-fantasy moments, and there were some achievements that I wanted to
get, so… It made sense. It was good to be a Space Marine, grimly
fighting against hordes of whatevers that I could drive into the ground for
fifteen to twenty minutes at a time.
But then I tried the multiplayer game. And holy shit.
Beneath a middling deathmatch/CTF game plagued by latency
issues and serious feature creep (players will have to put in a minimum of five
hours to actually get anywhere with Space Marine’s multi, and even then they
can expect to die frequently against min-maxed powerhouses who will simply
stomp them at will) I found something incredible: the Exterminatus game type.
Exterminatus is essentially a love letter to Horde modes: a
third person version of the amazing Last Stand mode from Dawn of War II. But it’s more than just the sum of those
parts. There’s something intense about
it, incredible and compelling that most horde modes simply can’t provide.
Part of it may very well be the product of the Warhammer
40,000 license. Kicking ass in power
armor with a sweet glowing sword is pretty great, and the feeling of
cooperation, paired with the sensation of being a highly specialized juggernaut
is a pretty solid high. Killing hundreds
of orcs? Not too shabby either.
But what really makes it impressive is a superlative
construction of the Horde game type which understands the appeal of the genre,
the appropriate level of stakes for Horde games and the right way to curve challenge
in a Horde game type.
A lot of Horde game types have steep curves that immediately
and ruthlessly suddenly peak their difficulty in a way that makes them
incredibly frustrating to play – progression within the horde game becomes a
chore of sorts, tremendously unpleasant.
Resources can be distributed in a way that permits a single
inexperienced player to screw over their entire team without knowing it. Early mistakes can make the game untenable or
unplayable. Exterminatus addresses this
by utilizing a single shared resource for the team: life. You’ve got four lives at any given time,
max. You can’t bank them, but you can
use them to respawn and you earn additional lives as you rack up kills. Stakes and resource management are addressed
artfully in one fell swoop. And the game
stages quite nicely, especially in light of the tropes of the genre. Players will be exposed to new, harder
enemies with greater frequency as the game goes on, but it happens in an easy,
splayed fashion and waves are meted out in such a way that kept me from ever
feeling overwhelmed by a new twist.
There was always a decent warm up period before I found myself fighting hordes
of nobs soon or having to dodge an unreasonable number of suicide squigs.
Paired with a system of equipment unlocks and three very
distinct, very satisfying classes, none of which felt overpowered or
overwrought, there’s a lot to dig into in an elegant, understated
framework. It has all the power-fantasy
volume of the original game and lots of gear to grind towards, which eliminates
the tendency that Horde games often have to grow stale or dull in short order.
It’s not perfect: latency issues are still relatively
severe, early game balance is infuriating and certain pieces of very, very
useful gear are gated behind pay-gates, so that players who want to use some of
the better equipment in the game have to drop, minimum, a dollar to do so. It’s mercenary, and a little pointless, but I
can only decry it so loudly having paid for my power sword with the rest of the
rubes (and what a powerful sword it is!).
And it’s remains on the same page as the normal multiplayer
mode which, while fun, isn’t really any great shakes. There are moments that are truly great, but
the power creep issues that beset the standard multiplayer are tremendous, the
lag is a bit much and new players will be infuriated and lost until they get
their first plasma weapon. Even then,
the game won’t really open up until the secondary perks become available – they’re
a compelling reason to actually play the standard multiplayer game, since they
provide real bonuses and carry over between Exterminatus and normal play.
It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t really have to be. It’s just fun enough to make me want to pony
up a couple of extra bucks for digital toys in it, which is saying quite a bit,
but it isn’t fun enough to make me actually pay three bucks to play as a
Dreadnaught. That’s a road I just can’t
go down.
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