The Save Points!

I’m not really well-versed ot the Warhammer 40000 universe. All I know is that it’s basically a standard fantasy world, but with spaceships! But I checked out Kill Team anyways (thanks Pat!).

So read on and see if someone who knows nothing of WH40K enjoyed a very quick look at said universe!

Developer: THQ Warrington
Publisher: THQ
Date of Release: August 2nd 2011 (PSN), June 29th 2011 (XBLA)
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: Twin-stick shooter
Rated T for Teen

What I liked

Gameplay
The gameplay is fairly good. It’s a linear mission-based Twin-stick shooter. Basically: Go to one area as told, kill stuff there, go to next area, kill stuff there, rinse and repeat. There’s always a voice telling you where to go next, and a radar that will point you to your next objective. You have a few basic actions: Moving, sprinting, using special skills (depending on the class), grenades, melee attacks and shooting (wherever you aim with the right analog stick).

Generally, the area you’re fighting in (a huge Kroozer, which is the only place you’ll be visiting) is full of enemies and things to blow up. There are various collectibles here. There are 10 emblems to find in each mission, and power-ups that can be found in certain boxes. The power ups range from double/triple/quad shots to invincibility, rapid fire, health regeneration, increased melee damage and power shields. Each power-up lasts a little while, even health (basically gives huge health regen). You get points for every kill and thing you destroy (more if you do kills in super-quick succession) which eventually leads to a leaderboard.

The gameplay is fun and intense and almost never lets up, even when you backtrack they’ll generally be nice enough to give you enemies to kill on the way. The boss battles are quite entertaining too, even though they rarely require much more than “shoot them a lot”.

Customization
You have multiple classes to choose from here. Each has different types of weapons, some have stronger melee or stronger ranged weapons. As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock perks, which gives various bonuses like health and damage and power-ups lasting longer and such. And you also get weapons. Weapons unlock for any of the classes, no matter what class you’re currently playing, so you’ll get Force Swords for your Librarian even if you’re playing as a Sterngard Veteran. It seems to me like the weapons and perks unlock depending only on the number of kills, or points, but I may be wrong, it’s not terribly clear.

The customization and different classes enables to try various methods to go through missions, so it’s a nice addition, and each class works very differently as well.

What I didn’t like

Difficulty/time
The game itself isn’t terribly hard, since you have infinite continues and tons of checkpoints. What annoys me here is that they just put tons of enemies everywhere that you can’t possibly avoid to kill you, so you have to rely on luck a lot of the time to avoid dying. As you advance through the game projectiles hurt you more and more, and there’s really not much you can do against that other than hope to be able to move away (boosting your health may help as well, but not much). I’m guessing this problem is non-existent if you play in co-op, but I didn’t get to try that since the multiplayer is local-only.

Another thing that bothers me here is the time it takes to complete missions. If you’re well upgraded and good at the game you might take twenty ot thirty minutes for a mission (the missions took me longer on my first run)…. but that’s really long for a mission in a game with no story and no real cinematics (they put random cutscenes to show objectives and such, but nothing beyond that) and, well, it’s a score-based game. It’s nice for games like this to be playable in short bursts, but it’s not the case here.

What I didn’t particularly care for

Presentation
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING. The monsters you fight look cool, but otherwise… meh. Also, it’s really dark. That doesn’t cause too many problems, except when you’re fighting tyranids, because YOU CAN’T SEE THEM. That and the fact that there always seems to be fog/smoke where you fight them, or low-lighting… Having to rely on “where are the enemies hitting me from” to fight them is rather annoying. Sure, there’s the radar that shows where the enemies are, but get ready to get hit while looking at it anyways since you won’t be able to concentrate on dodging projectiles.

Overall

It’s a fun enough game, with a lot of characters and customization for what is a fairly basic twin-stick shooter. The presentation isn’t too impressive in any regards, and there’s no story, and I do have a few minor problems gameplay-wise, but it’s still a fun title. WH40K fans will enjoy seeing/fighting a few things, but it won’t convert anyone into WH40K fans. Oh, and I didn’t mention it but it does include a 2-player mode. Sadly for some, it doesn’t play online, so get a second controller and invite a friend over to blow up orc ass together.

jobocan Console, Games, ps3, PSN, XBLA, xbox 360