Gaming Space Hulk Review

Space Hulk recreates the rule-set of the classic boardgame, but not quite the same experience.
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2013/08/24/space-hulk-review/1

 

I never played the board game, but I bought this and so far have found it lackluster at best. To be fair, I guess I didn't anticipate how much the luck of the dice can really screw a player over. I nearly shelved it after failing the first mission the first 4 or 5 tries. Once I came to understand the subtleties of play, it got a little less taxing.

In at least one way, it puts me in the mind of Hero Quest, a board game a buddy of mine and I used to play. An unfortunate cast of the die could be brutal, but it was a fun game playing in RL nonetheless. In contrast, Hero Quest had a variety of opponents, settings, furniture, weapon racks, and loot. If Space Hulk had incorporated anything like these elements, it would at least break up the mindless tedium.

How Space Hulk ever became popular boggles my mind as it is really a very basic game without any real variety. There is a strategic element involved to be sure, but it seems overwhelmed by chance. At a $30 US price tag, it was definitely far overpriced. $10 or $15 maybe, but I definitely regret pre-ordering this one.

 

Love the bit about the soapy dolphin. I will be using that!

Shame about the game. I always thought that with the glut of shooters we'd see a 40K one sooner than this. Even Space Marine was a missed opportunity.

 

I was bought the original board game by my neighbour when i was about 7 but found it too difficult to understand at that age, but I loved the artwork. I will have to dig it out.

 

Ah, completely forgot about that. Man it's been so many years. Apparently another favorite of mine at the time was also done by Games Workshop too, Battle Masters. With that game I remember getting a little book with adverts for all the Warhammer table top stuff. Never had the money to get into that though. I do have a lot of fond memories playing both Hero Quest and Battle Masters. Took a lot of room to play Battle Masters though. That vinyl map was huge! Them were some good times.

 

What is this "friend" concept you speak of and where might I purchase one?

 

I had this on 3DO and it was crap then.

 

I actually enjoyed it on the 3DO but that's going back a while.

 

I played it on Saturn and it was hard as ****, but pretty challenging

 

I played Space Hulk on the PC yeeears ago and found it okay (I seem to recall the gameplay wasn't much different from this version), sure the grapihics were pretty crude by today's standards but was okay.

I did have trouble with the exceedinly pious comments from the Terminators every time the dispatched a Genestealer, can't remember any directly but it was old school fire and brimstone preacher style dialogue, proper old testament stuff. At first it was okay but they seemed to have a limited about of lines and it just got a bit tedious pretty quickly. A bit like Bruce Willis/Arnie style wisecracks coming from Moses as he wouldest smitest thouest heathen/unbelievers/foulest jezebels/ungodly (delete as applicable).

I'll probably give it a shot, but not right now.

 

That's the 40k universe in general...

 

Reminds mew of Father Grigory from Half Life 2. Just when you thought Ravenholm couldn't get any more surreal...

 

I am a bit disappointed. For such a simple game (lets be honest, a small indie team could have made this) I am not sure what they have put the time and money in to. The movement is laughable, the game seems to suffer from a number of bugs both playability and engine wise.

The only saving grace is if the add ons come up to par. A map editor, the ability to share maps etc....

 

I played it back then, but I missed out on the dialogue because I was playing it on a laptop with no sound card, and a black and white screen.
I seem to remember that a lot of CONFIG.SYS ****ing around was needed just to get it to load. Good fun though.

Another good board game was Space Crusade, which was basically Hero Quest in the 40K universe. There was a version of it for the Amiga as I recall.

 

OK, having put in a bit more time in the game, I still cant work out why it is so slow! There is so little going on, on screen. It would seem that the developers have planned to release further content and rule changes. So this could turn out, with some engine enhancements, to be a great game.

Missions are very much hit and miss. Some have been so easy I cant see the point in them, others as you would expect, very dependent upon the luck of the dice.

 

Space Crusade was Space Hulk with a couple of differences:

Instead of 1 team of Blood Angel Space Marines against the Dungeon Masters team of Genestealers you had 3 teams of 5 Space Marines:

• Blood Angels (Red Plastic),
• Imperial Fists (Yellow Plastic) and
• Ultramarines (Blue Plastic)

against the Dungeon Masters team of:

• Chaos Marines (+ Dreadnaught),
• Genestealers,
• Orks (+ Gretchin) and
• Pre-Necron Necrons (I think they called them androids in the instructions, but they look incredibly similar to what the Necrons started out looking like).

I think the copy I have is published by MB games (but licensed by Games Workshop).