Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Exterminatus!

Exterminatus is the new co-op survival mode for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, for up to four players to face wave after wave of Orks..

We’ve waited a while for this mode, hoping it would work better than versus did.. when both myself and a friend ended up with network issues on the PC.  In the meantime, I’ve played with randoms on the 360.. and though I’d rather play with friends, it was still good fun.

I preferred the Seige Ground mode, as it provided a common objective for the team.. playing with randoms tends to mean less useful communication, but players tend to group up on the capture points anyway.

On to Exterminatus, though..

We tried this with just three of us against the waves of Orks being dropped off around the map.  You can play as Tactical, Devastator or Assault, depending on whether you’ve unlocked them yet or not.. and if you’ve unlocked them, you can use different perks too.  I picked Assault because of the Jump Pack 🙂

Just to break things up, there are a few Challenges issued during play too.. such as getting a number of headshots within a time limit.  These award extra lives or increased score if met, so are worth going for.. if you notice them in the Ork-killing frenzy, that is!

There are only two maps.. although there are a number of arenas in each map, which you move through if you clear enough waves of enemies.

We also found that all four players are wanted.. the game does not send less Orks if there are only two players 😉

Space Marine Multiplayer

I completed the singleplayer last weekend, and have since attempted to play multiplayer on the PC with little success, thanks to the only friend with the game installed being unable to join online games.  We tried with a private game, but eventually this crashed, taking out the network here and putting us off trying again..

However, thanks to work I also have a copy on the 360, and this weekend I went for a few sessions of multiplayer with randoms on the 360.  Surprisingly, the random players I met during the weekend were decent, and the only abusive phrases used were as part of banter with each other. 🙂

I discovered that in Space Marine, I much prefer Seige Mode to Annihilation.. capturing points adds a bit more direction to the game, especially when random players aren’t looking to work together as well as friends usually do.  This also gave me another source of XP, and so I was able to unlock the Customiser to make my very own purple Space Marine!

Sadly there are only five maps at this point, so eventually it started to feel a bit repetitive.

An update is due in October, and as this will add co-op, it may see a bit more action.. so long as there is no recurrance of the network problem!

I hate Ertan!

After having not run any dungeons for a while, I joined a friend for a Random Heroic.  We ended up with Vortex Pinnacle, somewhere I’d not been since much earlier in the year on normal, never mind Heroic.

Things were a bit scrappy on the way up to the first boss, and then it really went to hell, with a wipe on the now-hated Grand Vizier Ertan.  One player left, and we ran back in to find another appeared to be AFK, so after a little while we kicked him, and got two more.

We didn’t do any better this time, with lots of abuse from the two randoms directed at me after everyone started taking lots of damage, and one guy, standing outside the tornadoes, died.  The boss went down, but that wasn’t enough and the randoms kicked me from the group.

I ran though the dungeon again on normal later with friends, just to look at Ertan, and last night I went through the whole dungeon with another friend and randoms, again on normal, however, it’s not really changed anything.

I now don’t want to consider going near Heroics unless I know the dungeon really well.. and that’s where my second problem comes in.  Who to go in with?  My friends have seen it all before and want to do Heroics, which leaves me having to ask for normals, or go and do normals with randoms.. a prospect which makes me feel anxious 🙁

I originally took a trial out to have a look at the game and play with friends.. and the friends had been the reason I’ve stayed, while meeting potentially abusive randoms and feeling anxious in case things go wrong are things that makes me not want to play.

There’s only room for one..

In a normal game you would be looking out for your team mates, helping them as they would be helping you.  With ‘Room for One’, those other survivors become a threat the closer you are to the end of the level..

I played this with a friend on The Parish’s Bridge level, as we already have a rather set route and plan for rushing to the end.  I won, but it felt rather a hollow victory..

I was prepared to save him up until the last stretch, but I can easily imagine that if playing with randoms you could find yourself abandoned to the first thing that grabs you, regardless of distance through the map.  I’m quite sure this means plenty of random groups not making it very far at all.

There might only be room for one in this newest mutation, but I don’t want to be alone.  Aww, I know..  This game mode feels like a lose-lose proposition to me. If I’m playing with friends I want them to survive, and don’t particularly want to leave them behind.

Next week, I believe we have ‘Headshot’.  I think this will be a bit more of a challenge, as my weapon of choice is the auto-shotty, however:  bring it on!