In The Grim Dark Future, There Is Only Single-Player

Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium is now only going to be a single-player game, thanks to layoffs at Relic and Vigil.

MMOs are expensive to make, so changing the game to a single-player saves them a considerable amount of money.. but what a disappointment.

Space Marine gets Dreadnoughts!

THQ have announced that The Dreadnought DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is due for release this week!

The Dreadnought DLC is the second premium content pack for Space Marine, consisting of a new multiplayer mode called Dreadnought Assault, three new multiplayer maps; Desolation, Dome Mechanicus and Chem Refinery, two new player skin packs: Iron Hands and Death Guard, and the usual extra achievements and trophies.  Dreadnought Assault is a team versus mode, where teams must control a capture point to be awarded with a Dreadnought, which one player can control to help score points for their team.. until the Dreadnought is destroyed and another spawn point appears.

As well as the premium DLC, all players will receive free content: the new multiplayer Capture and Control mode, where players will be challenged to capture and defend different locations around the map.

Space Marine’s previous DLC releases have included the premium Chaos Unleashed map pack, released in December 2011, and the free Exterminatus mode, released for PC and PS3 at the end of October, and for the Xbox 360 at the beginning of November.

In Exterminatus, players co-operatively battle through two scenarios; Assault on Hab Center Andreas, and Escape From Kalkys Facility, facing waves of enemies in each arena with extra in-game challenges providing extra lives or points.  Chaos Unleashed allowed players to take on the role of Chaos Space Marines in the previously Space Marine-only Exterminatus mode, as well as adding three more multiplayer maps: Habs Ablaze, Station Tertius and Aquila Caonyon, and a new Capture the Flag game mode.

The Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Race!

So Relic’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has finally been released, allowing players to take the role of Captain Titus, a genetically modified superhuman clad in several tonnes of power armour..

Despite only really having Dawn of War II as a reference for the whole Warhammer scene, I’ve been looking forward to Space Marine for a while, and when it finally arrived there was no chance it wasn’t going to be played.  Tim and I decided to have a friendly race through the single player game, too 🙂

The story: Orks have invaded an Imperial Forge World, and Captain Titus is sent in with his Ultramarines to hold key locations until reinforcements arrive..

Your starting weapons are a bolter pistol and a combat knife.. and these make short work of the Orks you first encounter 🙂
Combat is a mixture of ranged and melee, but the melee is where the fun was to be had, especially with the combinations of different strikes and stuns sending the Orks flying 🙂

Health is regained by performing an Execute move; this becomes available when you have stunned an enemy.  This meant staying in the fight where you’d normally have to duck out of fire to let health regenerate.. and it transformed the smaller Orks into health pickups!  Stomping through the Orks let me take a very short lead over Tim, too!

It wasn’t long before we met the Imperial Guard, and they were rather happy to see us 🙂
They also had an Ork problem, which I was more than happy to help with!  At the end of the first run through the trenches, I came across my first Nob, who I found difficult compared to the previous carnage.

Repeated attempts on this enemy meant that Tim got ahead in our race.. and he stayed ahead while we were helping the Imperial Guard and their leader, 2nd Lieutenant Mira.. blowing some stuff up, killing some more Orks, and being given some nice new weapons; the Stalker Bolter and the Vengeance Launcher!

As the Orks had captured a gun emplacement, that was one of our targets.. this involved sticking explosives to one of the massive shells and pushing it into the loader, so that it would blow up the gun.  Following the shell up, we found the Orks had spotted and removed it..

Guarding Leandros back while he pushed it back in was a hard task as there were plenty of Squigs hidden in with the Orks, and they blew me up a few times while I was busy meleeing Orks!  Tim had also struggled with the Squigs, which had allowed me to catch up again 😀

After this we met Inquisitor Drogan, who turns out to have some amazing secret weapon.. and we end up carting the power source around for a while, which attracts the Orks.. the Warboss Grimskull wants it too!  He sent some of his boyz to take it, but I killed them off and proceeded to take the power source, which blew up and sent me down to the sewers, where I had to fight my way up to rejoin the Ultramarines.  I also unlocked the Melta Gun and the Lascannon, two fantastically powerful weapons, though the Melta Gun ended up being my favourite gun for up-close fiery death 🙂

We fought our way to the weapon with plans to turn it on the Orks, through hot turretty death thanks to a security system which couldn’t distinguish us from the green-skinned fungus.. but firing the weapon unleashed the forces of Chaos!

Inquisitor Drogan turned out to be a traitor, with the weapon having been designed to open a rift for the Chaos forces to come through!  He was rewarded with death, then the Orks joined the fight.. Grimskull still chasing the power source.  While fighting, Grimskull and Nemeroth fell over the edge, leaving us to fight the Bloodletters, big red demons who warped around and so weren’t good to shoot, but were rather susceptible to melee stuns 🙂

Next up was destroying the Spire and the Chaos Warp.. via the awesome Imperial Titan which we’d seen before.  On the way to it, I met Grimskull again..

Killing the Warboss wasn’t as hard as I would have expected, with the Melta Gun to destroy his pet Squigs and minions.. and when he was dead, the remaining Ork forces scattered, leaving just the Chaos enemies to kill on the way to the Titan.  The fight on the Titan was a little frustrating as the enemies were out of range of my Thunderhammer.. and Tim caught me up again >.<

After the Spire was destroyed, Nemeroth made another appearance, killing Sidonus and claiming the power source.. which he would use to become a Daemon Prince!

There was another session with a jump pack next.. I love that thing.. and I managed to misfire myself through a hole in the ground at one point, but overtook Tim again.. only to lose ground in the next section and end up behind again.

Tim completed the game just before I got to Nemeroth.. but we were both beaten by another friend who completed it all in one go.. he isn’t human 😉

I enjoyed the last fight despite the use of quicktime.. probably because they were the buttons as I would have been hitting anyway.
As for Captain Titus.. is he corrupted or not?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see if there’s a Space Marine 2 😉

40k Nerdiness

I’ve been watching some of the videos coming out of E3 tonight.. things are looking interesting on the games front!

Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online, the long awaited MMO, is finally being talked about.  A friend was asking about this a good while back, with another interested too.  Makes all the difference when friends have your back.

Rather a teasing video, this one..
Demons, aliens and heretics, versus the Imperium of Man?  Damn right, there will be war 😉

It’s early on yet, but the graphics are already looking rather nice and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
I broke my usual rules, and included a screenshot from THQ’s site here.  If this is anything to go by.. wow 🙂

Again from THQ and Relic, we have Warhammer 40,000:Space Marine.  This one’s for the console, rather than the PC.

Watching this video, I see some similarities to Gears of War, another game I loved.
Take your huge, heavily-armoured brute and run him straight at the enemy: awesome!