Space Hulk: Deathwing Enhanced Edition

Ok, I'm leaving a positive review because I was able to enjoy most of the campaign missions. If you're a Warhammer fan, then this game might be for you despite its flaws. If you're not a Warhammer fan, then this might not be for you. Beware that the first two campaign missions have some horrible chokepoints and constantly respawning enemies, but after that it gets a little better. The "fun factor" is at its highest when you're exploring the space hulk with your squad, proceeding slowly, completing missions, clearing the enemies — and most importantly — staying alive. One of the best things about the game is simply shooting Tyranids. Fighting through large hordes can be genuinely satisfying, and the weapons generally feel impactful when you hit your targets. The sound and feel of the weapons, combined with the sheer number of enemies you can mow down, create some of the game's most enjoyable moments. When everything works as intended and you're moving through the Space Hulk with your squad, cutting down waves of Tyranids, the game can really capture the feeling of being a heavily armed Space Marine. Unfortunately, the rest of the game's systems don't always support that feeling as well as they should. That said, my main gripe with this game is that it's not very enjoyable to play until you learn the squad commands in the single-player campaign and complete the first few missions. When you play the campaign with a bot squad, it often feels like you're constantly responsible for everything. You have to make sure your teammates are defending properly, get them healed and keep them following you. Every time you enter a new area, you also need to scan for turrets, because if you don't, your entire squad can be wiped out within seconds. Teammates will often warn you that there's a rocket launcher enemy nearby, but you're usually the one who has to deal with it because the AI struggles to deal with ranged threats. The armor also feels extremely weak. One rocket launcher hit can leave you needing to heal immediately. It's also not uncommon to suddenly realize that one of your teammates has died because you were too busy dealing with enemies that the AI simply can't handle on its own. Sometimes you just have to jump in front of the danger and take damage because the tight environments and AI behavior won't allow you to kill enemies unscathed. Then there are areas where enemies spawn indefinitely, meaning that sometimes the only practical option is to run away. This can make the game feel less like a tactical shooter and more like you're constantly trying to escape situations that the game itself created. Campaign missions are fairly simple in structure. Most involve moving from one objective to another, activating machinery or destroying specific targets, with occasional defense sections where you have to hold off waves of Tyranids. Some of these objectives can even be bypassed in unintended ways. For example, in Chapter 4's "defend and purify" objective, you can simply stand outside the designated area and avoid triggering enemy waves entirely. The relic system encourages exploration, but I often questioned whether the rewards justified the risk. Enemies can ambush you from almost every direction, and entering a side area to search for a relic can quickly turn into a situation where your entire squad is overwhelmed. The rewards don't always feel worth the risk, especially when dying can mean losing your progress and having to start over. The autosave system also makes collecting relics more frustrating than it needs to be. In Chapter 6 I managed to find three out of the four relics, only to die before reaching the next save point and having to start the mission over. As far as I can tell, the game only saves at certain points, such as when you use a Psygate. If you're trying to collect relics while also staying alive, this can turn exploration into a fairly tedious process. You have to decide whether searching for an optional reward is worth potentially losing a significant amount of progress. The difficulty can feel brutal even on normal. The player and the squad can die very quickly when facing certain enemies, while some encounters give you very little time to react. This makes the difficulty feel somewhat excessive considering how easily a single mistake can wipe out the entire squad and force you to repeat a significant portion of the mission. All it can take is one hit from a Broodlord or a Hybrid Psyker to kill you, even on normal difficulty and at full health. As a player you also need to learn which types of enemies deal the most damage. On the other hand, you can run into enemies unexpectedly in stairwells and narrow corridors without much of a risk because regular enemies are basically cannon fodder. The weapons don't help much either. Even with the default Storm Bolter, stronger enemies can sometimes tank more than 30 bullets out of a 60-round magazine. When two or more of these enemies appear at once, you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed. The combination of weak weapons (not all of them are weak, though), poor AI and fragile armor makes the entire squad feel more like a burden than a team of powerful Space Marines you actually want to fight alongside. The multiplayer experience was even worse for me. I tried playing online, but the game felt extremely chaotic and unforgiving, and dying could happen so quickly that I never found it particularly enjoyable. There also didn't seem to be much of an active player base when I played, with only a few other players around. If you're mainly interested in Space Hulk: Deathwing for its multiplayer or co-op experience, I would be especially cautious. The multiplayer is not an improvement over the single-player campaign and actually makes the game's problems feel even more pronounced. The atmosphere and setting are great, but unfortunately the actual gameplay often feels frustrating rather than empowering. You don't need to have visions gifted by the Aether to see that this game had a lot of unfulfilled potential. I want to feel like I'm leading a squad of heavily armored Space Marines into battle against hordes of Tyranids, not like I'm constantly babysitting a group of fragile AI teammates while trying to compensate for their weaknesses myself. Despite all that, once you learn the squad commands and get used to the game's pacing, there are genuinely enjoyable moments. Warhammer fans who can overlook the rough edges may still find this game worth experiencing.