Video games based on the Warhammer series are regulars on PC games, and searching for Warhammer on Steam, there are 61 titles on sale, and on average, at least three are released every year in year. In fact, because of THQ's bankruptcy liquidation after 2012, the exclusively licensed Warhammer IP was once silent, pulling down this average, and in the past two years, with the reauthorization of the copyright source Game Workshop (GW), Warhammer Games has shown a blowout. Last year, there were 8 games launched, including gold-sucking beasts such as "Total War", as well as independently developed arcade machines such as "Shootas, Blood & Teef", in addition, there are 4 games that have been confirmed to be released this year, which has the meaning of drought and flood protection.
The Warhammer worldview is an inexhaustible treasure trove for game developers, and the monthly magazine "White Dwarf" has been published in 475 issues, which is the official publication of the GW, soliciting fans from Hammer fans, and all the stories published in the series mean that they have been genuinely recognized. In nearly four decades of collective creation, Warhammer's two main world settings, the Middle Ages and 40,000, have become a lifelike fantasy world.
After thirteen transformations, three hearts and two lungs, the ultimate warrior, dressed in metal armor carved with proverbs and blessings, in the length of the Gothic battleship hedge in kilometers to jump gang hand-to-hand combat, mortals throughout the galaxy as cannon fodder, the battle line stretched for several light years. Hundreds of meters high mechs rose from the ground and carried the entire church to the front line, and the mechanical priest burned incense and prayed to ensure that the eternal power of the machine soul dedicated to the battlefield. The enemy is the former demon-corrupted comrades, twenty warbands fighting to the death under the hatred of ten thousand years, with the same root but more brutal slaughter machine, what is more "secondary two" than such a wild and uninhibited space opera?
Recently, hammer game has added a new Ding, an American wargame gameplay of "Chaos Gate - Demon Hunter" rushed to the hot list, with the hammer powder "loyalty" faith, it seems that each warhammer 40,000 games can be on the home page for a few days, the quality of the game, regardless of whether good or bad, can also become a topic of laughter and anger.
This time, the perspective falls on the most mysterious warband after the Great Rebellion - the Grey Knights, the leader of the ten regiments of the Human Empire who defected to the subspace, drew elites from the remaining troops, formed a direct subordinate legion dedicated to fighting chaos and corrosion, and did not hesitate to use the emperor himself as a genetic prototype to ensure the absolute loyalty of this army, which is known as the last gift left to mankind during the second army building period. Because of the particularity of the duties, the existence itself is top secret, with the right to dispose of other Imperial troops, equivalent to the Stasi + KGB, when the Gray Knight's strike cruiser came to the battlefield, it was absolutely bad news, although it was only a single company of a hundred people, but the psychic weapons that emitted a bright blue light in their hands declared that both sides of the battle were inevitably turned into powder.
Such an elite of the elite, the trump card of the ace, is not a game "unparalleled mowing"? However, in the gray knight company controlled by the player, the space cans that symbolize the highest combat power have become the bottom of the food chain, not only indistinguishable from the general chaos starfighters, but also by zombies and cult soldiers who lack arms and legs, and the game development team is jokingly called the "chaos traitors" who come to scandalize the warband, and the player also has to rename the game "Na Dirt Order: Grey Knight Hunters".
To be honest, after in-depth experience of this not-so-painful slaying tour, as the game itself is still a stable SLG. Players need to attack the crowd, make full use of terrain and items, control battle losses, quickly resolve battles, complete major operational objectives, and evacuate the war zone before enemy reinforcements pour in. The main framework of the game is the standard template of American wargames, custom training characters, racing against time before the villain completes the evil plan, destroying one stronghold after another, and at the same time, the characters cultivated by their own side will also be injured or even killed in battle, at which time it is necessary to build bases, including supporting medical services, weapons production, scientific research and upgrading facilities, and carry out arms competition. "Phoenix Point" and "This Is the Police", which have sold well in recent years, have followed this established structure.
The bold performance is also one of the selling points of this work
The story tells of a company of Grey Knights who have just fought a duel with the Terrorist Demon, the commanders of both sides have died together, and you who survived have taken over the temporary leadership and led the broken battleship and team back to the Titan mother star, but at this time, the latest information came from the superior department intrigue, and the NaShi Demon secretly planned to corrupt the entire star area into the Magic Garden, which was a secret weapon that the Empire had never recorded, and the Star Whisperer did not hesitate to sacrifice himself to light up the broadcast, and the only person who could be investigated was this secret Grey Knight. Therefore, on the one hand, the player needs to meet the intelligence needs of the "Chincha Minister" sent by the inquisition court, on the other hand, he must take into account the face of the mechanical priest who lent the mothership to the warband, complete the repair of the cruiser and return to Zhao's own job, choose the voyage and order of action, and by the way, ask the Titan headquarters to requisition more weapons and equipment, fully demonstrating the chaotic constraints of the empire's administrative structure under the 8E rule.
The Player's Grey Knight Squad is the most loyal faction in the Empire, so it is also qualified to harness the subspace psychic energy that is at risk of chaos corruption, slaughter demons to get energy points, and then convert them into teleportation magic, armor magic, and psionic bombardment to turn the situation around the battlefield. Grey Knights are armed differently from ordinary starfighters, mostly crafted with psionic boosts, which can be activated by consuming energy points when attacking. In addition, the Starfighter's iconic Airdrop Barn and Chainsaw Sword will not appear, as the Grey Knight's cruiser can teleport companies into subspace and sneak indoors from low-Earth orbit, while the Chainsaw Sword has been replaced with a psychic sword with a crystal pattern.
The Grey Knight can easily smash beams and pillars, but he can't slash enemies with a single sword
Whether it's text or fine art, the game's portrayal of the Grey Knight is quite detailed, except for the battles... Starfighters need to engage in "sparrow warfare," "mine warfare," and "guerrilla warfare" with cultists who are essentially mortal shells. The reason why it has not been able to restore and take into account in this regard is actually limited by the shackles of the XCOM framework, the background setting of XCOM is that the enemy is strong and weak, the human resistance army vs. the alien colonizer, the enemy and self values in the wargame game, the level rhythm, including the setting of various resources, all come from here, and it is difficult to change the whole body.
The story of the Warhammer 40K is the opposite, the human empire is the ancient and powerful invaders in the universe, not to mention the elite interstellar warriors. However, if the player is allowed to play the role of a bastard who wreaks havoc under the eyes of various space cans, it may be much more reasonable, but the production team will inevitably be scolded as a "chaos traitor".
In fact, there are also successful examples of warhammer adaptations similar to XCOM, released in 2018, the "Mechanical Order", allowing players to play a scientific research team of the Martian Mechanical Sect, coming to the cosmic mausoleum where the space necromancers are about to be revived, and exploring the mysteries of these binary skeletons. Priests are not professional combatants, so they need to be used as cannon fodder by the Mortal Guardian Army to uncover the knowledge of the scene for the mechanical priest, including enemy weakness attributes, field effects, and lost documents.
The endless thirst for knowledge will turn into the priest's power, a steady stream of re-activation opportunities, and if properly operated, the player can sweep the entire burial chamber in one turn and transform into a treasure hunter. The absurd and crazy rules of action match the creaky and strange tones of the priests, and they are full of hammer. The game eventually achieved 92% critical acclaim on the platform, second only to THQ's most successful Dawn of War RTS series.
In the lost universe of 40k, research, tomb robbery and archaeology are one thing
Speaking of this, I believe that everyone has found that the fundamental problem is the skin changing game, and the "skin" and "soul" are not appropriate. After the GW released the license, a large number of small and medium-sized manufacturers tried to make Warhammer games, of course, this is not an excuse for the lack of creativity of the game, but it is also a helpless reality. There are countless legends and stories in White Dwarf, and there are always parts that resonate with the existing gameplay.
Among the several hammer games that will be released soon, we can see that the previous development of the "Apocalypse Plague" series Fatshark is based on the 40k background of the "Dark Tide", which maintains the L4D-like FPS gameplay like the previous game, even if the previous game has obtained millions of copies, it still takes the most stable peel route. Last year's "Necromonda: Bounty Hunter", which Focus spent heavily to promote, is also a popular equipment-driven FPS game, without the popularity of starfighters, the gangster fire of the nest world is not good. In the foreseeable future, this kind of theme + gameplay "Lalang matching" is destined to continue to occur in the adaptation of the game authorized by GW, intercepting a drop in the dark universe, focusing on an original one-act drama, perhaps from time to time to emerge excellent finished products, but the total war and grand performances that hammer fans expect become more difficult to achieve in the next generation.
Warhammer world comes from collective creation, but the modern operation of classic IP needs a clear fist product, in the case of the copyright party does not personally go down to develop video games, physical desktop games from the perspective of development law will not have explosive progress, perhaps the Warhammer universe will be the same as the lost human empire, gradually moving towards another dark millennium. In this regard, Nippon seems to be more pragmatic, which I have analyzed when I mentioned konami's "game king" IP and Bandai's "Gundam" IP before, they have always tried to produce a masterpiece with authoritative appeal, but the implementation has been repeatedly frustrated, and the conservative forces in the company have also made it impossible for the game development department to take a step.
Finally, the reserved drama of the emotional charge is "while scolding, while playing", which is one of the reasons why the Warhammer adaptation game has been flocked to by developers in recent years, or those four words, drought and flood protection.