Space Hulk Ascension

Space Hulk Ascension. It is turn based tactical game with rpg elements set in the grim dark universe of Warhammer 40K. This universe has fandoms, many of them. One hates anything but tabletop games and books, others call the first a bunch of 600+lbs elitist snobs. That’s how I see it. I suggest you avoid getting into fandom because you will only lose. Be it money, time, sanity or dignity you will only lose. So let’s cut loses and only waste time and maybe money. Bit you want decent casual game that won’t bite you play either Space Marine or Squad Command. 

Anyway what is a space hulk? It’s colossal debris thrown out of the warp, big pile of spaceships smooshed together, chewed and spat out. If such thing appears near any faction besides Chaosits and Tyranids it means trouble of colossal proportions. That because those space hulks are always crawling with gene stealers, heretic marines and orks. But they are also contain technologies of the past witch are very valuable and such chance must not be missed. That’s only toughest of astartes are allowed to scavenge space hulks. I’m talking about the terminators, each order of astartes have terminators. If space marine is already big mean heavy armored mofo. Then the terminators are even bigger meaner and even heavier armored units. Even they shart and die after one poke from a gene stealer. Seriously though, they are supposed to be “nigh invulnerable” yet they pop like a balloon. It’s laughable to see such a huge dude that probably waits like halve of an 18wheller getting folded by one slap from a space bug. Whatever, another one popped and emperor knows what will happen so terminators are dispatched. 

So anyway how it goes in the gameplay section? Just like terminators gameplay is slow and clunky. The corridors are tight and terminators are wide. So wide in fact it takes a whole action point to just turn 90 degrees and they don’t have many action points. Our usual tasks are cleansing the taint of chaos, cleansing the xenos, fix a teleporter, rescuing a brother etc. Sounds like a good time? Not so much if only the gameplay would be more action and less terminators turning around. It’s really slow if you don’t want to get punished for impatience you have to take it slow like a Galapagos turtle. Playing this game feels like being stuck in a traffic jam. All because the danged terminators take so much space, god dang it! Move it brother Horatio the gene stealers are on our asses and I need to overwatch this corridor. You are not allowed to hurry it up, you always need to have someone with a weapon that can overwatch on the front. And that one who would overwatch need to have two action points in reserve to set an overwatch. So others are just slowly walks forward while grumbling silently. Also your “tail” need to walk backward and overwatch and pray that there won’t many forks on your to your objective. At least terminators don’t need to stand to shoot, they can walk and shoot since it costs action points. Then after a while gene stealers will start to spawn. Don’t let them get close or you know what will happen. Let’s talk about shooting part. The further you are the harder it to hit your target, but with each shot on the same target accuracy increases. Each weapon has several firing modes, longer bursts, wider/longer flame etc. Just don’t forget to reload and cool down your weapon or it will jam or explode. Okay not to the types of terminators we have. Regular one with bolters or flamers or melee oriented (Dear Emperor why would be focusing on melee in a Space Hulk game?), heavy terminators, sergeants, librarians and apothecary. Heavy terminators carry heaviest weapons such as storm bolter, librarians can boost your allies with warp magic or attack enemies. Apothecary can boost stats your allies.  But my woes are not over there is also fog of war. So you can’t even see the potential corridors sometime because they could be locked by a door that you can only notice on a small camera feed from terminator’s point of view. Doors are also needed to be opened and closed and sometimes sealed, which will save your life for 1-2 turns.

Feels like everything is against you and it is and I just about had it enough. Two hours more than enough for me not to mention the tutorial only took an hour and it was just 3 missions. This is not bad game but there better WH40K games there are better Space Hulk games. If you not afraid of really slow gameplay then be my guest and play it, I’m out.