Another Space Hulk game in development

[Starglider]

So..... Here's the question. Let say YOU have the reigns over a Space Hulk game. How would you design it?

I would base it on Advanced Space Crusade, a much more interesting game as noted above, with terminator armor appearing only in a few special sections towards the end of the single-player campaign (which can be over-represented in marketing material as much as necessary to placate fanboys). It would be real-time first-person, with a pause that zooms out to third person and allows overview of the situation and issue of orders to your squad and selection of which character you're controlling. Pause would be restricted to once every five seconds or so, and I would bias the event sequencing so that it disproportionately halts on frozen images of stuff blowing up etc. Play would be interleaved slices of first person chaos and realising the extent of / trying to contain each unfolding FUBAR in the pause/orders view.

[InsaneTD]

Well they could take all the 40k cannon references to spacehulks and base the game off that instead. It would allow for much more enemies, lots of varied environment. Be a much more interesting game.

[PainRack]

I agree with Vendetta, especially on the PC part.
FPS with silly over-the-top action and enemy body counts, with CRPG-style "skill trees" to sink points into after gaining experience points.

Generally, though, I think basing a computer game on Space Hulk is an inherently flawed idea, regardless of whether it's turn-based or real-time action.
There is a lack of variety and enemy types in Space Hulk because it is a board game, that is limited by the terrain tiles and game pieces.. simply because it is a board game.
Computer games are not bound by these limitations, and thus after years of gaming (decades, for some of us) we have come to expect more from them.

Thus, when you make a computer game faithfully based on (and therefore limited by) a board game's design, the seeming dearth of variety in content starts looking like a major shortfall to many people.. even though those same people don't find fault with the board game for, say, only having narrow corridors, or only having Genestealer foes.

I... honestly don't think that you should base the computer game on the board game rules . Vengenance of the Blood Angels didn't afterall.

The thing is, what made the computer games iconic was the sheer difficulty and innovation of the game when it first came out, compared to Doom or any other, it was more 'linear' but despite what should have been a mind boring fest of spam enough bolter fire to kill genestealers coming down a long corridor, it was sheer mind boggling difficult to advance through.

Its just that you can't make an updated version of that game since it would be horribly dated by now.


Hmmm......... its interesting to ask this though. Shadows of the Horned Rat and Dark Omen was considered difficult games, requiring a lot of micro-management back during their days, despite it being a rendition of the fantasy game. Yet, mark of chaos isn't a good game, despite it being nothing more than a mere updated version of Dark Omen. Granted, Mark of Chaos wasn't difficult enough because they didn't 'take' away regiments and balance veterancy but still............

Could it be that as our games gotten more sophiscated, what was fun before simply isn't fun now.

[Ahriman238]

Make it an FPS with vast and twisting maps, get the guys from Space Marine if you can. Then fill it with genestealers, orks, chaos cults, weird survivor societies that want to sacrifice you to the God-Emperor and so on.

[Vendetta]

I... honestly don't think that you should base the computer game on the board game rules . Vengenance of the Blood Angels didn't afterall.

"Make an iPad version of the boardgame" isn't a bad plan, but it needed to be at least multiplayer (local and asynchronous online) and preferably to have a scenario builder as well.

Space Hulk was an asymmetric game, the Marine player would usually lose because he had all sorts of disadvantages, but that didn't matter because next time you swapped sides and see how far the other guy could get.

Games with lots of dicerolling where you're at a structural disadvantage just aren't as much fun against a computer, they need another person who also pisses and moans when the dice screw them over.

[Gunhead]

Actually Vendetta, it goes like this: Marine player loses if he doesn't know how the map is supposed to be played. If he does know it, he will only lose if the dice fail him and those scenarios that are decked against the marine player. You can look up a preferred tactic for the marine player for all the written scenarios in the basic SH game online. The problem is that the marine player knows where the stealers are coming from and the map is fixed, so it's just a race between the marine player to get his deployment in the right spot vs. the stealer player trying to disrupt it. But this doesn't really involve any type of tactics anymore, since both players know what is their best bet to win so it becomes just a string of dice rolls to see who wins. If I wanted to play a game like that, I'd play monopoly. That's my experience anyway.

-Gunhead

[PainRack]

Actually Vendetta, it goes like this: Marine player loses if he doesn't know how the map is supposed to be played. If he does know it, he will only lose if the dice fail him and those scenarios that are decked against the marine player. You can look up a preferred tactic for the marine player for all the written scenarios in the basic SH game online. The problem is that the marine player knows where the stealers are coming from and the map is fixed, so it's just a race between the marine player to get his deployment in the right spot vs. the stealer player trying to disrupt it. But this doesn't really involve any type of tactics anymore, since both players know what is their best bet to win so it becomes just a string of dice rolls to see who wins. If I wanted to play a game like that, I'd play monopoly. That's my experience anyway.

-Gunhead

Agree with Gunhead here. The early SH missions, and based on what I can see from the PC reviews/walkthrough are essentially a series of scripted "move here, move there" and "counter Genestealer with this" tactics. Its only the later missions where you have stuff such as your Termies being dispersed where you even expect casualties routinely, otherwise, its a series of dice rolls.


The problem with the PC and the upcoming Ipad version is that it doesn't feature two things that make Space Hulk exciting.
1. A time limit....... which creates fun when other players/watchers add their own atmosphere in and of course, the inevitable human attempt to cheat yourself out of it:D
2. Campaign continuity.

Its that aspect of the game that makes Space Hulk difficult, not the missions itself. Some of the missions does require you to place Termies in situations where they will eventually die, to ensure the success of your other terminators. Without that continuity, the game doesn't play off the value of said sacrifice and it doesn't up the difficulty level.

Hell, Vengenance of the Blood Angels had that aspect and it literally shocked me when I first played through. Subsequent playthroughs and attempts to keep my brothers alive made the missions easier........ although I must admit one of the best fun I had in that game was trying to turn off the gas valves alone:D

[Irbis]

The trailer, it does not impress.

I don't know, cautiously optimistic - no narrow corridors in sight, 3D threat, and quite agile Termies

Terminators are- especially in SH- not even remotely close to agile. They're clunky as and can't even turn quickly on the spot (there are real problems with the original idea of Terminator armour as it's presented in SH and what it has evolved into but that's another topic)

Out of curiosity, what problems?

[Kojiro]

Out of curiosity, what problems?

The short version is that terminators used to be just Space Marine heavy armour. A bit slower, slightly tougher and harder hitting. Now they're semi mystical one man tanks that seem to specialise in melee combat. In their original form they're the best of the best, the heaviest arms and armour that can be put forth and they still lose most fights and don't get a save. They picked up a 2d6 save in 2nd Ed (along with a new close combat system) and it has evolved into a brain bug that terminators are nigh indestructible melee monsters. Terminators today are routinely fielded with only melee squads and have gotten larger and larger in every incarnation. Originally not much larger than normal marines they have since gotten resculpted to be larger in 2nd, again for 40mm bases in 5th and the newer Forge World models are larger again.

And now there are centurions which are... I don't know what.

[PainRack]

In Space Hulk, terminators were depicted as Elite, but the armour system made them die very easily. Even with the house rules that incorporated normal Space Marines vs the hybrids, the depiction of the armour save was still relatively quishy.


The change from Hulk to Wh40k with its more elaborate rule system made Termies more tougher and strangely enough, the SH advantage in carrying heavy weapons was lost when compared to a normal Space Marine. Its just a depiction of the game point systems, where a fully decked out Terminator squad with Cyclone missiles and autocannon costs a shit ton of points with one burst template and some additional dice to take apart vehicles. Also, changes to stormbolters made it less powerful. In 2nd edition, you could literally doubletap your rapid fire bolter, making for a whole spew of bolter spam.

Compared to Hulk when the autocannon and heavy flamer was god against the Genestealers.