Space Hulk: Deathwing PC Review

In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. And performance issues that add to what seems to be an unfortunate trend that doesn’t want to go away. Space Hulk: Deathwing, Streum On Studio’s attempt at a Space Hulk-inspired FPS, is, unfortunately, part of that very trend. However, before we declare heresy and call for an Exterminatus, let’s delve deeper into what’s on offer here.

You may know Streum On Studio if you’ve played E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, an interesting little title in its own right. Space Hulk: Deathwing is their second effort. Using the Unreal Engine 4, Space Hulk: Deathwing recreates the Warhammer 40k atmosphere in a very vivid manner. As you go through space hulk Olethros, you’ll witness a melding of industrial and sacral elements. One moment you’re in a tight corridor, pipes running along its walls, only to come out of it into a large, open room, with statues of Space Marines, symbols of the Emperor’s might, towering over you. The character models are also very detailed, their armor, swords and bolters inscribed with quotes relevant to their credo. The weapons themselves are marvelous to look at, as is the visual feedback when your shots and blows connect with the faces of the many Genestealers present on board. Heaps of Genestealer bodies falling to the floor, entrails flying through the air as your Thunder Hammer pulverizes your foes, Space Hulk: Deathwing, benefitting from a first person perspective, could be the best visual representation of the Warhammer 40k universe in a videogame. The only thing keeping it from being just that is the large amount of film grain used, that cannot be toggled off, which keeps the image from being as sharp as it could be.

The single player puts you in the boots of a Librarian which, alongside two other Terminators, must explore Space Hulk Olethros. The narrative stays within the universe’s boundaries, but comes off as thin, ending in a disappointing manner. Each team member’s loadout can be customized. Your Librarian has access to the largest pool of weapons which include bolters, assault cannons, thunder hammers, power swords but not only. To be fair, I never changed the apothecary’s loadout due to the fact that Narthecium, a healing ability, required him to have a storm bolter equipped. The Assault Marine seemed to die quite often with anything but the thunder hammer, so, once I unlocked the ability for it, I also didn’t change much there. As for my Librarian, I experimented with every weapon, but ultimately oscilated between the Flamer and the Thunder Hammer. Speaking of weapons, I mentioned the visual feedback of blows and shots being very good. When it comes to sound, things are rather hit-or-miss. For example, the assault cannon’s firing and impact sounds are powerful, which cannot be said about the thunder hammer which, while an imposing weapon, sounds like a regular hammer, found in any toolbox, hitting against a piece of metal. This can be extended to other weapons as well.

There is a light RPG component in Space Hulk: Deathwing. Depending on how well you do, you get up to four points at the end of each chapter, points which you can distribute between three skill trees. Most of the skills are passive upgrades, with the exceptions of the bottom tree that gives your Librarian new psyker abilities. Overall, these abilities are very fun to use. Seeing a whirlwind of flame mow down an entire corridor of Genestealers, then walking over their charred bodies feels great. The passive bonuses, though, never feel like they make much difference.

As you explore the space hulk, you’ll be beset by rows upon rows of Genestealers that come in different flavors. Ranged hybrids, melee warriors, stealthing stalkers and the supposedly terrifying Broodlords. Apart from the hybrids, that do seem to stick to the distant positions they spawn in, the other Genestealers constantly charge you. The issue here is that they always charge you from the front, especially in open zones. It’s true, walking down tight corridors requires a member or two to be careful behind for the occasional bug. In open areas, however, encounters quickly turn into shooting galleries as enemies behave extremely predictably. Even the stalkers, which can stealth, come in a straight line, de-cloaking seconds before attempting to land a hit. There is little to differentiate between a Broodlord and a Warrior-strain, apart from the visual design and the fact that the Broodlord hits harder and takes two or three additional strikes to go down. This quickly leads to tedious combat, which is a glaring issue when shooting Genestealers is supposed to be the meat of the game. AI enemies also tend to stop in their tracks for no apparent reason, or decide mid-charge that they want to go back to their spawn point in a really slow manner.

Your Battle Brothers do handle themselves most of the time. In tight corridors they do cover the back once enemies get close to them. Giving Barachiel an assault cannon, however, had him dying every chapter, while after equipping the thunder hammer, he refused to even drop to 10% HP. I’m not sure whether it’s because the weapon itself is overpowered or because Barachiel had skipped every weapons training class, save from the thunder hammer one. Aside from that, friendlies do get stuck on terrain, especially when you use the quite clunky radial menu to issue orders. Don’t get any illusions of tactical gameplay, though. You can order them to move to a certain point, to follow, defend or heal, but save from the healing ability, which is instrumental to your survival, the others won’t be game changers. Occasionally, you’ll run into turrets which, while active, are a nuisance. That is the case because they target your squad while ignoring Genestealers. In order to hack them you need to bring up the map screen, thus removing yourself from the action, scan the nearby environment and choose between hacking, enabling, disabling or destroying the turret. Getting hit while doing this pulls you out of the map screen, in a brusque manner, requiring you to do it all over again. I could see this working in multiplayer, where human teammates could hold enemies from hitting you and making you lose control, but in single player, the addition of turrets is not very inspired, quickly becoming immersion-breaking. This could have been handled differently, by letting players hack turrets without the need of entering the map screen. On top of that, enemies didn’t seem to spawn while I was outside the room with the turret and, at that point, using it felt redundant as it’s not very appealing, in contrast to, say, any weapon from my arsenal.

The 9 chapters in the campaign take about 5 hours of your time, but can go up to more than that depending on how much you explore and on what difficulty you’re tackling them. Playing them, however, feels like you’re spending much more than that. There isn’t much variety going on, as you’ll be killing rows upon rows of predictable xenos. I’d lie if I said there aren’t those moments of catharsis, this type of games rely upon. There were times when I did get lost in the roar of assault cannons mowing down countless Genestealers as they were attempting to close distance with me. These moments, however, were few and far between, the AI and large performance issues being the main causes. One thing that deserves appreciation is the approach to soundtrack, which is mostly made up of ambient noises and very subtle music that makes you feel like you’re aboard a giant pile of ships that’s been floating in the Immaterium for a while. Drops of water from broken pipes, metal screeching as you move your heavy body over it, giant machinery working, all these elements of sound design help the player’s immersion. Exploring space hulk Olethros is a great experience in this regard, sadly the repetitive gameplay pushes you too often to just getting to the end of the mission.

Moving on to the multiplayer component, we’re served the same 9 chapters from the single player campaign. The changes come when we’re talking team composition. For starters, multiplayer allows up to 4 players to take on missions. Furthermore, there are 5 classes from which players can choose. The librarian is the only one who can use psyker powers, while the Apothecary is the only one who can heal. Assault cannons are given only to the heavy-weapons specialization, while Assault Terminators can wield thunder hammers. Furthermore, each class has a specific ability, like the tactical specialization’s revive. Certainly, the classes use the same weapons your librarian could use in the single player; however, they do tend to fulfill other roles, feeling different enough from each other.

There is a system of progression which, as you kill enemies, unlocks weapons for your class to use. The system is not particularly deep and everything is lost upon map completion. This means that every time you play, you’ll have to go through the same weapon unlocking over and over again. Class and weapons can be changed at any time by accessing the map menu, provided you don’t die while doing it. Codex Rules is an option that can be toggled on or off and which removes progression, allowing access to all weapons from the get go. You cannot alter your class or loadout during the mission and respawning is more limited in this mode. To be fair, the most fun I’ve had with Space Hulk: Deathwing was when playing with Codex Rules on, and on hard difficulty. Sadly, higher difficulties do not come with smarter AI. The sole change that happens is that enemies become bigger bullet sponges that also hit harder. The radial menu does facilitate communication to a certain degree, having basically the same orders as in the single player campaign, however, the game has no in-built voIP.

Getting Space Hulk: Deathwing to run well on your system is a gamble. The game desperately needs patches that address its optimization. Regardless of the settings I chose, my framerate was very unstable, going as high as 60 FPS and as low as 27. Random crashes kept me company through all of my time with the game. Sometimes, map assets would take a bit too long to load, while, in multiplayer, getting disconnected meant all the progress was lost. On a couple of occasions, only the party leader could see the objective markers in multiplayer. This would actually be a neat feature to implement, requiring the other teammates to struggle more to keep the leader alive, however, at this point in time, the developers obviously mean to have everyone know where the objectives are. Space Hulk: Deathwing did not have a very smooth beta two weeks prior to release, which already prompted a short delay. The question remains: why not delay it even further and deliver a product that was free of performance issues, at least?

Getting proper enjoyment out of Space Hulk: Deathwing requires one to jump through some hoops. Luck needs to be on your side so that you won’t run into performance issues, with a good tolerance for repetitive content and, preferably, some friends to play multiplayer with also being required. And even then, there’s still the issue of the AI that turns the game into a snooze fest very easily. Space Hulk: Deathwing’s biggest redeeming factor lies in its visuals which provide a faithful representation of the Warhammer 40k universe that is bound to please fans. Take a few steps further than that, however, and you’re bound to run into disappointment.

Bogdan Robert, NoobFeed
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