This game is exceedingly mediocre in its gameplay while being borderline broken in its multiplayer and singleplayer aspects. Marketing is largely a lie on a store page, nowhere game looks even remotely as good as it does in game. Even in-game model textures are being altered in order to create a false impression that it is astoundingly looking video game when it is not.
For further discussions and full review:
Calicifer’s Reviews
Video section
I had made a video highlighting all the issues and more I wrote about in my review. It is quite average game, but it is not a simple, but well done game. It is rather over-ambitious and poorly done one. This is my experience when playing this game. This is one of those games which has so many things wrong in it. These things constantly stick out to ruin my experience, but are somehow seldomly…What Space Hulk promises us
Space Hulk has an amazing potential to be tense, horror game where you and your squad of terminators are clearing abandoned space hulk. With all the heavy armor and firepower you go through abandoned derelict only to be ambushed by a swarm. By turning a corner. By one jumping out of the vents. By opening doors an encountering an army. Game could be intense, on an edge where sound effects and dynamic AI would try to catch you off guard. This is what Space Hulk promises to be, but in reality it is just bland Left 4 Dead clone. You walk down the narrow corridors and occasionally game spawns a horde of bullet spongy enemies who surround you and slowly whittle down your HP.
Gameplay
Game itself is very repetitive and you will see everything there is to see in first few hours. There are humanoid type enemies. There is only one type of them with three variations. There are genestealer type enemies with one common type, one more stronger type with range attacks, one exploding enemy type and that is it. Later they will get reskined, but will function identically in a same way. Ultimately there are tank type bosses which are just bullet sponges which either get stun locked with specialised guns or are DPS check if you did not pick direct counter to them.
Limited number of squadmates
Scalability and AI are particularly bad in this title which makes gameplay without 4 people or single player gameplay on anything other than an easy difficulty – virtually impossible.
- The first issue is that in this game you have very limited amount of squad-mates. Two in total where game is designed with four people in mind. Even in single-player, game is nigh unplayable, because there is simply not enough of you to deal with amount of enemies are out there even if AI would be competent. This absolutely guts any solo experience which this game has.
All powerful main character and pointless customisation of your squad-members - In a solo mode, you are all powerful class with best of everything. You can equip any weapon and supplement your weaponary with vast arrays of psychic powers which are merely activatable abilities on cooldown. It would be fine, but your squadmates has a zero customisation options themselves. Your Apothecary has only one viable build if it wants to keep its heal available which is essential ability. Your Gunner has few specialised weapons, but AI is too bad to use any of them. Plasma Cannon has splash radius and it seems to end up killing him quicker than without it. Assault Cannon needs sustained fire and has spin up time. AI can’t properly handle anything more complex than a Bolter which seems to be even better for its quick response time. This leaves your Gunner class using only Bolter until you unlock Hammer&Shield combination and discover how broken it is. It does not have any animation, it just kills enemies around your squad-member and gives it immense resistance bonuses. Since AI is questionable at holding enemies at range with firearms, it is the best weapon in the game after which you won’t be using anything else on him.
Pointless upgrade tree - Upgrade tree is boring and particularly bad. One branch focuses exclusively on unlocking useless perks and upgrades. It for some reason thinks that hacking time is important and one tree branch focuses on getting better at hacking. Hacking in this game is barely useful and used only to destroy turrets without line of sight. Otherwise, you fire a round or two at them and they get destroyed. Other branches are not all that much better. Psychic branch just adds abilities which make others obsolete. Infantry branch just adds random upgrades to your squad-members mixed with occasionally useless upgrade.
Broken difficulty curve - Game was incredibly hard in first two or three levels. and the difficulty just nose dived. I’m not sure why, maybe I learned to work over game limitations. However, I do think that the issue was with broken objectives. Earlier in a game you often had to kill enemy nests or you would awaken genestealer nests. This would mean areas which are programmed to constantly spawn massive quantities of enemies on top of your constant stream of foes. You had to know if you reached the objective, the best way to complete it is just to rush doing the objective ignoring all the enemies. Otherwise, they will just keep on coming. Some areas get locked with never ending stream of foes without game telling that you must move out of objective area. Game is very rough around the edges. Then at the end, game is supposed to be hard, because it spawns special enemies. The issue with it that the biggest tanks can get stun locked with rapid firing plasma cannons which makes them harmless. Psykers can be one shotted and they are mostly attrition based enemies. Often they will bug out and will fire you while themselves stuck in walls or otherwise impossible for you to detect them. Then you will just continuously lose health until your squad will move out of your existing area.
AI
Scalability and AI are particularly bad in this title which makes gameplay without 4 people or single player gameplay on anything other than an easy difficulty – virtually impossible.
Artificial Intelligence
This game was designed around the multiplayer, but co-op experience is absolutely horrible.
- Artificial intelligence in this game is abysmal. It requires a tight coordination, but you have no tools to set up your squadmates to do anything. If game could put some rules for AI to follow like “Watch my six” and AI could always keep its watch there, game would be a lot easier. As it stands now, AI just kind of derps around.
Scalability - Game is also missing proper scalability. You can’t have bots in singe player. Only 2 out of 3 bots are available. Game however does not scale with number of players/bots present. In multiplayer you can’t have any bots which makes playing game with anything less than 4 players as a giant handicap. Especially when game throws DPS check enemies at you which essentially just stops your progress if there aren’t any experienced players to counter them with plasma cannon.
Multiplayer
This game was designed around the multiplayer, but co-op experience is absolutely horrible.
Constant disconnects
- The first issue is that networking is absolutely horrible. All servers are 9999 ping. Even when I tried to play with my friends, we still could not complete even a single round without constant disconnects. Game has no lobby system to keep match going and allow players to reconnect. If host is disconnected, everything dies and everyone go home without any rewards. Multiplayer is unplayable in this game.
No scaling for lack of players - Another cardinal sin is that there are no bots and game does not scale. If you do not have 4 players, you can’t complete the game, period. Even if you could complete a match without a disconnect, difficulty of a game would make it nearly impossible to complete campaign on your own.