Previews

Warhammer 40,000: In all it’s Gory Glory

We got to grips with early code and shot an excited games producer to pieces…

Warhammer 40,000: In all it’s Gory Glory

It's a well-worn phrase that an army marches on its stomach, but turn-based strategy war game Warhammer 40K: Glory in Death looks to take a slightly different angle. Firstly, it's someone else's stomach that the assembled Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Orks and Eldar will be marching upon - they'll also be stomping on spleens and hanging heads on spikes at every opportunity...

Fortunately, the game promises to be as deeply steeped in rich story-telling and tactical depth as it will be in big guns, bunched fists and body counts. Needless to say, when we were offered the chance to get our hands on an early version and take on the game's producer, Jason Blundell, we dived straight in!

After an amusingly black cut-scene featuring an Ork commander taking an interesting tack on the concept of battle headwear, we enter into a sample battle. Although we flick through them rapidly, the setup options look substantial with plenty of options to fine-tune your game. In addition to 60 maps across 5 different terrains from ice to industrial, we are assured there will be 19 different types of mission, including rear-guard actions, prisoner rescues, ambushes, assassinations, sabotage missions and hold-at-all-costs base defending. What's more, there will be multiple play modes from co-operative Bluetooth battles against opponents to everyman-for-himself affairs over Bluetooth or the N-Gage Arena. With just one demo N-Gage to hand, we opted for a 2-player hot-seat game (Blood Angel Space Marines vs. Orks) and crack on with picking and equipping our army. This is done via a points system, in which hard-hitting vehicles obviously cost more than your basic gun-toting grunts, but there's more than enough flexibility to develop a force to suit your own tactics from the 60 unique unit types on offer (although we just selected as many dangerous looking tanks as we were allowed). This system will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played the Games Workshop tabletop games that Death in Glory is based upon and each unit has its strengths and weaknesses.

Having placed our units on the battlefield, it was time for action. As promised, the controls are very intuitive; selecting units, moving and targeting can all be controlled with a simple point and click, but there's also more detail available on units and their types of attacks if you press another button. Both fans of the tabletop games and more casual gamers will be happy with the methods of play on offer.

The turn-based play breaks down into 5 distinct stages: movement, firing, hand-to-hand, psychic actions (only for the mystical Eldar units at present) and reinforcement. We go through the motions on a small map, positioning forces then moving and firing. The target selection option feels particularly impressive as it automatically shows which of your weapons can be used against which enemy units and there are various attack modes to consider depending on what you're equipped with, what you're firing at and whether you've moved or not. When you attack the view changes to a scanning combat camera that enables you to get a closer look at the impressively detailed unit models, all of which are faithful to the W40K universe. At present this is quite simple, with all characters firing at same time and few effects, but it’s easy to see that a little more attention to the action will create a more engaging, atmospheric battle scene.

As we watch Jason's Orks being decimated, he enthuses about additional attacking options like driving over troops with tanks, using flamethrowers, attacking from behind and doing enough damage to break a unit's morale so that it must be rallied again by leader, or command unit. He also reels off a list of additional features, like a map creation program, the ability to save specific army set-ups and the presence of additional monsters that can be set loose upon your foes. And by this point we're almost as enthusiastic about the game as he is!

While it's true there's still plenty of work to be done, there’s enough time to do it before a Q1 2006 release and, at this stage, Jason's enthusiasm looks to be well-placed.

Chris James
Chris James
A footy game fanatic and experienced editor of numerous computing and game titles, bossman Chris is up for anything – including running Steel Media (the madman).