WARHAMMER 40K: ETERNAL CRUSADE
A Space Marine, Eldar, Ork and Chaos Marine walk into a bar...
DEVELOPER BEHAVIOUR INTERACTIVE PUBLISHER NAMCO BANDAI PRICE $ 49.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM eternalcrusade.com HOLLINGWORTH:
Once upon a time, the idea of being practically swamped with videogames based on the venerable Warhammer 40,000 setting from miniatures maker Games Workshop would have filled me with giddy excitement. This is a setting I – and many, many others – have devoted untold time and dollars to since its inception in the late 80s. As a videogame setting, it should be a no-brainer; and, to be honest, there have been some very good titles set in this grim-dark future. But of late, it seems that GW has been handing out videogame licenses like free prizes in breakfast cereal packets, and it’s resulted in a glut of games that are at best merely adequate.
Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade does not even make that grade.
On paper it sounds great. It’s a four-faction multiplayer shooter, with a persistent layer that sees you fighting over various locations. Basically Planetfall with Mark VII Power Armour. There’s a range of vehicles, different classes for each faction, gear to equip, and…
And look - before you get too excited it really does not add up to the sum of its parts. Am I wrong Daniel?
WILKS:
Well, this whole idea of Planetfall with power armour is what the game was originally pitched as, with the persistent game world following what players do, what areas are controlled by different factions and the like, but the game we have been delivered is very different from that promise. What we have instead is a game in which the persistent layer is reduced to a simple 2D overlay showing a map, and the gameplay is more Battlefield than it is 40k. As disappointed as I am with the game as it stands, I can see so much potential, and that, perhaps is what is most disappointing of all. There is real potential for Eternal Crusade to be good but as it stands the game is half cooked and feels entirely unfinished and not ready to leave Early Access. There are placeholder animations, a near total lack of balance between the factions, a lack of vehicles, menus that are hard to access and don’t make sense when you do, obfuscated loadout options and more. But there are good things as well. They are just buried under the unfinished parts.
HOLLINGWORTH:
I think you’re feeling much more generous than I am. Being the big nerd that I am, I immediately jumped into playing Space Marines, because ultimately I am still that geeky teenager who digs that stuff. But from the get-go, the whole feel of the gameplay just doesn’t feel right. For one thing, everything in the game, from infantry to vehicles, feels really light and bouncy – there’s no sense of heft or weight to movement or combat. And the two most defining aspects of what makes a Space Marine a Space Marine – their power armour and mighty bolter – feel massively underwhelming. I know that progression opens up more customisation options, but between the really messy aiming of the ballistic combat, and the seeming one-hit-kill capacity of most foes, I just can’t get invested in what the game has to offer.
I know they’re two very different games, but it’s impossible not to play Eternal Crusade without comparing it to Relic’s Space Marine, which got pretty much every aspect of the 40K aesthetic right first time. To Behaviour Interactive’s credit, the game is not lacking for scope, but it simply feels like it’s a task that is way beyond what the developer can deliver.
WILKS:
You were always Marines and Guard, but I was always Ork and Chaos, so that’s where I immediately jumped. The Orks don’t have the heft they should, I agree, but the emphasis that the developer has placed on melee combat over ranged combat works in the favour of the greenskins. Mechanically it’s a pretty solid melee system with stamina ensuring that you can’t just spam attacks. Of course, having melee dominant over ranged weapons kind of goes against the whole 40k aesthetic. Sure, chainswords, power axes and thunder hammers ring out on the battlefield, but only after meltas, bolters, las pistols, shuriken cannons and the like have done the majority of work. There seems to be a set of strange range parameters in which weapons function well. There are a few long range weapons capable of sniping, but the majority, including the beloved bolter are all but useless at anything over close/medium range as the spread is far too wide to hit the side of a Rhino.
HOLLINGWORTH:
Tell me about it – one of the nastier and least balanced match-ups I’ve been in was playing Space Marines against Eldar, and it just wasn’t at all fun. Eldar at least feel properly nasty – they’re fast, and feature some rather vicious stealth classes (boy do I have a whole new hate for Striking Scorpions). I could barely get a kill, however; my bolter was woefully inaccurate, and even when it was scoring hits, it took many to take down a single foe. Whereas I had Eldar sneaking up on me and taking me out with apparent ease – so much for power armour! One of the big issues with match-ups like that is the game’s camera feels like it’s hanging on rubber bands, so tracking fast-moving opponents (who also feature some seriously janky animations) is a chore.
The camera feels like it’s hanging on rubber bands, so tracking fast opponents is a chore
Eternal Crusade also features one of the most confusing tutorial modes I’ve ever played in, which really doesn’t do the game any favours. There’s a lot to take in, from vehicle control and spawning, to interacting with supply crates, to the various attack modes on offer, but the game asks you to track down and activate seemingly randomly placed servo-skulls (little floating skulls, basically), which only ever give you the most basic of instructions.
There’s some good ideas here, but I wonder if maybe I’m too wedded to the canon of the setting to get past the developer’s interpretation of it?
WILKS:
I don’t think so. I have a feeling that Eternal Crusade is a game that has been released into the wild due to financial motives rather than the game actually being completed. The simple fact that there are so many janky, unfinished (or entirely non-existent) animations, there are only two vehicles per faction, both of which are mostly useless on the majority of maps and lack any type of customisation, the tutorials are abstruse and unfinished (they don’t even really explain how to use the loadout menu) and the erratic framerate all say to me that the developer probably had more plans in store for Eternal Crusade but didn’t have time to implement them before the sale window. Maybe with some serious patching there will be a playable version of the game I see inside Eternal Crusade’s hastily constructed shell, but until then, I’d stay away.
HOLLINGWORTH:
I really like the idea of coming back to Eternal Crusade and being pleasantly surprised. The massive player count – up to 60 players a side! – seems like a good idea on paper, and if the faction balance can be managed so that each faction feels like it should, then it’s a sure winner. But for the moment the lack of polish makes the game pretty much unplayable as far as I’m concerned.
Which is a damn shame.