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Author Topic: Warhammer 40k: Armageddon  (Read 5924 times)

ragnar119

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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40k: Armageddon
« Reply #16 on: January 11, 2015, 06:46:43 pm »

So I got this for Christmas, 40k fan that I am.

And despite my love of the setting and war games in general, this game is not for me.

#1, it's just so barebones that compared to most 40k games which try to lavish as much on the visuals and sfx and music as possible (since that's generally what makes it iconic), Armageddon is about as basic as it gets. The sprites are lovingly crafted and canonically detailed (especially the tanks.) I was surprised how many Leman Russ, Chimera and Rhino variants they offered.

But that, and the weapons allotted to each unit type, is pretty much where the detail ends. No unit descriptions to speak of, describing intent or just simply for flavor, to be found. No animations other than the firing animations. No real unit actions other than resting to recover infantry morale and some damage. No voice overs, or even simply unit barks.

What really got my goat is, and I suppose this is because it's based on the Panzer Corp engine and I've never been into those kind of older-fashioned hex war games.....is the real core of gameplay. You pull up in range, you shoot, they shoot back, w/e. But when my Leman Russ destroyer, which has 7 wounds, manages to lose 1/3rd to 1/2 of them in one round of combat with an Ork Boyz squad? Fuck off. This game is about various attack and defense numbers, but no real interesting calculations or considerations going on. You're going to see Ork squads with 8x as many wounds even as your tanks, and you'll need to focus fire the shit out of everything to win. It's attrition prevention, basically. If you want to hurt guys, they'll probably be able to hurt you, and how do you hurt them while being hurt the least. Again, being that I didn't get into older hex wargames like these, if you do enjoy them, maybe you'll find Armageddon likable.

But it just doesn't deliver in terms of flavor IMO, and that's a rarity for 40k games at least up until now. There's flavor in the blah blah blah mission briefing you get from one of your officers, that is voiced....adequately. But really there's not a whole lot else going on. If the mechanics aren't keeping me playing, and the flavor isn't keeping me playing, there's nothing really else left to. Good luck Armageddon, you're going to need it.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2015, 03:10:33 pm by nenjin »
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Majestic7

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Re: Warhammer 40k: Armageddon
« Reply #17 on: January 12, 2015, 02:00:16 am »

I feel if this game had come out in 1990s or early 2000s, it had excited me a lot. Now it just seems... old, like something fanmade. I find this to be the problem with the various remakes of old games (going bit off-topic here, I know) - they just replicate the old formula without updating anything to the possibilities modern computing allows. I mean, even newer Panzer General games had leaders, medals, special abilities pop up to units as rewards for playing. Nothing attaches you to your units in Armageddon. At the same time you can't just throw them away due to strict requisition point limits.
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