As the video games industry continues trying to cram itself into as few companies as possible, French publisher Focus Home Interactive have announced they've bought a majority stake in Streum On Studio. They're the French studio behind the delightfully ambitious E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy as well as two Warhammer 40K shooters published by Focus Home, Space Hulk: Deathwing and the upcoming Necromunda: Hired Gun. Honestly, they seem a fair fit. And hey, they've made a new Necromunda trailer too.
]]>In the last five years alone, there have been four video game adaptations of the Warhammer 40,000 spin-off, Space Hulk. Plenty of chances to get it right, you’d think, though the first three attempts suggest otherwise. And here comes Space Hulk: Tactics, once again throwing gruesome Genestealers against stompy Terminators in derelict spaceship corridors. It’s not quite a combo-breaker, but it gets very close.
]]>Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they've been changed for better or worse.
Bolters are the standard-issue weapons of Warhammer 40,000’s Space Marines, and they fire bolts. But they’re not just bolts — not really. As befitting the grim darkness of 40K’s far future, the bullets that Space Marines fire are individual rocket-propelled grenades, each backloaded with enough fuel to force them through ceramite armor, and frontloaded with enough explosive to shred the soft meat hidden inside that armour.
]]>Space Hulk: Deathwing must have been a dream project for little French indie studio Streum On, creators of the endearingly janky E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. As a team they'd started their careers with making Warhammer 40,000-themed mods, so having the official key to the kingdom must have felt like a miracle, but with a famous license and a higher budget comes higher expectations.
While undoubtedly more polished than E.Y.E, Deathwing still felt like a low-budget game with a high-budget facade. After an additional year and a half of development and launching alongside the PS4 version of the game, an Enhanced Edition rolled out today, addressing many of the flaws of the original launch and for those with the original version, it's a free upgrade.
]]>Polish your crotchskull and prepare to demonstrate renewed devotion to the Emperor, as Space Hulk: Deathwing will officially become the Enhanced Edition on May 22nd. This is the last in a series of free updates intended to expand and improve the squad-based FPS, which had the looks of Warhammer 40K but didn't have the touch. It was too janky and just too thin, which is a shame because it has such lovely Gothic spaceships and such big crotchskulls. Fingers crossed this update can find that magic. Not that I believe in magic; that would be heresy. Ah yes, I love the Emperor, I surely do.
]]>A new class of Space Marine has just dropped into Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site], the Warhammer 40,000 FPS. The new update adds a staff-wielding Interrogator Chaplain – the first class that can revive his teammates. Clearly, he likes skulls. There's skulls on his weapon, skulls on his shoulders and, er, a skull where his head should be.
If you recall, the game was released back in April and was a real mixed bag. The single player was repetitive, but the co-op was an intense, backs-to-the-wall affair where you and three other Space Marines waded through rivers of Tyranids and worked together to survive.
]]>Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] has got the look but has it got the touch? Not quite, our Alec thought. But Streum On Studio's first-person shooter does yet have the potential to be a fine bang-bang adaptation of Games Workshop's tabletop wargame and, bless 'em, they are still working on it. Following a patch improving the technical guts of Deathwing last month, Streum On today launched another adding a new mode with randomised mission objectives. Plans for future updates include a new multiplayer progression system, new enemies, and more.
]]>I couldn't remember a thing about last December's Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] without going back to read my own review - a statement which in itself perhaps constitutes all the review you might need. As well as inciting the inevitable deep self-loathing, reading back my own words also stirred vague memories of the L4D-like Warhammer 40,000 team shooter running about as well as an Ork who's already participated in fourteen Waaagh!s in one day.
Though Deathwing's road to greatness might be a longer one, its most recent update aims to put paid to its performance issues. The results are tangible, but mixed.
]]>It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's THE mosssssssst wonderful tiiiiiiiiiiiime ahaahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I wish I had a machinegun ho ho ho ahahaha, get stuffed 2016.
]]>SPACE HULK SPACE HU.. no, sorry, best not do that again, eh? This latest pixel-flashing rendition of the revered Games Workshop tabletop game is no boardgame adaptation, but rather a squad-based swarm-shooter in the vein of Left 4 Dead.
I played Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] alone and had a lousy time. Then I played it with others and ALL GLORY TO THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND! Oops, I did it again.
]]>Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site], the new squad-based FPS adaptation of Games Workshop's tabletop Warhammer 40,000 spin-off, is now out. Our Alec is currently busy polishing his crotchskull but, once he's done with that and made himself decent, he'll load Deathwing and play so he can tell us all Wot He Thinks. For now, he sends initial word that "the environments look like concept art and it has the requisite thumpy metal sound effects, but do brace yourself for a whole lot of stomping down long, twisty corridors." Sounds like Space Hulk all right.
]]>Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site], the Warhammer 40k squad-based FPS about Space Marines shooting oh so many nasty aliens, has been delayed a few days. It was expected this Friday, the 9th, but publishers Focus Home have pushed it back until Wednesday the 14th for a little more polish. Untrue rumours started by me suggest that our own Alec Meer has been in the recording booth for a special mode replacing every single sound effect with him shouting "SPACE HULK" with various intonations.
]]>The best way to play Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] will surely be its cooperative multiplayer mode, with you and three of your closest warpals yelling over Skype as you stomp around mowing down hordes of aliums. The FPS will also do singleplayer with AI squadmates, mind, and that's on display in a new gameplay video. It shows seventeen minutes of uncut gameplay, seventeen minutes of Terminators stomping around a space cathedral, whacking Tyranids with swords inscribed with slogans like "I am wrath. I am steel. I am the mercy of angels." No subtlety, those Space Marines.
]]>Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] finally has a release date, announced today by publisher Focus Home: December 9th. Deathwing is a new FPS adaptation of Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k spin-off, with Space Marines tromping onto colossal warped spaceships to salvage ancient treasure and smash aliens. You've got a month to prepare, so draw up a schedule for the essentials: plug in storm hammer for a deep charge; polish helmet; doodle "Aetius Maximianus Caelius ♡ The Emperor" in Sharpie on armour; check Urban Dictionary for cool new names that hip initiates call aliens.
]]>I mean the 90s EA version, not the boardgame-faithful but divisive recent adaptation. Sure, it doesn't play so well today, but I think it's too overlooked in discussions of that great early-90s surge of PC shooters. This was one of all too few which eschewed the Doom model in favour of something altogether more ambitious.
]]>Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] is due to launch this year, last we heard, and I'm pretty keen to see more of the Warhammer 40,000 spin-off FPS. Wandering around the ridiculous gothic architecture of mutated Imperium spaceships is very much My Bag as a video game tourist, of course, but I'm fascinated to see what developers Streum On Studio will do after their wonky but pleasing unconventional FPS-RPG E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy. So ooh, come on, gather round, crack open a box of Soylens Viridians, and let's watch this first gameplay trailer.
]]>I am hopeful that Warhammer 40K FPS-RPG Space Hulk: Deathwing [official site] will be, at the very least, a weird game. Developers Streum On Studio were behind E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy, another FPS-RPG about an order of warrior monks stomping around a dystopian future in ornate power armour. It was hugely ambitious, baffling and wonky yet fascinating and endearing, which I'll take over mediocre any day. So a new trailer choosing a soundtrack with mariachi-tinged rap from a Swiss pop band, well, that's certainly unconventional for a 40K game. I'm quietly hopeful.
]]>Whee! A new Space Hulk game that converts the claustrophobic tension of the boardgame into some sort of action-packed shooty-punchy experience. I'm not deeply versed in 40K lore, although I could have told you a thing or two about the Codex Imperialis when I was a teenager. I made an army of chaos marines by gluing bits of toy animals onto my Space Wolves because I wanted a change of pace. Unfortunately, I'm not the most gifted person when it comes to modelling so the height of my achievements was a heavy weapons chap with a hoof for a codpiece. Let's look at Deathwing.
]]>Games Workshop are spaffing Warhammer 40,000 licenses all over the place lately, with predictably mixed-but-a-bit-bleh results. However, one did land at Streum On Studio to make first-person shooter Space Hulk: Deathwing. Yes, the folks who made E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. Their FPS-RPG debut was awfully wonky yet jolly ambitious, and quite endearing because of that. It's nice to know that one of the oodles of 40K games should be, at the very least, interesting.
The first 'screenshots' arrived in our inbox this morning, and while they're clearly staged they do have plenty of pretty Space Marine Terminator armour to ogle.
]]>Eschewing the often broken International Laws of Highlander and Vampire Slayers, there is another Space Hulk game in development. A surprisingly swift announcement after the miasma of sadness generated by the recently released strategy game, Space Hulk: Deathwing transposes the corridor-set alien masher into a more appropriate format. It's a first-person shooter by Streum Studios, the makers of the interesting and flawed E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy. A tiny, mouse-sized teaser trailer is squeaking in the undergrowth. Let's all disturb it, shall we?
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