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| Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus - First Impressions by Mischief Maker 07/27/2019, 7:49am PDT | ||||
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Okay, I can see now what all the fuss is about. Lore & aesthetics-wise, this is the best 40K experience I've had since the Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. I was dubious about a game all about tech priests, but playing this game has given me an epiphany: space marines are the least interesting part of 40K. Tech priests in this game bring cybernetics beyond the level of overkill into full blown body-horror, yet mix that with a ridiculous religiosity where an early mission has you sending hundreds of troops to their doom so you can spread sanctified incense through a necron tomb. The Saturday morning cartoon villain necrons, monolouging in plain english, are more relatable than the ostensibly human cyborgs you're playing as, whose voices are indistinct electronic murmurs. It is so wonderfully weird, it's drawn me in way more than all the 40K games I've played since DoW that take space marines seriously. And the music is fantastic; a mix of church organs, gregorian chant, and deep electronic bass. Gameplay-wise, it's a cross between Druidstone and Invisible Inc with a splash of FTL and its progeny. The premise is you have a limited amount of time to explore this necron tomb world before an overwhelming defensive force awakens, multiple commanders with competing agendas are offering missions with random rewards, and you don't have time to do them all. The maps themselves are randomly arranged, with each room having either a combat encounter, a glyph with two weird symbols to choose between, or choose your own adventure dilemmas with 3 choices, only one of which is correct. Health and resources from these encounters carry into combat, so if you guessed right at the choices (or use save-scumming) you can have a slight advantage in the final combat battle in the map. Combat is turn-based on a grid map. Initiative is individual unit-based, with the option to delay moves. Your main troops are your tech-priests with an escort of disposable skitarii troops (by endgame a maximum of 6 tech priests and 6 skitarii). Aside from moving and a handful of cooldown-based abilities, just about everything your tech priests do consumes "cognition," which is the game's equivalent of mana, and you gather cognition mainly from necron obelisks scattered throughout the map which replenish every round. Despite reviews comparing this game to X-Com, there is no cover system and absent any dodge buffs all weapons auto-hit. Every tech priest has a personal servo skull that can serve a variety of purposes, from gathering cognition from distant obelisks to scanning an enemy troop to determine if it's vulnerable to physical or energy damage (not all necron warriors have the same shields). As you play through the maps and battles, there is an Invisible Inc-style alert meter filling up. Within the mission it provides global bonuses to the necrons the higher it gets, and after a mission the final alert level is added to the percentage-based end game counter (eg. ending on alert level 3 adds 3%). There are consoles you can blow up to reduce the meter, but for the most part the game is a risk/reward balance between gathering money/XP/combat boni verses finishing the map as fast as possible to keep the alert low and enable you to do more missions. I gotta admit the high-point of the game comes between the missions. Necron tomb worlds aren't the most imaginative of structures, after all. But the visuals are glorious back on your cathedral-ship, especially when upgrading your tech priest and he(she?) goes from just some dude in a red robe and a gas mask to an insane skittering nightmare cross between doctor octopus and Tetsuo-the-Iron-Man. 10/10 on the aesthetics, we'll see how well the combat mechanics hold up by late game. |
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Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus - First Impressions by 07/27/2019, 7:49am PDT  After the honeymoon, how am I supposed to put this? Oh right, MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH by 08/17/2019, 5:52am PDT Did you happen to grab any screenshots for this? NT by 08/19/2019, 8:53am PDT Could you hold off for a bit? I wanna give the game one more chance to redeem. by 08/19/2019, 9:51am PDT I .............. can! NT by 08/19/2019, 10:30am PDT Aw, fuck this game! Even if it does eventually get fun the start is too boring. by 08/20/2019, 5:21pm PDT Okay, I will schedule a review to go up, trying to have one every Thur again NT by 08/22/2019, 10:49am PDT I've come around again with this game. by 03/14/2020, 1:14pm PDT |
