Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I see there is a new video game on the way, dakka squadron.

Do you feel that any 40k game has really reflected the setting of 40k well or do you think they are cartoonish and made to appeal to a non 40k audience.or something else?

Space Marine was excellent. Really gives you a feel of the power of a Space Marine.

Battlefleet Gothic Armada was great too. Really nailed the feeling of the setting. "You have been promoted! Well, after we torture you to be sure you are not a traitor."

Mechanicus was pretty good and did a nice job of reflecting the AdMech and Necron factions at a smaller skirmish scale.

I second all mentioned games so far and want to add Dawn of War 1 and 2. They were both great at bringing the universe to life.

Let's forget about the miserable 3rd entry of the series.

I think Space Marine is the best 40k game out there. I plays a lot like Gears of War sans the cover based mechanic as well as a pretty satisfying, if simple, melee system. Unfortunately, it is still only a good video game, and I think being a 40k fan makes it easy to bias it as a better game than it is. I still enjoy playing it from time to time.

I think Space Hulk: Deathwing did an amazing job of capturing the visuals of the 40k universe. I also think it did a pretty good job of creating feeling of being in terminator armor. The game is riddled with fatal flaws and unfun mechanics sadly. Single player forces you to babysit the two dumbest space marines in the galaxy. You have to do the Apothecary's job making sure they are still alive because as stupid as they are you need their damage soaking ability and damage dealing ability. Single player also forces you to only play the librarian and pick general purpose weapons. Multiplayer fixes a lot of this, but you still need to find/have a group of players. Even then, a single mission takes more time than I often care to give. Cool downs take too long which isn't so much challenging as it is tedious. Even a single terminator can pretty much survive until the rest of the squad respawns by holing up but that is several minutes of basically down time.

I can't say much about Mechanius. Every now and again I try to play tit, but not really liking those sort of games I have to run through the tutorial. The last mission of the tutorial where you have to runaway always leaves a bad taste in my mouth so I stop playing pretty much every time at that point. I am sure it gets better, but I don't have as much time to play video games so I am not going to work through games that have such rough spots. I will say I think the visuals for 40k are pretty good at least giving one the idea of what the inside of a Necron tomb might look like.

I can't really remember too much about that Inquisitor game. I think a played it a few times and the 40k visuals work. But like I said, the game really didn't leave much of an impression on me.

Kill Team is very cartoonish but a fun twin stick shooter.

Space Hulk (the 2013 one) is a pretty faithful representation of the board game. It also probably one of the more faithful representations of 40k in that the game is kinda brutal (and I think it cheats with as many weapon jams as I get). The visuals aren't a whole more than the board game though.

My dad had a warhammer game we used to play a lot when I came to visit. It was a bit like Xcom, and you could play chaos vs ultramarines in a campaign mode. It was really fun, but very unforgiving. I liked it a lot.

That was Chaos Gate, it was excellent for its time.

Karol wrote:
My dad had a warhammer game we used to play a lot when I came to visit. It was a bit like Xcom, and you could play chaos vs ultramarines in a campaign mode. It was really fun, but very unforgiving. I liked it a lot.

That would be Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Gate.

Its available on GOG for a pittance (without the game breaking bug i might add) and is an excellent turn based strategy game (as mentioned, pretty much x-com without the base building bits). It is one of my favourite ever games (showing my age now).

Second favourite, due to how well it captured the essence of the board game would be Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels.

I really enjoyed the campaign in Dawn of War 2 and the Chaos Rising expansion; it felt like they managed to make Space Marines into interesting characters instead of cartoons or caricatures, and aside from a few weird edge cases (spending forty minutes running in, shooting a bit, and running away to kill an Avatar) the gameplay feels very faithful to the setting.

Original Dawn Of War and it's expansions were fantastic. 2 was OK but I was disappointed by the reduced scale of it - only 4 squads, no base building, no vehicles etc.

Space Marine was damn good.

I loved playing Space Marine and that was what got me into 40k in the beginning.
Dawn of War 1 was fantastic for me and 2 was good although sadly the third version goes by the same rules as the Last Airbender movie.

I enjoyed playing Space Hulk Deathwing but to be honest I wouldn't play it unless you can get it cheap.

Space Marine is awesome. I'm amazed I haven't worn out the disc at this point.

Feth Calgar. Captain Titus for chapter master!

princeyg wrote:

Karol wrote:
My dad had a warhammer game we used to play a lot when I came to visit. It was a bit like Xcom, and you could play chaos vs ultramarines in a campaign mode. It was really fun, but very unforgiving. I liked it a lot.

That would be Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Gate.

Its available on GOG for a pittance (without the game breaking bug i might add) and is an excellent turn based strategy game (as mentioned, pretty much x-com without the base building bits). It is one of my favourite ever games (showing my age now).

Second favourite, due to how well it captured the essence of the board game would be Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels.

Or it could be Warhammer 40k: Squad Commander for the PSP? That would fit the description too.

Dawn of War 2 and Space Marine are the standouts for me too, although I do have a soft spot for the Panzer General-alike Warhammer 40k: Armageddon.

The original Dawn of War series, definitely. "BLOODY THE TREADS!"

Dawn of War II [at least DoWII Ret] was comparably disappointing on so many levels.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
The original Dawn of War series, definitely. "BLOODY THE TREADS!"

I would say Dark Crusade and Soulstorm were the best. That campaign map was great. Plus you could do crazy things with mods, like Ultimate Apocalypse.

"If you will not serve in combat, then you will serve on the firing line."

 Trickstick wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
The original Dawn of War series, definitely. "BLOODY THE TREADS!"

I would say Dark Crusade and Soulstorm were the best. That campaign map was great. Plus you could do crazy things with mods, like Ultimate Apocalypse.

"If you will not serve in combat, then you will serve on the firing line."

Dawn of War 1 Vanilla and Winter Assault had the best campaigns. DC went to the risk map of skirmish battles with the strongholds that were great. SS make it obnoxious since it didn't preserve bases which just made it replaying skirmish battles over and over again.

I hated space marine, it was pure button munching. The only thing good about it was the graphics.
My favourite 40k game was a small game on the old psp called squad command. It was a turn based tactics game, it was really easy but lots of fun. A large scale more complex version would be excellent.
Dawn of war was ok but far too tedious after a while.

I thought I would mention it because many don't know about it, but there is a game called Chapter Master. Well, it's technically a mod. A very in depth Chapter Simulator, if you can look past the quite basic design. I never got into it but I think it is probably exactly what some people would love. I may give it another go, even though I'm more of a Guard lover.

Space marine, even if i though Gears of War felt much more 40k with its bleak colorless presentation and juicy gore.
DoW was also great!

But none of them bests Total Warhammer, but thats not 40k.
Just inagine a total war 40k...could be the game of games!

As the token tau player, may I mention Firewarrior? I read the book, but I constantly got lost in the IoM cruiser, so I gave up on the game.

Soulless wrote:
Space marine, even if i though Gears of War felt much more 40k with its bleak colorless presentation and juicy gore.
DoW was also great!

But none of them bests Total Warhammer, but thats not 40k.
Just inagine a total war 40k...could be the game of games!

I mean, Total War is kind of a formation fighting & melee medieval sort of game. There isn't a Total War WWII or Total War Afghanistan. I don't really think it would be suitable for 40k.

Dawn of War is Company of Heroes: Warhammer 40k Edition, and while at times kind of lackluster in game play [especially DoW II], definitely nailed it with bringing the universe to life.


I think that something like Blitzkrieg would be pretty awesome [mostly because I really like Blitzkrieg I/II], but is probably a little on the "gritty" side to capture Warhammer 40k [at least from a non-IG perspective]

Space Marine is ok. As a game it's nothing special really, without the 40k theming I think it would be largely forgotten today.

It gets put on a pedestal a bit simply because being an ok 40k Videogame is actually kind of rare.

The last one I played was Space Hulk: Deathwing, and oof. That was an awful game.

I've only ever played 3:

Rites of War

Fire Warrior

Space Hulk: Deathwing

They range from garbage to passable.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Dawn of War is Company of Heroes: Warhammer 40k Edition, and while at times kind of lackluster in game play [especially DoW II], definitely nailed it with bringing the universe to life.

Nah, Company Of Heroes is Dawn Of War: WW2 Edition. Dawn Of War came first...

Crispy78 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Dawn of War is Company of Heroes: Warhammer 40k Edition, and while at times kind of lackluster in game play [especially DoW II], definitely nailed it with bringing the universe to life.

Nah, Company Of Heroes is Dawn Of War: WW2 Edition. Dawn Of War came first...

Okay, that's fair. The point still stands that 40k needs mechanics for a more modern themed RTS than one that's very good at explicitly representing features of antiquity battles like formation fighting.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Dawn of War is Company of Heroes: Warhammer 40k Edition, and while at times kind of lackluster in game play [especially DoW II], definitely nailed it with bringing the universe to life.

Nah, Company Of Heroes is Dawn Of War: WW2 Edition. Dawn Of War came first...

Okay, that's fair. The point still stands that 40k needs mechanics for a more modern themed RTS than one that's very good at explicitly representing features of antiquity battles like formation fighting.

I'd love it if they gave Eugen (Wargame/Steel Division) the license to do a 40k game. It's unlikely, and GW would probably ruin it by insisting on only allowing models they physically sell to be represented in the game, but if they took the hands-off approach and let the developer make stuff up/extend the rosters like they've done with Total War it could go somewhere.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

I mean, Total War is kind of a formation fighting & melee medieval sort of game. There isn't a Total War WWII or Total War Afghanistan. I don't really think it would be suitable for 40k.

Disagree. Empire and the Fall of the Samurai did mixed ranged and melee (with firearms and artillery) in an entertaining way. Certain factions in Total Warhammer (lookin at you Dwarf bois) likewise handle the kinds of weapons that 40k need (plus a working framework for Psyker powers to boot). What would need updating is the terrain mechanics, as neither can realistically do urban combat in a functional manner.

Just give it to Paradox.

Entire galaxy, with every faction represented? Sure, it may take 5 years and 10 expansions, but it would be good.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Dawn of War is Company of Heroes: Warhammer 40k Edition, and while at times kind of lackluster in game play [especially DoW II], definitely nailed it with bringing the universe to life.

Nah, Company Of Heroes is Dawn Of War: WW2 Edition. Dawn Of War came first...

Okay, that's fair. The point still stands that 40k needs mechanics for a more modern themed RTS than one that's very good at explicitly representing features of antiquity battles like formation fighting.

I'd love it if they gave Eugen (Wargame/Steel Division) the license to do a 40k game. It's unlikely, and GW would probably ruin it by insisting on only allowing models they physically sell to be represented in the game, but if they took the hands-off approach and let the developer make stuff up/extend the rosters like they've done with Total War it could go somewhere.

Given that there's so many units, they don't need to allow extended rosters. Dawn of War doesn't use half of the available roster of units to chose from [and at times the only thing the unit shares with it's real version is appearance]. They need to tell them to reproduce the line faithfully.

Slytherine appears to have a licence or at least a few games to their name; though Paradox would be fantastic. The two companies do hit similar markets with strategy games; but Paradox appears to have much deeper pockets and larger teams with them. Slytherine get some good games, but they often have that feeling that they ran out of steam (money) and end up stuck a bit on the niche end of things.