Not Without Its Faults pt 2

The other game defying my expectations was Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. I got this for ten bucks on my Xbox 360.

Unlike the giant-budget Epic Mickey, Kill Team is one of those little downloadable titles that publishers more and more frequently release as an apetite-whetting cash grab. Part of building hype for an upcoming triple-A game. Sometimes these are little flash games on websites, sometimes they are more elaborate... like the 2D 'retro-styled' game released in conjunction with Capcom's Dark Void. Usually these little side stories aren't anything to write home about, but Kill Team is now out about a month before the much-anticipated much-hyped Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, and is definitely an exception.

It is actually REALLY good.

The upcoming Space Marine game looks to feature the player in the role of a Marine Captain. In the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Captains are legendary hero-level characters, typically commanding good size armies, and capable of laying waste to whole squads of trooper models on their own. They get their Chapter's pick of the best custom-made armor and weapons, and are typically very old, very experienced war leaders who have seen battle on countless worlds against all manner of enemy. They're also every inch the super-sized no-nonsense shoot-first type of warriors that western sensibilites seem to require. So a Space Marine Captain makes a great player character in the third person blast and chop-fest that this new game is bound to be. One of 40K's iconic enemy races, the Orks ('futuristic' versions of fantasy orcs), appear in most of the screenshots and videos I've seen for the game. Video games based on GW franchises don't always work out so well, but Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine *looks* like it hits all the right marks.

Which leads to Kill Team. This little downloadable game starts of showing an Ork Kroozer (warship) heading into Imperial Space to attack a Forge World (industrial complex planet). Space Marine boarding craft intercept it, and your game begins. I think the game represents a different specific conflict, but is attached to the larger that also encompasses the upcoming WH40K: Space Marine.

You can choose between four 'types' of Space Marine, and the differences in them basically reflect how much balance you want between ranged and close combat. You can also choose between five different Chapter color schemes, for a bit of personalisation. Each Marine type has three different weapons available but the high power ones need to be unlocked through play. The game also provides various levels of buffs (again most have to be unlocked) and you have opportunities to swap weapons and buffs in the course of blasting through each stage. You're never stuck with an unworkable combination. The controls are simplicity itself, the game is a twin-stick shooter. Moving in one direction while firing in another is a piece of cake, and use of special abilities, running and all that are mapped in logical places. There isn't that much to keep track of anyway.

Now for 40K purists there's going to have to be a little give here. The player is expected to run and gun through the corridors and chambers of a large ship killing hundreds of Orks and Gretchin (SF goblins). None of the Marines on offer would canonically be capable of accomplishing this. In the upcoming Space Marine game it might be a bit less of a stretch considering Captains are top-level hero characters, but in Kill Team you are using (for variety's sake) squad leader and lower level heroes. It is a bit like the stretch you have to make when Guile is fighting the Hulk in Marvel vs Capcom games. For the sake of even having a playble game, some bending of canon is required. So if a 40K goober can just have an open mind and set aside the limitations imposed on these Marines by the tabletop game, they'd find most of the rest of the game is a really neat little exploration of the 40K universe.

I read a review (after I'd played it) that said Kill Team's environments were drab and same-y. Well, there are only five levels and they will take the player about forty minutes each the first time through. And all the levels take place on a big Ork spaceship. So a certain amount of consistency could be expected. The devs structured this, actually working to NOT break canon in a sense, similar to the tabletop system's penchant for campaigns, scenarios strung along in narrative form to reach an ultimate goal. Most typically official individual scenarios do NOT range all over the galaxy and pit an army against a variety of enemie armies. 40K game narratives don't have an everything-but-the-kitchen sink approach, though in their own home games players frequently battle with little regard to a functioning narrative. So I found focusing on just the Orks and THEIR environment to be a good idea. Especially considering the short length of the game and the focused nature of the narrative.

As a long-time 40K fan, I found the portrayal of the cluttered, ramshackle Ork ship to be really cool. It had lots of great details, like every time there was an explosion big enough to rock the ship, all kinds of carp lying around would slide across the floor-- the Orks don't tie anything down! There are great vats of radioactive material just open to the air with no safety railings, and catwalks made up of metal planks barely riveted together. And everything is lit with harsh white lights or hellish red and green glows. The game totally nails the anarchic and heedless nature of Orks and their technology. It's a miracle they could build anything space-worthy. For a little variety's sake there is one level in the game where the Orks have sealed off the ship because of yet another alien presence that they haven't quite been able to eradicate. This was a good bit of fun, with a few visual cues here and there (heavy use of maroon and purple) to indicate the 'changed' nature of the region. The player must make their way through this area, of course, and battles a totally different, well-known 40K force, before confronting the Ork Warboss in the finale.

The in-game player and enemy models are also worth mentioning. I read somewhere that these were basically the assets from the Dawn of War strategy game series, but jazzed up with a few extra details. I haven't played Dawn of War (aversion to PC games, aversion to strategy games!) but the characters and enemies are all perfect for this type of game. The game is played in an on-high isometric view, very much like you were looking down on a tabletop wargame. You get a pretty wide field that you can see to allow time to see what's coming at you-- though the game has a lot of ambushing going on-- and to give room for many enemy to be on screen at once. Consequently, the actual size of the models for most of the game is quite small-- again, like a tabletop view, but every now and then the camera zooms down in for a slo-mo enemy death scene and then the level of detail in the scenery and characters becomes apparent. It isn't Halo Reach levels of sophistication, but there's a lot more texture and bling than was really necessary for such a cheapie twin-stick arcade game. Interestingly, with all the details the dudes in this game all look like well-painted 28mm figures, with the figure proportions and chunky details... as opposed to the upcoming Space Marine game's properly proportioned realistically rendered game characters.

There might be a lot of video gamers who will look at this game and think it is some kind of science-fiction ripoff of stuff from World of Warcraft, but GW's designs, both fantasy and futuristic, were full-fledged and established well before even the first early generations of Warcraft came along.

This game doesn't really do anything new, mechanics-wise. If you can play Robotron 2084, Expendable, Loaded, or Geometry Wars you're good to go. It just has everything tuned really well. It makes it seem ludicrous that no one has applied the twin-stick formula to 40K before. The graphics, the sound, the voice over (sounding rather like Patrick Stewart or Sean Connery at times), it is all just badass.

And the game is just as fun, if not moreso, in two-player couch-cooperative. The powerups, and their judicious use is pretty critical to getting through the game and Kill Team lets both players share the advantages of a powerup that either grabs as long as they stay in proximity to each other. Players can then stack the powerups in a way you can't do in single-player. Player one can grab the power field creating a dome around the Marines impervious to enemy fire. Player two can then grab triple fire, granting awesome sprays of bullets. So for as long as these pickups last, both players are protected, both players have spread guns. It really encourages the players to strategise together and not just be every-man-for-himself and dick the other guy by grabbing the good shit. Since my kid is a 40K fan, this game is tailor-made for he and I to just pick up and play. And it was actually fun trying to find all the hidden medals and acquire all the weapons and buffs. The usual confusion ensuing from two players wreaking havoc is a major part of the fun because with all the cooperative aspects, including reviving a downed partner, it almost never causes a game over. I never found the camera a problem either, and in fact its dynamic tracking actually added a lot to the game.

I've also read some complaints about game length, but to me it was perfect. I'm so damned tired of games that require such a huge commitment in time and effort... even fun games can bog down. This game is only four hours for one play through, as I've already said. But it was really fun on repeat plays and it rewards the primary player with unlocks, achievements, etc even when played co-op. So I've put much more than four hours into it, and none of it has felt like a chore or grinding.

Other writers seem to largely agree with everything I'm posting here. Even non-40K fans give the game a lot of props. BUT. I have to go along with the one huge glaring fault:

NO online co-op. Let me repeat that. A pick-up-and-play game with an expansive user-friendly field of view and multiple aspects to encourage teaming up, but has NO WAY for you to play co-op other than with a friend in the same room. Local two-player ONLY. Wow.

Now for me this isn't really a problem. I have a fanatical kid gamer and 40K goob right in my own home, and I'm not that big for online play anyway. This does, however, seem like an absolutely massive oversight. I can only think the money ran out. Since the game is so well-done in just about every other way, maybe the room wasn't in the budget to implement this. I don't know what all it takes to enable smooth netcode but looking at this game it isn't much of a resource hog. I can't believe it would require anything like a Halo or Street Fighter game to banish lag and get really efficient bandwidth usage out of it. It has a mostly fixed view, tiny characters, and minimal, straightforward controls (son not a lot of inputs to have to read).

Anyway. Huge oversight, yes. But for me personally, this is the best cheap game I've bought all year, and one of the better games overall regardless of price. I don't feel too keen to diss Mickey, and I'll admit to 40K frothing probably enhancing my enjoyment of Kill Team... but I'm probably not going back to the Disney game. I will, however, spend a lot more time in the Ork Kroozer icing greenskins.

Down With The Iron Warriors

Walking in to my local comic (and game) shop last Sunday, I escorted my son back to the wargame tables at the rear. Every Sunday Games Workshop wargames, mostly WH40K, are played in an informal ‘bring and battle’ format. Usually it is pretty well-attended and the previous week my kid had met other players his own age, and that got him all fired up to bring in some of the Tau squads on which he’s been working so hard to paint.


He’s been working so hard on them because I’ve insisted that he do so, and not just show up with a bunch of drab plastic and metal guys.

In common with a lot of players (and the immediate gratification mentality they have) he doesn’t really want to get much painting done before he plays. Truth be told, he’d probably just as soon do NO painting. But having built several Gundam models he at least understands the positive aspects of a modeling hobby and putting something of your own creativity into it. We discussed this at length before the first dollar was spent: ‘Son, your Dad is a beardy old gaming git and you’re going to have to do this right if you want me to throw in with you’…or something to that effect. But he’s only twelve. Eagerness to get to the fun part and ‘aw geez’ the work part is to be expected.

We’ve gone to watch the games played a few times before he even bought his first models, and the example set by the other players is NOT helping my cause. While he does vaguely remember the ‘old days’ when he was around tons of amazing miniatures, intricately designed scenery and enthusiastic GW staff, seeing what goes on at this local shop it’s understandable (even if he wasn’t a kid) why he’d think the non-playing side of things could or should be neglected.

Because The Iron Warriors dominate.

This references an old joke when I was employed at GW. At that time when our staff were going around to game stores trying to promote the hobby, they were constantly confronted with players using armies of unpainted or barely-painted figures. And in those days almost all the models were made out of so-called ‘white metal’, which is a silvery alloy consisting largely of tin. In Warhammer 40,000 there is a chapter of Chaos Space Marines called the Iron Warriors whose predominant color is, as their name suggests, iron or steel. So the preponderance of bare steel-colored models eventually generated a running gag about how all these different players had all these loads of models but at the end of the day they were all using ‘The Iron Warriors’. So everywhere we’d go there they’d be… more Iron Warriors. Progeny of lazy or ignorant players everywhere. They might be shaped like Eldar or Orks or Tyranids but still…

Iron Warriors.

I think the joke is outdated now. Since that educational crusade by GW it has become common opinion that you at least need to get a basic coat of color on ‘em. While the overall effort is still pretty lackluster, in general it seems most players do at least the minimum so that the won’t look totally lazy if they wind up against someone who did a good job. And so many of the models are plastic, the whole ‘iron’ descriptor doesn’t really fit as well.

As Jervis Johnson is always going on about in White Dwarf magazine, immersion is a huge part of this hobby. Like books, films and video games, with any of our diversions we want to be drawn in to a created world, even if that world is largely the same as our own. We want to experience the drama or the humor as closely as possible and the more effective the break from the real world around us the better. Tabletop wargaming is no different. Immersion in the battle is important to the experience. But with gaming of this type, there are so many rules to follow, so many discussions that need to take place, and so much potential distraction (if you’re gaming away from home especially) that it isn’t an unbroken entertainment experience like reading a book in your favorite chair or watching a film in the theater. Wargaming has to generate its atmosphere and color, its ‘hooks’, from the models, the scenery, the narrative behind the battle and the personalities of the players because it is a competitive pastime. It requires a lot of communication that isn’t WITHIN the game’s world.

If you think it’s okay to just throw the unpainted models out there on a flat surface, then why don’t you just play chess? Or one of the tabletop wargames that doesn’t require figures (think Avalon Hill style cardboard chits)? Or in this generation, play a strategy-based video game? They even got ‘em based on the WH40K universe, the Dawn of War series.

Why not pursue other strategy pastimes that don’t have so much manual work involved? Because those pursuits don’t have little toy soldiers you get to push around miniature battlefields. That’s why.

The tactile aspect is a huge part of the attraction. At GW, as much as it was believed that the painting is important, it was also understood that the actual doing of it is a lot of labor—daunting in fact. But no one expected every soldier to be a masterpiece and no one expected the whole thing to be done before you start playing or even to have been done quickly. At the actual GW stores, staff insisted that you get started on painting your models before playing with them in the shop, and that every time you brought them in they showed a bit more progress.

My town, as removed as it is from civilization, appears to have a population of wargamers who have no idea what paints and brushes are for. At least not why they are sold in that very shop right next to the figures. Watching them play presents a laundry list modeling yuck I thought had been driven out back in the 90s. They’ve got unpainted or primer-only model. Models not glued to bases or vehicles (constantly falling over or off). Wrong weapons on models. No weapons on models, including vehicles. Substitutions galore, that is ‘my marine seargeant model here is actually a chaplain’.

That doesn’t even touch on all the wackiness play-wise like not having a list prepared (flipping constantly through the books) or not using counters so the players can’t remember wounds taken on big models or weapons lost on vehicles.

The players spend so much time backtracking, looking shit up, and reminding each other just what the hell they are using on the table… I couldn’t see how it was fun. These games are complicated enough as it is. Further crap that takes you out of the spirit of the game is something to be avoided. Having a painted, correctly assembled and modeled army doesn’t just help with the atmosphere and coolness… it helps the game move along more smoothly. There’s no question what the guns are on the tank. No argument about which model was the hero or heavy weapons trooper in the squad. No struggle to remember that this group of shuriken catapult armed guys are actually carrying shuriken pistols and power swords…. THIS time around. For all that these players (and others like them) seem to think the PLAY is the thing, they sure don’t do a lot of the shit necessary to keep the focus on the play and not on all the exceptions and goofiness spread around their rag-tag ‘army’.

And assuming someone DOES show up with an army with a decent paint job, the Iron Warriors player is doing that guy a disservice by being pathetic about the hobby end of things. THAT guy made an effort and he wants a cool, immersive, atmospheric game. He wants to fight a ‘believable’ force. And you bring the equivalent of an expanded Civil War Chess Set.

Nice.

What happened to making it look cool? People think the art looks cool. The sculpting of the models is cool. This is entertainment in which the consumer gets to participate. What happened to their contribution?

I know a lot of these players like the background. They discuss the troop types and name their forces (I’ve heard ‘em). They must be buying the novels and art books because I frequently need the next one in some series and it is sold out. So why shouldn’t a player do their best to capture this color?

Trying to convey this to my kid is difficult but seems to be working. He showed up with two fully painted squads and third halfway done. And everything was as depicted on his models (and he had some little unit cards with him so he didn’t have to flip through rulebooks!). He knew the game less well than his opponent but his own turns went much smoother and faster.

I don’t actually want to be a snob about it…. But I am. And I want him to be a snob about it too within reason. We can’t make our local shop do what GW does with their must-be-painted policy. But we can try to encourage and be an example. My son should still play against unpainted armies and be a gracious player, but I really hope his work rubs off vis a vis the painting aspect.

I have seen some regular Warhammer (fantasy) players in there too. And they seem more resolved to do the work correctly. While I saw a lot of unpainted or primer-only models, the ranked up nature of Warhammer units kind of forces the players to be more organized, and get those weapons correct and get everything glued down.

I find it staggering that it takes ‘convincing’ to get players on board with this. I see them over in the miniatures racks picking up boxes or flipping through books with ‘wicked’ or ‘those look badass’ spouted all the time. So don’t you want your shit to look badass? I mean you spent all that money (things are NOT cheap) and you’re just going to leave it an Iron Warrior instead of trying to make it look like what attracted you in the first place? And these players have the internet. There are kajillions of online examples at all skill levels that this shit is done and, in fact, MUST be done. You don’t get a fucking bye just because you live in the sticks.

I need to take the word to the heathen.

Apologies

Between kids going back to school, the wrapup of summer doings, and various medical or health-related shenanigans I have not been making time to update this blog.

On the video game front I haven't progressed much owing to the above-listed time killers but also because I'm just bogged down in Okami. Almost bored with it you might say. It isn't that it is a bad game, it is just so long. I'm having similar problems to my play-through of Odin Sphere awhile back. What little time I do manage on my consoles is mostly dicking around with the digital pinball games from Kaze. About as far from Okami as you can get. The only thing video game wise that really has me excited is all the shit Cave has announced at their August Matsuri festival. Just about every old STG they've ever designed seems scheduled over the next year.

If anything my pastime-time is taken up with getting back into GW stuff. I've been reading a lot of Black Library novels set in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes to get hepped up, and I've made some progresss in buying and starting an Eldar army for 40K. I don't get anything like the great deals on this stuff that I used to so I have to be a lot more strategic with my purchases of figures. Most of my old paints aren't good either so I have to rebuild that setup. My son has gotten inspired and is beavering away on a Tau force. I've got an infantry model done to completion so I could figure out my army's color scheme and three more troopers following on from that. I'll post pics soon. I like my ideas, but my son hates it! Ha.

He'll double hate it when my force rolls over his.

I'm actually more of a Warhammer (fantasy) player. I will be firing up a force of High Elves before long and dividing my painting time between the two. I'm working 40K earlier because that, of course, is what the boy is into. Even my daughter is getting in on the act. She knocked out a decent Space Marine, but really wants to paint some Wood Elves.

Nerdy nerdy family.

Ghosts

In case anyone is interested in what I used to do. The above photo is for a Thousand Sons Space Marine, what are now called Rubric Marines in the current edition of Warhammer 40,000. The photo above comes from the second edition rulebook, but I cribbed it from the current online fan standard wiki for 40K lore, the 40K Lexicanium site.

The link for the Lexicanium page:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rubric_Marine

This is my marine. I painted it and set up the photo for it. It is part of a set of four chaos marines that Jes Goodwin originally sculpted and the designs became the standard by which all subsequent marines dedicated to specific Chaos power were based. In the same way that Jes's designs set the stage, this is MY interpretation of the text-described blue and yellow scheme for this troop type, and it became the standard. I expect my 'blueprints' for the other powers are probably also still floating around out there.

My day in/day out job there was not to paint miniatures, but getting involved in the hobby end was pretty standard for staff, including some fairly high profile stuff like this. I was first out of the gate with painted versions of this set of four models, and GW liked them so much they were figured pretty prominently whenever Chaos Marine stuff came up.

Painting models is so much more obscure than being a writer, painter, or filmmaker, but I'll admit to quite a bit of gratification that something I did is STILL relevant even if it is in a really nerdy niche corner of the universe. Most of my models are packed away, but I was kind of missing them the other day. I don't have any of the photos of them handy either. So I looked about on the internet to see if someone else had pics.

Yes they do apparently.

What Goes Around Comes Around, Eventually

Hm.

For about two months now, my son has been expressing an interest in starting up a Warhammer 40,000 army. Briefly, for those not in the know, Warhammer 40,000 is a tabletop wargame. It uses models (british english: toy soldiers) to represent the personnel and vehicles of an army based in Games Workshop's science fiction universe. You battle an opponent who has their own army on a set of miniature scenery. WH40K, as the game is usually abbreviated, is Games Workshop's most popular game, although not my personal favorite.



In any case, it was probably only a matter of time. My son remembers, dimly, a time when he ran around a warehouse full of toy soldiers, or barged in on friends of mine slaving over layouts and copy for White Dwarf magazine. UK design studio staff have met my kids. So now that he's ten suddenly he's put two-and-two together and realized he has some sort of heritage in this stuff. He probably would have found it cool and gravitated to it even without my employment history with them. It's hard to say. But knowing what he knows just injects that much more fervor into the hobby for him.

I left GW on good terms. My years with them were almost all positive, and I will never say a bad word about the company. A lot of GW fans and stockists have held negative opinions about them (as any popular company is going to generate), but being on the inside, and hearing the reasons why some decisions had been made I 'get' GW and why it does what it does. Really the only reason I'm not still working there is the move of their manufacturing facility from Baltimore to Memphis, and not making that move with them was my choice.

So I have no hard feelings. But I do miss that job. It was a large part of my identity and a lot of the residue still informs me today, even though I don't actively cultivate the hobby itself into my daily activities any more. Really my avoidance has more to do with feelings of melancholy and nostalgia than any sort of dislike.

But as I've said, it was probably only a matter of time before I had to face GW again. I don't know how ramped up I'll get about this stuff, I have enough things on my plate in both responsibilities AND pastimes... but I know that if my kid shows enough persistance to actually build this hobby for himself, I'll work with him. After Christmas when I started to help him paint some of the new soldiers he got, I found the old methods and rhythm to doing the work just fell right into place. Like riding a bicycle. Often when I worked for GW, people would quit, only to find themselves back there after months or even years. I used to joke that it was like the mafia. Once GW had their hooks into you, you could never leave.

I may be finding this to be true for myself. Truer than even I knew.