I started this week knowing I wasn’t going to have much
time, so I was only going to be able to play a few games. By the time we got to
the end of it, it was only one…
My new game for this week was Warhammer 40,000: Eternal
Crusade. I bought this last week as part of a War bundle from Steam; a lot of
the Games Workshop licenced games had come up on there and as I hope to do a
complete retrospective on them at some point, I thought I might as well buy it.
I didn’t intend to try any of them straight away as I have things to be getting
on with, but then it came to my attention that Eternal Crusade was a
multiplayer-only online shooter. Now, I’m not very good at these games, and my
laptop hasn’t got a particularly fast hard drive so games like this don’t run
especially well, but I thought I’d better give it a go before the servers die
out.
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| Funnily enough I'm not sure it looks this good on my laptop... |
The game allows you to choose from one of four Warhammer 40K
factions: Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Orks and Eldar. Being the sort of
player I am I initially started off with Chaos, but then I had a look at the
structure of the game; if you want to get in to a battle you have to choose
from a number of areas on the campaign map that only two of the factions will
be involved with. Far from remaining loyal to one side, I created a character
for all four factions and decided to play as whatever the battle needed at that
point. I spend the most time playing as Orks, funnily enough…
As for the game itself, it plays like the multiplayer mode
to Space Marine than anything else. You have a mixture of classes taken almost
straight out of the 5th Edition rules: A standard Troops class that
can capture objectives, a Heavy Support class with big weapons, a Fast Attack
class with a jump pack or similar, and a healer or support class. Some other
heroes are available for a price. You start with standard equipment; more can
be unlocked as you’re going along and gain experience in battle. You have a
certain amount of time to capture a few areas, and if you can hang on to your
captured areas before the time runs out, you win. There is also a mode where
one side has a limited time to capture all the areas, and the other side has to
defend it with limited reinforcements.
I have really enjoyed Eternal Crusade so far and I hope I
continue to do so. I have heard some questions raised about the game’s quality;
I don’t play a lot of games like this so I don’t know which ones do it any
better or worse, but it seems alright so far. I’ll probably try to get what
play time I can out of it before the servers go dead, and since I’m enjoying levelling
up my characters and playing online matches, this could be a while!
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| Anyone want to help campaign against the tyranids? |
But there is something I do need to be careful of – addiction.
I’m not very good at controlling this at the best of times, and I’m noticing
the familiar patterns. Eternal Crusade has a quick but very entertaining core
gameplay loop, and more than once this week I’ve found myself still playing at
some ridiculous hour in the morning after telling myself “just one more game.”
It’s certainly not going to help me get through my backlog, since this isn’t a
game you beat in the usual sense; even the Player Versus Environment is a bit
of a non-starter since no one seems interested in playing it. It does have the
potential to get in the way of my work/life balance if I’m not careful, and
while it is my intention to keep playing, I’m glad I’ve resolved to play a new
game every week – I’ll need something to distract me from this.
So, a new game for next week then. Also, I might get a war
game in at some point; I’ve not done that for a while!
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