I bought Warhammer 40,000: Regicide last Summer when I was
on a Games Workshop kick. It was my intention to go for a complete collection
of all the Games Workshop licensed games, and Regicide had the added benefit of
me having seen some coverage on it from TotalBiscuit. It looked more of an
oddity than anything else, but I managed to see it through to the end.
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| On this level, you have to kill, not capture, the enemy... |
The game is essentially Chess set in the 40K universe, using
the Space Marines and Orks as chess pieces to simulate the battles. How Regicide differs from Chess is that once
you have moved, you can use abilities of your pieces on an Initiative Points
system to attack your opponent. This works on a percentile mechanic, and
usually amounts to shooting them, or attacking them in close combat if you’re
in an adjacent square. It takes longer to eliminate a piece using this method,
but if you focus enough attacks in one place, you can take out entire armies
without having to capture anything; the usual method for Chess. This is
augmented by additional abilities from the various pieces: Devastators (Bishops)
have the ability to focus their attacks to do more damage at the expense of
being able to move, Assault Marines (Knights) have increased attack power after
they move and can also throw Krak (anti-armour) grenades, and so on. This
creates an additional strategic layer to the game and sets it apart from either
Chess or 40K in a way that, for the most part, works reasonably well.
The game is presented well enough; the graphics are fine and
the sound is good. The music is thematic, and loops in a way that runs just
underneath your attention level and doesn’t distract. And the sound effects are
all in the right places; the guns have a nice kick to them and the close combat
attacks sound nice and meaty. The voice acting is competently-performed, and
has no surprises for anybody familiar with the 40K universe; tough hulking
warriors for the Space Marines, and barely-intelligent growling from the Orks.
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| The takedown animations are suitably brutal... |
The bulk of the game revolves around the Campaign; a series
of 50 levels that put the Blood Angels against the Orks in various different
deployments and scenarios. There are primary objectives that you need to
achieve to beat the level: Eliminate a certain piece, move one of your pieces
to a certain square, use a certain ability on a specific piece. There also are
secondary objectives that you can complete to achieve a higher score, and these
tend to be more specific: Capturing a piece rather than killing it, don’t lose
any of your pieces, use a certain ability in a specific place. Depending on the
mission these can be very tough, but they make for a fun challenge! However,
the level design isn’t always on point. Granted, there is only so much you can
do with an 8x8 board, but some of the objectives are designed in such a way
that the only way to achieve it is to replay the level over and over again
until the AI makes a mistake. That, coupled with the random number generation,
means that some of the later missions in particular are won more through luck
than judgement.
Sadly, this is all the game really has to offer in its
current state. Skirmish games of Regicide – as close to chess as the game gets
– is probably enjoyable against a live opponent but the servers are almost
completely dead and it’s all but impossible to get a game. If you’re going to
play ‘Hotseat’ (both players on the same computer,) you might as well just play
chess or 40K. As the points you acquire from the campaign are used to unlock
customisation options like different skins and weapons for use in the Skirmish
mode, there’s not much incentive to get those either. The single player can be
fun, but the sometimes unfair difficulty and RNG makes it frustrating more
often than not, and renders the game very difficult to recommend on that basis.
I enjoyed it, but it’s a 40K game; I was always going to like it. I don’t
necessarily know if anyone else will.
Final Score: 2/5. If
you’re sure.
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