“Blood for the Blood God!” was the war cry shouted by ichor red Chaos Space Marines in 1998’s tactical strategy title: Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate. I remember Chaos Gate as a fun tactical strategy title made in the mold of the legendary Xcom: Enemy Unknown. You might think, judging by the way I’ve altered said battle cry above, that this review of the more recent Space Marine tactical outing: Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf will end up negative. If so, chalk one up for yourself.
Like a proudly flatulent yet hot blind date, Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolves is an unfortunate exercise in extremes. The game starts off well before its myriad IAPs form a $100 plus paywall that, like an offered finger from said hot date, exhibits an indifference to its core audience that’s as off-putting as it is insulting.
As far as I can tell there hasn’t been a video game yet that has focused solely on the Space Wolves, a group of Space Marines from Games Workshops’ famous Warhammer 40,000 universe, and no doubt a lot of fans of the Warhammer Universe will find this exciting; and really it’s not bad stuff at all. You play as the leader of a band of Space Wolves. The Space Wolves apprently hail from a planet called Fenris (named after the Norse god Odin’s pet wolf), are coolly wolf-like and do all sorts of bad-ass things like eat their enemy’s brains for intel—the imagery and snippets of story that you engage with en route to the game’s missions are fun for the most part. The overall story involves something about a planet and aliens and Chaos Marines and really, who cares? It all boils down to window dressing for gameplay but for that, it’s pretty good.
The game’s missions consist of your avatar and two companions snapping open cans of whup-ass on various gangs of aliens and vile Chaos Space Marines. You can choose your two companions from an overall squad of five, each of whom represents one of the game’s three classes of Space Wolf, namely: Grey Hunter, Wolf Scout and Wolf Guard. The playable characters that represent the two coolest classes: Wolf Scout (sniper) or Wolf Guard (heavy weapons specialist) can only be unlocked via IAPs. Which brings us to this: So far this description suggests a lot of choice. Not so, unless you have money to burn. That’s because developer HeroCraft has seen it fit to charge players for every conceivable thing one might do with this little band of sci-fi soldiers. Want to change classes? Pay the piper. Want a sniper? Pay up. Want to level up your scout? Your avatar? Change classes? Change or enhance your cards? Heal after a mission? Pay, pay, pay, pay and pay. What’s worse not only does the game charge for every essential facet of the game it even charges to level up your avatar and five companions. Worse still, the price to level up actually doubles with each successive level. More on that in a moment.
In spite of its incessant nickle and diming, I found the game’s unique approach, that of a tactical strategy/collectible card game hybrid to be a fresh and compelling way to deliver turn-based tactical strategy, and by that same token, I found the game’s first 9 or so missions to be a complete blast. What’s more, HeroCraft does a solid job of both making general sense of the card mechanics and integrating them into the game’s turn-based tactical combat missions. The cards themselves represent either one-shot weapons (attack cards), equipable weapons, movement or general use cards. Each of the game’s three combat classes comes with its own deck, which overall boils down to classes having generally similar cards, more of certain types and a few class-unique cards. For example, the Wolf Scout (sniper) class gets both equipable and one-shot sniper rifle cards that the other classes don’t.
During missions each playable character’s hand is displayed along the bottom of the screen. Any of the game’s cards can stand in for a standard movement card. When used in this way, the card is played and lost from your hand. Savvy players will thus maintain a small contingency of crappy cards to sacrifice and by so doing, be able to focus the game’s severely limited allotment of resources on a smaller elite deck within their deck.
All combatants, both player and AI, get two action points to spend per turn with initiative being decided by way of a timer. You can mitigate this limitation by either setting back the timer via ‘effort’ cards or by ending your turn after spending only a single action point, but you have to be careful that you don’t overdo the single-move tactic or you will find yourself being handily outmaneuvered by your opponents.
With no cover mechanic, an utter lack of firing stances and limited turns and movement, Space Wolf more closely follows the Space Hulk model over that of Xcom or Jagged Alliance. Yet in spite of these missing tactical conventions, Space Wolf offers up a bevy of options to consider within each turn. Whether it’s attempting to manipulate the timer by taking a single move turn, or choosing to use an equipable weapon over a one shot, or choosing a facing that will optimize your approach two turns down the line, there’s no denying that, at its core, Space Wolf boasts some very nuanced gameplay.
Sadly, this compelling gameplay is badly unbalanced about midway through the game’s three tiny campaigns—or sooner or later, I should say. Depending on how many IAPs you buy and when, the game’s difficulty curve spikes and winning missions eventually becomes impossible, unless you’re willing to buy bunches of expensive IAPs to compensate. While this is a common (and lame) aspect of most freemium titles, it’s particularly egregious here because grinding to compensate is barely an option. First off, Space Wolf’s wonky multiplayers pays out peanuts. Secondly, the game’s daily rewards are counted in multiples of ten, while leveling each of your characters begins in the thousands and ends in the tens of thousands. Lastly, replaying Space Wolf’s small array of missions to earn extra credits is out, as replaying only pays if you achieve one of a mission’s three goals—goals I should add that payout little, do so only once, and are often enough nearly unattainable. The end result is a particularly frustrating and exorbitantly expensive paywall.
I initially hoped that, like Blizzard’s Hearthstone or Gameloft’s Dungeon Hunter 5, we might have a fair freemium title on our hands. Because of this and because we endeavor to give every dev a fair shake, I invested $40 in Space Wolf’s IAPs (a liberally fair number considering the relative dearth of content). This investment rendered Space Wolf playable up to about mission nine or for about three hours. After which, because of the exponentially rising costs of leveling, the game quickly became ridiculously expensive, especially for an app. Just moving from level 7 to 8 would have cost me an additional $40. To be clear that is moving three of the game’s five playable characters up a single level. Also bear in mind that after that move there are levels 9 and 10 to consider, to say nothing of the card booster packs, buying credits, weapon parts, two types of runes (card enhancement and extra life runes), and the cost of healing your Space Wolves between missions. In short, Space Wolf is an unholy rip-off.
Again, there’s no denying that an excellent strategy/card game hybrid sits at Space Wolf’s heart, as there’s no avoiding the fact that in the end it is completely hobbled by so many annoying, overpriced IAPs that even the most frugal gamer would end up spending well over $100 to finish this app (within a reasonable period of time). While this paywall is in place, we cannot recommend Space Wolf. What’s more, because HeroCraft deigned to drag a decidedly hardcore genre deep into the freemium mud, we actually recommend that core gamers avoid it like the plague that such games might be.
If you’re a mobile gamer who loves tactical strategy, check out The Banner Saga, Final Fantasy Tactics or either of the two superb Xcom games. And when you find yourself caught between such extremes, whether it’s excellent gameplay marred by hosts of ludicrously expensive IAPs or the aforementioned hot blind date reaching for your lighter, we say life is not a dress rehearsal, drop the nut off at the next block or hit uninstall, whichever the case might be.
Is it Hardcore?
Nope.
An exercise in extremes, Space Wolf’s excellent gameplay is badly maligned by unbalancing IAPS and a prohibitively expensive paywall.