Defend the Empires lands from the
unrelenting, leaderless hordes of chaos or thrust your dark will and
serve the Chaos gods themselves.
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| This is no fellowshipped Middle-earth |
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An easy going tutorial |
It’s your standard good guys vs. the bad guys
setup, a lot of nasty words were traded with oceans of blood too, and
now you’re responsible for sorting out this mess. So what makes Mark
of Chaos anything special then? The answer is simply: thunderous
battle.
As the game opens you’re treated to one of the best
salivating intro movies a game could offer with plenty of sword, axe
and blood. The detail is brilliant and the animators having everything
to be proud of, it sets the tone for the entire game and doesn’t
disappoint.
You have the usual suspect of configuration settings
at your disposal, whacking as many as high as you can get away with
really doesn’t transform the experience of the game. I don’t have too
meaty a machine, turning off shadows and the bloom effect was enough to
pump out a nice frame rate leaving me with many other fine eye candy
options switched on.
The game is gorgeous for its battlefield
environments, playable units and a brilliant user interface. From the
preview version I noticed that every model within a unit was identical,
this has changed and a greater variety is given. While not entirely
free of clones the units when you zoom up close for some action vary in
their equipment such as helmet, shield banner etc.
Detailing of
more unique units such as giants or trolls really stands out, though
it’s probably more tactical to stay zoomed out, take a close look at
these beasts and recognise a great artwork department. Battle maps and
even the campaign map are impressive enough without even having men and
orcs marching across them. While the campaign view may feel like
you’ve stepped into Lord of the Rings for a second, the way it plays
out is very different.
Aside from multiplayer which I’ll go into
later, you’ll be able to choose from two campaigns. The first is to
serve the Empire and the second, you’ve guessed it, fight for the
hordes of chaos. Each campaign is then split into chapters which
consist of the player traversing a campaign map with various stopping
points, both mandatory and optional.
Mark of Chaos is unique in
that it is a real-time strategy game at heart but it also delivers a
fantastic light role-playing element – it’s actually been done before
yes but this game blows them away. The reason for this 0wnge? Well
there are three categories you can level up your heroes into, so the
more death they deal the more experience they’ll rake in. The first is
more of general combat against foes; the second is for duelling against
other heroes, and the third aiding attached units.
Hero duels
are a fantastic little feature; you can charge one of your great heroes
and make them challenge another. They’ll fight to the death, no other
unit can interfere with the duel, an enforced honour ethic protection
barrier forms around them. If things look bad then you can always use
the option to flee but your troop’s morale will take a hit.
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| A hero, with a traitor’s bloodline |
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Easy three category RPG system |
Your units themselves too can go up in experience, so when you
combine a powerful hero with a veteran swordsman group you can bet
there’s going to be a lot of dark red liquid sloshing about the place.
You can also outfit your heroes with dropped or purchased booty, better
armour, weapons like sword or staff, a decent pair of slippers etc.
This applies to troops as well, except they get standard upgrade gear
from a town’s armoury. Sadly you can’t trade items between heroes from
retail version, but a recent patch fixes this issue.
Yes the
campaign maps does more then let you play the route and conquer your
way to the next chapter. It’s also where you get to spend your gold,
recruit your army and outfit your shiny trinkets. You use towns to
access places like a temple which will provide blessing bonuses for the
next battle as well as replace fallen comrades. An armoury will let
you gear up the troops with better weapons, armour, siege equipment,
banner carriers etc. A barracks lets your enlist fresh faced units to
swell your numbers and an alchemist offers potions and is where you can
sell unwanted junk.
Of course this doesn’t happen out of
charity, gold is all important in Mark of Chaos and it isn’t easy
flowing so watch the purse strings. It’s almost critical then to watch
out for your current troops, as they gain experience and have better
equipment they’ll be worth far more than to enlist a new unit as
replacement. Experience cannot be bought like cheap wine, fight with
your brain on and you’ll really do yourself a favour later on
financially.
After a battle you’ll also get a sum of pillaged
monies, a nice little incentive to storm over optional battles. In the
actual battle themselves enemy units can also drop gold so don’t leave
dropped items behind. Another drawback is that you can’t explore
battlefields after objectives have been met so any bounty left on the
floor will be lost. As you recruit and outfit your army on the
campaign map you don’t do so whilst in battle. You can’t build more
troops like many other traditional RTS titles, you choose your units
and heroes before the conflict and then deal with what you’ve got.
It’s
a great way to remind everyone it’s not just a numbers game; you have a
maximum you can take into the field so you have to choose wisely, you
could also select the option so the computer chooses for you. This is
a great way to jump into battle as it will pick a variety of units to
help you deal with what lies ahead.
Each major point in a
chapter has ingame cut scenes done rather well; while not as divine as
the intro movies quality it is more than enough to move the plot
forward. The voice acting is spot-on with everyone feeling human, or
orc, and you’re not reminded this guys in some booth waiting for his
pay check. Kudos as many gamers (me included) fear wretched acting,
spoiling our whole virtual experience. If only the lip-synching were
better timed then it would be perfect.
Mark of Chaos is a linear
campaign experience, does this hurt? No. While it’s no Total War or
Lord of the Rings for freedom on the campaign map, this game is out to
tell a story in its rich universe. It brings new features to an old
style of storytelling RTS, the days of Command & Conquer for
example. Non-linear isn’t always better and often sacrifices a great
story and experience for throwing countless options at players. Mark
of Chaos is about blood drenched battle, and I’m glad that they get
straight to it effectively.
For the dedicated Warhammer fans out
there, the army creator awaits your command. Multiplayer is designed
to cater for the true underlying flair of the Warhammer franchise, big
armies in big battles, usually accompanied by big egos. You get to
choose what units you’ll have, their colour scheme, banner etc
everything that will help you personalise an army.
Modes you can
choose from are a death-match style where you simply bash each others
troops till one emerges victorious. Reinforcement battles actually let
you earn gold and then buy additional troops to call in, understandably
these battles can last a while.
It would seem the practicality
of an online match is disappointing with a number of hitches in the
works; patches have been forth-coming so make sure to grab them as soon
as you can. They also address a number of bugs and crashes.
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| Hero duel, with complimentary honour ring |
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Detailed units, especially the big ones! |
There is so much going for Warhammer: Mark of
Chaos and while it’s beset with lingering technical woes, underneath it
has the right stuff and would be well deserved of your attention.
Top Game Moment: Inspecting the massacred remains of my fallen foes, bloodlust isn’t a bad thing it’s just been misinterpreted.
