by: Michael Barnes

I absolutely love Games Workshop’s venerated Warhammer setting, but I refuse to touch their miniatures games, let alone buy their $15 bags of modeling dirt or fritter away countless hours painting the hundreds of spikes on a Chaos Defiler. Therefore, by default, I’m excited any time 40k crosses over into other formats, including video games like THQ/Relic’s upcoming Space Marine third-person shooter. I can hardly wait to see how the game turned out, but for now my hunger for 40k has been at least partially sated by the release of Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team for the download services. With its promises of unlocking an exclusive power sword in Space Marine, It’s really little more than a marketing tool to raise awareness of the upcoming retail title but since it’s 40k and the mini-game serves up plenty of Xeno-slaughtering at the hands of the Adeptus Astartes I’m kind of OK with that.

The good news is that Kill Team is a fun, albeit brief, romp in which players choose one of four different classes of Space Marines to run rampant through an Ork Kroozer encroaching on Imperial space. Each class has unique ranged and melee weapons along with a special ability. Gameplay is mostly a linear dungeon crawl with twin-stick shooter controls through the bowels of the hodge-podge, scrap-metal space ship as Orks and Gretchin stream out from all corners, hollering in their delightfully cartoonish English accents. In the later half of the game, Tyranids join the party so there’s Hormagaunts and Genestealers to blow away as well. There are several varieties of power-ups and an experience system unlocks perks and additional weapons for each class.

The neat thing about the game is that it tentatively bridges the gap between top-down shooters like Dead Nation or Alien Swarm and hack n’ slash games like Torchlight or Dark Alliance. The combination of melee and ranged weapons makes for some fun combat variety, and any game with both Lightning Claws and Melta Guns is fine by me. You can’t beat skating through a horde of hapless Gretchin with a jetpack boost, swinging a chainsword and racking up combo bonuses like “Butcher” and “Angel of Death”. There isn’t much tactical depth beyond holding off on blowing up some of the exploding props to do maximum collateral damage and popping your special abilities at the best time. Objectives are basic- flip a switch, blow up this stuff, run away from the Carnifex. Replay value is limited, but the game encourages you to try each level with every class and there are hidden collectibles that unlock artwork and other bonuses. There is also an arena-based survival mode.

It’s all very direct and there are only five campaign levels that run 20-45 minutes a piece so it feels a little thin on content. But it is a ten dollar piece of pseudo-advertising, so it’s hard to really come down on the game too much for that. More troubling, however, is that even in its short duration it can feel repetitive and there is very little variety in locations or environments. This is disappointing particularly because this could easily have been fleshed out into a larger- possibly even retail- game. The concept is solid, and with more dynamic play, greater customization options, and more varied environments I’d have gladly have paid more money for it. I’d love to see a simple arcade game like this that explores more of the 40k universe. And by explore, I mean shooting it up.

The biggest fumble Kill Team makes is in its co-op offering. There is no online multiplayer option whatsoever. This is a game that is at its best with another player but it’s strictly local-only. In 2000, that would have been de rigeur. In 2011, it’s borderline unacceptable. This is also something of an issue because there is no difficulty setting, and the game doesn’t appear to scale based on whether you’re one player or two so there are some pretty intense difficulty spikes in the game. They’re not insurmountable (particularly if you’re using the Techmarine’s turret deployment ability), but if you don’t have a couch-bound buddy you’ll definitely feel the pain, and since some of the checkpoints are so poorly placed you’ll likely have to replay the harder sections several times.

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is a fun, simple blast-a-thon that goes a little beyond typical twin-stick shooter mechanics with its classes and upgrade system and it takes place in one of the coolest settings in all of gaming. It’s intended to get you excited about buying Space Marine, but odds are if you like this material you already were anyway so at least you’ll get a special power sword out of the deal. The single player option is hardly a bust, but the lack of online co-op is a surprising hindrance. . Bottom line: the game costs less than one of those Games Workshop branded bags of modeling dirt—so there’s definitely value for the 40k fan.