Space Hulk

Way back in 1989, Games Workshop released Space Hulk, an interesting board game quite different to anything else out at the time. This 2 player game pits a force of space marine terminators against a force of nasty aliens known as genestealers. The space marine terminators are much more deadly version of the iconic space marines from Warhammer 40K lore. The genestealers are fearsome monstrosities similar to Geigers Alien, albeit with extra limbs and an even more unfriendly disposition.

The original boardgame is out of print and is no longer supported by Game Workshop. Unfortunately I never got a chance to play it and its rather hard to find these days, occasionally popping up on eBay for outrageous prices. What I do know is that the each player takes a turn playing as either the marines or aliens. The game is played on a board like a jigsaw, made up of corridor, room and intersection tiles. That can be arranged into a series of rooms and corridors. The marines have to complete certain objectives, like search for an artifact, immolate a section of the map or simply to get to a certain location. The space marine player has a strict time limit for his turn, so has to make their decisions quickly, adding a new dynamic to the game. The player controlling the genestealers has a comparatively simple job, to stop and kill the marines before they complete their objectives. The time limit for the marine player enforced a rather quick game time, meaning it was recommended for the game to be played twice, with each player swapping roles. I loved this idea, and it pains me to this day that I have never gotten a chance to play this first hand.

Space Hulk 2009 Edition

The main reason I'm talking about this, is that Space Hulk spawned two rather good videogames, Space Hulk, released in 1993 for the PC & Amiga, and Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, released in 1995 for the PC, PlayStation & Saturn. They were both developed by an earlier incarnation of EA. I have both games and at the time were my favourites due to their interesting combination of FPS and strategy elements. I think it is very strange that this excellent concept has not been pursued in recent years as I can only imagine how amazing a new version of this game could be considering the advances in game technology and design in the 15 years since the last release. The two games are very similar in gameplay with the graphics and some minor improvements in gameplay being the main differences. Like many of my posts on older games I will discuss both here.

EAs logo from '93 reminds us of a simpler time in videogames..

As I mentioned earlier, the video game adaptations combine elements of FPS and strategy. While this has been done a few times since (Battlezone,1998, is a good example of a decent effort), I feel that no other game has done it quite as well as Space Hulk. Bear in mind that when the PC version came out, the world had yet to experience Doom, which was still a few months away from release. It would be an interesting world if Space Hulk's flavour of FPS had become as popular as the likes of doom and we would all be playing strategic shooters today. The game is split into two modes, a top down view where the player can issue orders, and a first person view where the player can move around directly controlling the space marine selected. The player can jump between marines and control them personally if the player chooses. In the FPS mode, the marines are slow and cumbersome, awkwardly moving through the levels towards their objectives. They do not move smoothly as a player would expect having played the descendants of Wolfenstein and Doom their whole lives and seems to reflect an earlier attempt at FPS control. This is especially true in the first game where the player must specifically tell a marine which direction to face. So this means a marine standing in a corridor intersection will only fire in one direction, and can easily be killed by a genestealer approaching from the opposite side as he will not turn and face his attacker. This issue was thankfully rectified in the second game with your terminators turning and attacking anything that moves automatically.

The two screens from the original, strategy & FPS

The strategy element is very interesting. Here the player is presented with a top down view of the whole level and can issue orders to the marines. The game has a feature known as 'Freeze Time'. When this is activated, the player can pause the action for a limited time to issue orders. Once the time limit is up, the game restarts in real time and the freeze time meter slowly recharges. The time limit is usually fine in the earlier missions when the player is only controlling a few marines. As the game progresses, however, the size of your forces increase. When you have two full squads to control and issue orders, it can become quite complicated, greatly increasing the difficulty. It was often necessary to split your forces according to their weapon load out and objectives, with fire teams covering approaches to your squads position while other members get busy completing objectives. Once the task was done you would need to withdraw, covering your retreat trying to keep every member alive until you managed to escape. Losing a marine can cause chaos as you frantically try to kill the offending genestealer and rearrange your forces to plug the newly created gap in your defenses.

This feature works very well, with the move, pause, move pattern giving the game a different, but no less hectic and violent pace. It can be easy to get into a pattern of bogging down with some marines covering approaches to your squad and simply sitting still. However despite the slow movement of your troops, the game is all about speed. You need to move fast to avoid being overwhelmed as the genestealers are limitless and will continue to pour onto the map in increasing numbers until you are dead. It is immensely satisfying to successfully complete a mission. Getting your squads across a map while simultaneously completing objectives is a lot of fun. You need identify choke points, work out the safest and quickest way to your objective, always have marines covering your rear and at all costs do not delay. The later missions in both games are very tough and there is a tangeable sense of desperation as your try to coordinate your 10 marines as they fight their way through the infested space hulk.

The games were also very difficult, this is also probably due to many inexperienced players getting bogged down early on in the mission. However the difficulty increases very fast with the number of objectives, distance to travel and sheer number of enemies getting larger as the missions progress. Being a squad based game you will lose a lot of soldiers over the overall game. With you being able to witness their demise from a first person perspective, get ready to die a lot as it is quite possible to be personally killed 10 times in a single mission.

The PC game borrowed heavily from the Alien films, right down to the look of the genestealers. Another notable similarity is in the first games first person mode. The centre of the screen is the marine your currently controls line of sight, while dotted around the top of the screen are mini cams displaying what each of the squads terminators can see, very like the set up in Aliens.

The games were also very violent and gruesome, not to mention atmospheric. Despite their old graphics, the games were very spooky. The hulks were dark and mysterious, with bangs and clanks echoing through the corridors. I was only 8 years old when I saw the first one and I must say the intro terrified me. While today its pixelated graphics look primitive, in their day were very scary and really protrayed the spacehulks in their eerie glory. The second game really did wonders with the introduction 3D graphics. The genestealers were now much more fearsome and the environments much more detailed. The blood factor should also not be overlooked. Say for example, you manage to close some doors and seal off an area of the map. You could now move through an area you have been supressing at long range safely. As you approach the choke points, the ruination you had just wrought on the genestealer population becomes evident. The section would resemble a charnel house with blood and gore sprayed all over the walls roof, and floor. Mangled body parts are everywhere as your marines wade through the carnage to get to safety. This is another very satisfying aspect of the games.

The game benefited immensely from the introduction of glorious 3D

There were a few minor issues though. While the graphics were good in certain situations, the textures could get very pixelated if studied up close. Another major point of frustration in the first game was the inability of the marines to even remotely defend themselves in hand to hand combat. Now I know its true that a creature bred for combat with 6 limbs, claws that can tear through steel and an attitude to match its fearsome cutlery would be a pretty hardy foe in melee, it was still annoying that as soon as one got into close combat you were dead. While on some very rare occasions they could fight fight back, a single genestealer could quite possibly kill your entire squad on its own if your marines were too close together to get a shot off. The second game made hand to hand a little fairer giving the player the ability to block blows and fight back, but close combat was still very dangerous.

Die alien scum! A successful melee defence!

One point about the older version is that many of the ranged weapons systems were pretty useless. Your standard stormbolter had infinite ammo, but a tendency to jam, especially after prolonged use. Despite this is probably the most useful weapon of all. The other weapons, assault cannons, flamers and some interesting melee weapons usually had an ammo supply, but would never jam and be far more deadly. Unfortunately this didn't work as well as it should. While it would seem like an excellent idea to equip the monstrous terminator assault cannon (a vicious chain gun shooting shells as thick as your forearm) on a few of your troops, the weapons paltry ammo supply made it totally unusable. A mere 10 shots. While this would be stupendously powerful, being capable of clearing a long corridor full of aliens with one shot, being in situation like that would not come up very often. The basic AI of the day meant the and the marine equipped with the weapon would empty his ammo box after about 2 enemy encounters. Once the ammo was gone, there were no refills, so the marine now had absolutely no function. The aforementioned inability to fight effectively in hand to hand resulted in a soldier whose primary purpose would be to act as bait or slow down a genestealer (only by a few seconds). So this whole situation led me to equipping all the marines I could with storm bolters in every mission all the way to the end of the game. The later game remedied this somewhat with vastly improved ammo capacity, but there was still a chronic lack of ammo pick ups again resulting in the bolter being picked over every other weapons in most levels.

Another slight issue, especially in the second game, was the voice overs. Your marines would constantly chatter to each other through the missions, with the dynamic dialog changing to reflect specific things about that mission or things that were happening in real time. It was done reasonably well, will the game making sure the what the marines were saying was accurate, eg "They're behind....... Gideon!" or else something like "They coming from the.......East!". Unfortunately the little delay between the various pre-recorded segments of speech was always noticeable as the game stitched them together so they dialog made sense. It was a reasonable effort, but could have been a bit better. My main complaint about this was that your marines would never shut up. Their constant talking got old pretty fast, with the same things being said over and over again. There was probably only about 5 different voice actors and they all sounded like pompous English noblemen rather than the battle hardened warrior monks from 40,000 years in the future. Thankfully you could turn off this feature which is essential if one intended to play the game for any length of time, which was a lot for me.

Overall, the Space Hulk games are lots of fun, offering a unique take on the shooter genre and are a tribute to the Warhammer 40K genre. To this date, and for reasons I cannot fathom, no further offiical Space Hulk games have been made. This seems to be an awful shame as there is soo much potenrtial here for a scary and gripping strategic shooter. The first game was a milestone and was released in a world that had yet to experience many genre defining games that we all take for granted today. No Doom, Dune 2 was still going strong and the Playstation was just a thought. While there were a few small issues, the games robust and addictive gameplay and great atmosphere means that even today it could surpass many modern games. The second game improved on a few points while leaving the core gameplay alone and giving the game a great graphical overhaul. To conclude, both of these games are a fantastic addition to anyones game collection and should not be missed on the account of their dated graphics. 5 thumbs up.