I love me some WH40K, and I love me some twin-stick shooters. This looks like win squared to me
I won't deny it: I know very little about Warhammer 40k. I even had an AIM conversation with IGN's resident Warhammer 40k nerd Anthony Gallegos about this very topic. So when I went to play the upcoming downloadable title Warhammer 40k: Kill Team, I expected I might be a fish out of water. Would this be a game that appealed to me? Would it be any fun if I didn't know anything about Warhammer? Or would I be totally lost in a game which revolves around a deep fictional universe I'm completely ignorant of?
I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was no reason for me to be concerned. Unlike many other Warhammer video games that require at least a peripheral knowledge of the Warhammer universe, Kill Team is actually built with the Warhammer novice in mind. That's not to say that huge Warhammer fans won't find something to like here – they most certainly will – but it is to say that this may be the most accessible Warhammer game ever created, and one that caters to people who are interested in working their way into learning more about this fictional universe.
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See Warhammer 40k: Kill Team in action.
Kill Team is a twin stick shooter. Gamers will control their characters using the two analog sticks on the PS3 or 360 controller to shift your character around the environment and fire your primary weapon in any direction you choose. If you're familiar with the developer Housemarque and its PlayStation 3-exclusive twin stick shooters Super Stardust HD or Dead Nation, you'll have a good idea of how Kill Team controls. But unlike those games, Kill Team has a slightly more complicated control scheme, since the face buttons will allow you to employ melee attacks, and the triggers will result in actions such as grenade tossing and the use of special attacks.
It's those special attacks that are perhaps one of Kill Team's most interesting aspects. By killing enemies and earning more and more points, players will build-up a circular meter surrounding their character that, once full, will allow you to unleash a devastating strike unique to the character class you're using.
Speaking of character classes, there are four of them, and each class has unique weapon loadouts and skills. Since this is a game that can be played with up to two players, it's important that gamers cooperate with one another, using classes that complement one another. For instance, if you're going with a class that uses brute melee attacks first and foremost, it would probably be best if your buddy went with a class that can effectively attack from afar. Further encouraging cooperation is the unique power-up system, which allows either player to pick up a power-up capsule and share its effects with his partner, so long as the partner is in close proximity. I thought this was a nice touch, since even in cooperative shooters like this, there's an air of competition to get things like health, power-ups and the like. That's been completely eliminated here. This is a true cooperative game.
Good lord, that's a big enemy.
Unfortunately, cooperation ends if you don't have a friend to play with you locally. Kill Team's biggest flaw from what I could tell is that it doesn't support online gameplay. I've said it before and I'll say it again: in 2011, there's simply no excuse to have a game like this with no online support. I appreciate that there might be something to playing a co-op game with someone on the couch next to you. But not giving gamers the option to play online with friends is a terrible choice, and one that will inevitably limit the cooperative options of legions of gamers out there.
With that being said, I played through an entire stage of Kill Team with one of the developers, and I had a lot of fun with it. There are weapons and perks to unlock and upgrade, four different characters to fool around with, and five lengthy stages to slay enemies in. This isn't a twin-stick shooter that has the ridiculous amount of polish that an aforementioned Housemarque twin-stick shooter has, but I'm looking forward to seeing and playing more when the game comes to XBLA and PSN later this summer.
