The Best Warhammer 40k Games Right Now

I don't know what it is about Warhammer 40K but the franchise seems to have trouble producing games that attract the attention of the gaming industry as a whole many games in the franchise are either blatant cash grabs or downright bad due to poor gameplay or a severe lack of quality in general I'm jeffus and I love Warhammer 4K especially Warhammer 40K games there are three games in the entire history of the franchise that stand out as the absolute best of the best in two games that aren't quite as mainstream as the others but deserve to be included as honorable mention in this video nonetheless and these games are dawn of War Space Marine and dark tide I'll review my honorable mentions at the end of this video because they absolutely deserve your attention but for now let's jump right into it with Warhammer 400000 da of War this RTS was developed by Relic entertainment and released in 2004 but is still considered the goat of all 40K games personally when I talk about dawn of War I'm referring to the original game dawn of War 2 and all of their expansions I heard a rumor that a da of War I was developed but I looked into it and this is actually just an elaborate meme some fans got together and decided to troll the entire Warhammer Community all of the footage online that you see of a potential dawn of War 3i game was probably made with AI or something it's all fake and you could just ignore it anyways returning to games that are actually real I need you to understand the impact that dawn of War had on gaming back then by 2009 dawn of War and its expansions had sold 4 million copies which was a pretty big deal this game single-handedly introduced me to Warhammer 4K and I'd be willing to wager that it was a lot of other people's first foray into the franchise as well but what exactly made dawn of War so great well you see dawn of War wasn't designed to be a competitive real-time strategy game like Starcraft was the game had a major element that Starcraft lacked which is crazy considering that Starcraft was heavily influenced by Warhammer 40K dawn of War had style Relic entertainment knew exactly who they were making the game for Warhammer fans and potential Warhammer fans a good example of this is right off the GetGo before you even get into the game you could paint your armies just like you would for the tabletop game and the game did have a skirmish mode in multiplayer but honestly the premier experience was all in the campaign specifically the campaigns for the dark Crusade and soul storm expansions the developers took inspiration from Total War and risk to make a campaign where your army needed to conquer entire planets Province by province almost every major faction in Hammer 4K was represented in dawn of War by the time soulstorm was released except for the tyranids who would make their debut in the sequel this meant that by the time Soul storm rolled around you could potentially play or play against Space Marines chaos eldari Orcs Imperial Guard to nekron's Sisters of battle and duwari and I already know that there's going to be someone complaining in the comments about how the adeptus mechanicus wasn't a playable faction but listen the actual mechanicus game didn't come out until 2018 the number of OG mechanicus fans that existed before the game came out is a very small number especially when you consider the Codex didn't come out until 2015 anyways once you picked your army and started up The Campaign you were in for a wild ride melee combat was absolutely brutal and featured execution style animations that weren't previously seen in any other RTS game the variety of units that you were able to build was expansive and the game did a really good job of showcasing a lot of the weapons into technology featured in 40K and the voice lines and voice acting for various units was just plain iconic we are chaos chaos is strong for the dark Gods Yes master for the dark Gods cross me and die on the other side of the coin we have Dawn of War 2 which did away with the planetary wide campaigns and focus on delivering a narrative for the blood Raven Space Marines this was creative but it was an absolute mistake that would only be slightly rectified when Relic entertainment made the other factions in the game playable in the retribution expansion dawn of War II seemed like Relic entertainment's attempt to make a more competitive and replayable experience where players would find more entertainment playing against one another in multiplayer unfortunately competitive multiplayer wouldn't take off like Starcraft did especially considering that Starcraft 2 would release a year year after dawn of War I made its debut but what dawn of War II did have was Last Stand which single-handedly made dawn of War II retribution my favorite iteration of dawn of War in Last Stand you controlled a single hero character and survived against wave after wave of enemies the game mode had its own hero progression competitive ladder and a good amount of challenge I can't believe that in an age of seemingly endless Warhammer 40K games that are simply clones of other games in various genres no has decided to remake The Last Stand with some Modern polish more intuitive controls and a live service model with consistent updates new Heroes new maps and different enemies a remake of The Last Stand would absolutely kill it in today's gaming climate honestly I think my love of Last Stand is why I like dark tide so much additionally I'm surprised that a game like dawn of War hasn't been remade or remastered yet I don't know what Relic entertainment is doing in 2024 but if they're still holding on to the dawn of War Fran then they need to get to work fortunately dwn of War wasn't the only Banger of a game that Relic entertainment delivered back in the old days Space Marine actually wasn't received with the highest praise in the world at the time of its release in 2011 a lot of reviewers saw the game as pretty average the main problem with the game was that it was a third person shooter Andor action game that was released two weeks before Gears of War 3 which was the king of the third person shooter genre at the time there were a lot of people who looked at Space Marine as a Gears of War clone but with a fresh code of Warhammer 40K but anybody who played the game knew that the game wasn't like GE of War at all Space Marine had an emphasis on melee combat and to this day it still has one of the most solid melee combat systems in a 40K game this is important because even though Warhammer 40K is a Sci-Fi setting with space guns and lasers it has a unique emphasis on a wide variety of really cool melee weapons that is unlike any other sci-fi setting but the true gift that Space Marine delivered was definitely its gameplay it was just so satisfying being able to play as this ripped armored ultramarine that was able to fire ridiculously high caliber explosive weapons and tear both Orcs And Heretics apart in melee outside of the campaign you had multiplayer and Relic entertainment actually put a lot of effort into making it a satisfying and replayable experience when it worked PVP actually felt pretty good but a lot more people that I knew spent their time in exterminatus which was the spiritual success to The Last Stand game mode in dawn of War I are you starting to understand how big of a deal The Last Stand was have I glazed it enough in exterminatus your team of four Space Marines faced wave after wave of enemies in an attempt to not only survive but get the highest score possible so that you could top the leaderboards Space Marine marked an important chapter in the history of 40K games and I hope that Space Marine 2 is better in every way now let's move away from Relic entertainment because not every good 40K game was made by them the game developer fat shark released Warhammer 40K dark tide in 2022 dark tide is heavily inspired from fat shark's Warhammer Fantasy game veriti 2 which in turn is heavily inspired by Left 4 Dead that is to say that it's a co-op horde based first-person shooter with RPG elements I think that dark tide improves upon the systems available in Left 4 Dead by adding character progression significantly better gameplay better graphics and much better music here check it out when all of these elements line up in dark tide the game just hits so well unfortunately I also think that dark tide actually suffers underneath the weight of its graphical performance and P or optimization dark tide isn't optimized well at all and if you're not running it on a good machine it's not uncommon to see frame drops or for the game to just completely brick your console or PC the game is heavily carried by its gameplay but that's not the only reason why it's on this list I would consider dark time to be war 4k's first big live service game outside of the mobile gaming industry B shark is showing other developers that the model can work for Warhammer 40K games but it's ironic because compared to other Studios that run live service games fat shark releases content at the pace of a sprinting snail dark tide will continue to perform well for the niche of players that it's made for even when Space Marine 2 launches but it's going to take a long time to mature which isn't necessarily A Bad Thing the game doesn't have a subscription model so it's perfectly fine if you just put it down and pick it up again later that about wraps it up for dark tide so let's get into those honorary mentions the last games that I need to talk about are mechanicus developed by bull workk Studios and bolt gun developed by ouro digital starting off with mechanicus I don't typically play games for their story nor am I typically a fan of tactical games but mechanicus drew me in with its Exquisite stylistic graphics and alluring music the high quality of mechanicus hooked me to the game and kept me engaged throughout my entire experience as you play you really notice the attention to detail that the developers at Bor Studios exercised when crafting the game mechanicus didn't break records in the industry for making tons of money nor has it attracted a large player base it's simply a small highquality game that other developers in the industry need to learn from bolt gun is in the exact same boat but where mechanicus is a chill atmospheric game bolt gun is a high octane rock and roll shoot them up Al Rock digital set off to create a doomlike boomer shooter and did a really good job the game just makes you feel like you're one of the most powerful Space Marines in all of 40K what hooked me to the game was its variety of weapons intensity secrets and its unique stylistic Graphics these games prove that Warhammer games in general don't need to be massive triaa titles to be good as long as the developer knows what game they're making and who they're making it for delivering a good game should be easy if I didn't include a game that you feel should be on this list then let me know in the comments below I really want to know what games you guys like I tried to keep this as concise as possible while specifically targeting The industry's Heavy Hitters anyways thanks for watching and as always this has been jeffus and I'll see you in game

Channel: Jeficus

Views: 4,369

Keywords:

Id: phw0vNt1Eeo

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024