Warhammer Mark of Chaos Review

Warhammer is an old strategy game from the days when people sat down at the table and played it without computers. It has made a successful transition to the world of video gaming. Relic Entertainment has already sold a respectable number of its Warhammer RTS game and now Black Hole Entertainment and Namco have joined to being us Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. The game is fun but it has some serious bug issues.

Single Player

The two main protagonists in Mark of Chaos are Stefan von Kessel (Champion of the Empire) and Thorgar the Blooded One (Champion of Chaos). The campaigns take place around the same conflict. The two sides lead to different outcomes (obviously) but the story that leads up to that outcome is not as engrossing as one might expect from a Warhammer game.

The game suffers from a lack of art-direction. There are some truly outstanding elements and then there are some intolerable lapses. What is really surprising, or confusing perhaps, is that the graphics are brilliant and the world seems good to look at but the moment you start looking for details you get disappointed because there simply aren’t any. Take a simple effect like fire… it is missing. When you are moving through the campaigns you come across places that are totally deserted. There are no civilians running away from the war or being slaughtered by Chaos.

Warhammer is an extremely violent universe and while it is accepted that the developers might have decided to keep Mark of Chaos from turning into a gore-fiesta the height if decency in the game robs if off its authenticity. You just do not feel connected to Warhammer. The battles are slow, the maps are boring, the animations are either completely lacking or they are running at minimal rates. The game leaves you feeling as if it were lacking in something that should obviously be there.

This seems to be out of place when you keep in mind that the game models are well built and finely textured. The lighting and graphics are all well done and besides the usual spell effects, you will also notice heat shimmer and other environmental effects. Sadly, the frame rate is not stable when the battles get thick. You just do not get to enjoy the visuals because the animations are so lame. If they had only fixed the animation, this game would be a stunner.

However, that development may have been sacrificed to other aspects. This RTS allows for a high level of needless customization. You may customize individual units with different faces, armor, shields, helmets, etc. Your armies will never seem like a million Stormtroopers, all looking the same.

Once you get past the art and animation in Mark of Chaos and come down to the gameplay, the game bounces back and almost makes you forget its weaknesses. You get to choose your army before you enter the battlefield. There is no generation after that. You have to finish the map with whatever units you begin. The interesting twist is that the volume of units on the Order and Chaos side is huge.

Mark of Chaos makes use of regiments. This means a single unit could contain as many as 60 (or 1) components. This makes unit management easier. All regiments have their unique strengths and moving them around is only a matter of right-click and drag to rotate. There are some special moves available to some units that can prove useful if you get into a tight spot. Most of the fun in Mark of Chaos lies in properly exploiting these techniques and figuring out when to use them. The bad part of this is that there is no in-game help on units. If you want to know the abilities and downside of a unit you will need to refer to the manual.

If that alone was not bugging enough (pun intended) there are other bugs and design issues in the game. When off screen units are attacked you will not receive any notification. Sometimes your units will not acknowledge their orders and will just go ahead and attack whatever they think is more suitable. That might make the battles interesting if it weren’t for the fact that autonomous units make the gamer obsolete.

All units in Mark of Chaos have a moral rating. This is used to tell how your army “feels” about a battle. A unit that has lost morale is essentially useless. Some units have higher morale than others and you need to figure this out before you enter the battlefield. The moral factor proves justified when in the middle of a battle you use a few good moves and tip the scales in your favor creating an instant moral boost. It literally makes you feel like a master strategist that made an entire army feel good by making a few logical decisions.

Among the regular army units are the hero units. These are extremely powerful and their three skills (Command, Combat, and Dueling) can be increased with skill points. Command skills come in handy when heroes are part of a unit. Combat skills define the hero’s ability to single handedly take on enemies. On advanced skill levels Combat can prove to be devastating when used properly. It is possible to decimate the opposing army from a safe distance by upgrading the Combat skill. Dueling comes into action when one hero engages a hero from the opposite side in a duel. This is a 1-on-1 fight with no other units involved. If you run away from a duel then the nearby units will lose their morale. This makes the Dueling skill as useful as the other two.

Heroes also have their own inventory systems that are used to store extra armor, faster power recharging units, extra mana, extra health, and so on. You can also drag and drop items to exchange them between heroes the mechanism is close to impossible to use in the middle of a fight. The action is so thick that there is just not enough time to go about swapping inventory items between heroes. The idea is good but the implementation is poor.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer or AI skirmish mode allows you to choose your army from among Empire, Chaos, Skaven, and Elves and also lets you decide on the upgrades. Multiplayer also brings in the expense factor as gamers will have to decide how to spend. Every player is allocated some points based on the game-mode and the number of players. You can save your army (and all customizations) and load them for future battles and this makes it convenient as you do not have to customize them every time. The downside to all this is that there are insufficient multiplayer maps to enjoy.

The AI is quite challenging and aggressive.

Conclusion

Mark of Chaos is a good game that defeats itself through minor issues that can be fixed easily. The strategy part in this RTS still works well and that should be sufficient for Warhammer and RTS gamers alike. The battles are varied and very engaging and the addition of heroes makes for some good gameplay.

My advice is that you first download and play the demo to get a feel of this RTS before buying the full version.