Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is intended as bite-size hype for THQ's upcoming franchise jump-off Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Unfortunately, Kill Team somewhat bungles the message. Space Marine dev chat spins on the idea that rather than allow the player the kind of superhuman agility typical to third person action adventuring, they'll instead get to mess around with a man-shaped tank able to thump frothing, alien armies single-handedly. The gift being prepped revolves around a lightly invincible cosmic thug.

In that sense, Kill Team is often alarmingly off-message. The single player campaign is defined by a constant sense of fragility. Weapons, while distinct and appropriately vulgar, feel puny in the face of incessantly reinforced Orks. Typical play boils down to dull circling, blasting in all directions, desperately trying to inch down the enemy avalanche. Get surrounded, and your energy'll shrink in a flash. Kill Team has been assembled with a miser's eye to progress. Tiring boss encounters are usually followed by instant death cheap-shots, and unreadable environments are riddled with illegible sinkholes. Stick with Kill Team until the bitter end and you'll often be battling charcoal Velociraptors in pitch-black environments. Some maniacs given them green snot sniper rifles too. Kill Team recalls shuffle progress arcade machines, programmed to mug. At least with those titles you could pump in continue money. Here, if you're unfortunate enough to not have a revive buddy on-hand, you're more likely be kicked back ten minutes to endure another unskippable cutscene, and the deadly unfair encounter that caused your demise. Kill Team is anti-hype.