In the Grimmest and darkest part of space and time, Space Hulk: Deathwing sent us against hordes of alien Tyranids and corrupted mutants on the PC. Deathwing saw you control your team of marines in Huge Terminator armour.
You’d need to push them through the gory, monster-infested corridors and halls of a city-sized spaceship and only teamwork and dedication would see you to victory. It was a satisfyingly atmospheric FPS experience for any fan of the Warhammer 40K aesthetic.
Huge vaults filled with detail and dark pits filled with dread surrounded you. However, there was room for improvement. Multiplayer longevity was lacking with missions becoming stale after multiple runs with no real sense of permanent achievement.
The developer, Sterum on Studio, has addressed this and more with the release of Space Hulk Deathwing Enhanced Edition which brings this claustrophobic Xeno smashing experience to PS4.
Space Hulk Deathwing Enhanced Edition Review
In the Enhanced Edition, there’s now a full player progression system, with persistent character levelling across both single and multi-player. As you complete missions you earn the in-game currency called Renown.
You earn Renown based on your performance and can spend it in the brand new character and load-out customisation menu. Believe me, you can customise everything!
Every weapon type, once unlocked can be altered with new skins. Armour can be upgraded with stat augmenting adornments and each skin is unique. There is something here to suit just about anyone’s taste.
Space Hulk Deathwing Enhanced Edition now features six playable classes. Each can be levelled up to unlock extra abilities and new weapon load-outs giving you more ways to smash alien brains into space paste.
- The Tactical Terminator: a versatile class that plays can play support, offensive and defensive roles with ease.
- The Apothecary: The only way to heal in-mission. Every team needs a medic.
- The Librarian: Restricted to basic weapons but making up for it with powerful psychic attack abilities.
- The Heavy weapons specialist: Great for mowing down hoards with massive guns.
- Assault: Fast but weak, teleportation abilities are pretty fun though.
- The new Interrogator Chaplain: He looks super bad-ass and brings a massive mace and some useful new skills such as instant Resurrection
Teamwork!
Probably the greatest addition to this game, however, is the new Special Missions mode. The campaign is fun, but there are only so many levels and replaying them over and over can get old.
Special missions allow you to go back into any of the campaign levels, as single or multi-player. The map is the same, but the objectives are totally different every time.
With most maps being pretty huge, just changing the number and type of objectives you need to achieve adds massively to the longevity of this game.
I did find that on PS4 there were notable moments of frame drop and the game did even freeze for a couple of seconds, several times. That didn’t impact greatly on my enjoyment of the game, but it’s worth mentioning.
What did impact my experience was the fact that there is no option to disable head-bob. There is a low setting for it but even then I find it induces motion sickness after about 45 minutes of play.
This is not necessarily an issue for a lot of people but it’s something to be aware of if you suffer from the same thing. Hopefully, both these issues can be addressed in later patches.
As far as I can tell there’s a lot of variety. It seems like it will be a very long time before you would find yourself playing the same mission on the same map multiple times. Combining this with all of the new skins, guns and abilities to unlock makes for a compelling reason to jump in and play pretty regularly.
Space Hulk Deathwing Enhanced Edition was reviewed on PS4 using a digital code provided to PowerUp! by the publisher.
PowerUp! Reviews
Game Title: Space Hulk Deathwing Enhanced Edition
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For the Emperor - 9/109/10
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The Grimmest Dark - 8/108/10
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Brotherly Bants - 8/108/10
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Dakka! - 9/109/10
