It's way too geared at existing fans of the franchise rather than winning over newbies. This is the game's selling point, but it's also a problem. You take the role of a librarian (you won't be checking out any books, don't worry) in one of the chapters of the Dark Angels, but if you're not familiar with the source material then you'll be none the wiser as to what we're talking about. The single-player portion of this first-person shooter sees you playing as a space marine in terminator armour, trudging around these floating cathedrals, shooting a variety of different creatures while you're winged by a couple of AI characters. We spent quite some time just enjoying the ship's architecture as we wandered around. If you're not familiar with the universe then this may seem a little over the top, but we think it stays pretty loyal to its source material. It gives the playing environment a really eerie and at times claustrophobic feel. The space hulks are huge, dimly lit abandoned ships with a gothic cathedral edge.
The game brings over this rich backstory and on first impression, the visuals of the game are pretty accurate. The 40K universe is, for lack of a better word, bleak.
The world of Warhammer 40,000 is full of rich macabre lore brimming over with dead emperors, genetically enhanced super soldiers with psionic powers, over the top weapons and very cool terminator armour (not to be confused with Arnie, of course). Games Workshop might have started with tabletop games and paintable miniatures but the company has had its hand in the world of video games for many years, although attempts at replicating the tabletop empire's success have had mixed results.
It was, for the time, an incredibly progressive board game where you could randomly build different maps using a series of tiles.
Now out-of-print, the boxed game was set in the world of Warhammer 40,000 and saw a group of elite space marines take on an evil race of genestealers. Later came a series of board games from the company, and among them was Space Hulk. If you were a fantasy or sci-fi loving child of the '80s or '90s in the UK (and in plenty of other countries besides, no doubt), then you probably had access to these tabletop battles which were tiny in some respects but epic in scale. In 1975, three men founded a company called Games Workshop, a company which would go on to dominate the world of miniature wargaming.