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Wow, are you kidding me?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 14
Date: November 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a big fan of RTS's and MMO's. I heard that there was an MMO of Warhammer being released in the future so I decided to pick this game up to get hyped up for it. This was a mistake & I want my money back. I don't think I will ever play an RTS ever again. The gameplay is absolutely horrific, with nothing fun and surprising coming up at you. It's limits brings you back to Age of Empires II. I think the creators focused way too much on putting in mini cintematics at every turn of the game. The only good thing is the character customization which is not worth buying the game for. Do yourselves a favor and don't get this game. Pick up AOEIII or anything else really. Just don't make the same mistake I made.

Sweet game full of Warhammer goodness!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: November 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

So far the game has been a blast to play even though I've only gone through the Chaos side. The graphics are great and the storyline is nicely put together. I hope they make an expansion pack for this game.

So far.... not so good, but still hopeful!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to love this game & I think now that my expectations may have been too high. I'm an old school table-top Warhammer player, but for many years now I have not had the time or money to invest in the requisite hours of collecting, painting, and gaming with models (not to mention some of the people who play the table-top version are REALLY annoying)! I thought this game would be the perfect compromise, but instead it has turned out to be a big dissapointment. Oh well, there is always the Warhammer Online game due to come out in Fall 2007. If you're new to Warhammer or don't know much about it then you might like this game, either way it is pretty cool when a giant picks up one of your screaming men in the middle of battle and eats him.

PROS: Good graphics, good model animations, good sound, units gain experience and can be kept throughout the game (unlike Dawn of War).

CONS: Boring gameplay, boring and linear storyline, really long load times between screens, annoying NPC characters, poor keyboard controls.

A good game, though room for improvement

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 32 / 34
Date: November 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've never played the table-top version of Warhammer, but this game seemed to be a fairly interesting take on the age-old elves, orcs, and dwarf formula that appears in so many games nowadays. I'm a huge fan of Relic's Dawn of War franchise, so I decided to pick this game up. Overall, I'm glad that I got this game; it's a solid product with lots of potential for expansion. However, it also has plenty of room for improvement, and I would suggest that anyone considering this game to play the demo first.

Gameplay: The game is true to the standard real-time strategy (RTS) formula, minus the harvesting and base building. You pick and customize your units before each battle and then fight it out against other armies in open fields or sieges. Some of the battles feel somewhat epic, especially the castle sieges. But there are never more than about 400-500 units on the map at any give time. Hero units play a huge role in the game. They can "level up" and collect items like heroes in roleplaying games, duel against other heroes, and give bonuses to the troops that they command. The hero system, as it stands now, needs to be refined a bit more so that heroes don't level up too fast (I had one go from 10th to 35th level in less than 5 minutes in one skirmish game!). However, I generally like what heroes add to gameplay. The game does have some tactical elements to it. Things such as morale, terrain, flanking, charges, and unit-counters do come into play. Units with broken morale will flee, which can end a battle quickly. Cavalry is underpowered and does not nearly justify its cost. There is friendly fire in this game, but only in the case of area-of-effect weapons like cannon. In my opinion, that's good enough. I killed too many of my own soldiers with Hellfire Cannon in the single-player campaign to want any more varieties of friendly fire!

There are two single-player campaigns that come with the game. One for Chaos and one for the Empire. Playing through each (about 20-25 hours all together) will allow you to use all four playable races (Men, Elves, Chaos, and Skaven), as well as some minor races (Orcs and Dwarves). There are a variety of missions, from sieges and kill-all-enemies maps to duels and some minor dungeon crawling. The campaigns tell a decent story , though a linear one with very little replay value. The game includes both a single-player skirmish mode and online modes. It's good fun, but my biggest gripe has to do with the very small number of maps. Even with the 1.2 patch that came out at the same time the game was released, there are only 15 skirmish maps. Of that number, only 8 can be played as single-player skirmishes! This is really a shame and inexcusable. As with all other RTS games, the shelf life of this one will depend on whether the developer provides strong support with patches that fix bugs and add new content (like maps), as well as whether modders kick in.

Graphics: This is an absolutely gorgeous game. The terrain and environments are beautifully done, and the models themselves are finely detailed. The only dull spot here is the animations, which are decent but not up to par with the likes of Relic's Dawn of War or EA's Battle for Middle Earth 2. The intro movie is phenomenal and the cutscenes are pretty good as well. The graphics go a long way toward setting the atmosphere of the game.

Sounds: Everything is pretty good in this area. Weapons sound appropriate, the music is boisterous and epic, and the voice acting is mostly solid. It actually sounds like some of the Chaos voice actors were imported from Dawn of War, which is fine with me since the voices are so appropriately wicked.

Technical issues: I have had no crashes, freezes, stutters, or any other problems with this game with the 1.2 patch installed. I am running it on a fairly good computer (E6600 dual-core processor, 2 gigs of RAM, Geforce 7900GTO video card). The game comes with a very good manual that explains the gameplay and units, and the in-game tutorial is pretty good. Also, I have had no issues with the camera, which rotates and zooms fine. For some reason, the game comes on 6 CDs, with no DVD option available. In this day and age, I don't think that any game that takes up more than 4 CDs should be released without a DVD option.

Value: As an RTS gamer, I liked this game very much. It's a good blend of tactical gaming, roleplaying elements, and a fantasy-based storyline. Due to the severe lack of maps, I don't think it's worth $50 (more like $30). However, if the developer steps up to the plate and releases several more (free) skirmish maps and makes some other adjustments with patches, I could recommend it more firmly. Also, a good, meaty, well-thought out expansion could do wonders for this game.

Rating: 3.75 stars (out of 5)

Rushed development ruined a potentially good game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: December 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

"Warhammer Mark of Chaos" is a combat oriented real time strategy game. All elements of base building and resource management have been removed and the game consists of a linear progression from battle to battle, with token plot elements scattered in between. The main strength of the game is its beautifully rendered characters. The user can zoom using the mouse wheel from the "bird's eye" perspective all the way down to the individual character level. Whilst the game provides plenty of eye candy, sadly this is one of the few positives in an otherwise limited repetoire.

The game has drawbacks aplenty. Firstly as mentioned above the game is very linear which severely cripples its replayability in single player mode. The computer AI is horrendous. Given that the combat system is the game's only real selling point, the user would expect the AI to be able to implement at least rudimentary military strategy. Instead, the computer AI sends its units forth one at a time to be invariably crushed when facing the entire weight of the opposing army.

The game has a duelling system which allows opposing heroes to fight. This was rather pathetic. The enemy heroes were so overmatched that I was able to leave my hero alone and he was able to slay the enemy foe without so much as a mouse click from me. The game is also poorly balanced to the extent that I was able to finish the final mission on hardest difficulty without losing even a single troop. The heroes are far too powerful and this saps much of the enjoyability of the game.

Once the novelty wears off, and it quickly does wear off, it becomes very difficult to find anything about the game which can be talked about in a positive light. As such my only recommendation is to stay away.

To War!! as soon as I finish loading...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to like this game. It has the Warhammer universe to draw from for structure, storyline and gameplay but didn't seem to click. It didn't succesfully make the transition from a fun strategic tabletop game into a fun RTS game.

Firstly, the Loading times were unacceptably long which throws major breaks into your playtime. There is nothing worse than waiting almost a minute, in some cases, to make a transition from the battlefield to the campaign map. Speaking of the campaign map, it reminded me of the linear mapping of Final Fantasy Tactics. It really shouldn't have been implemented at all, but rather just take you from one battle to the next without the illusion of choice in the bigger scheme of things.

The graphics, visuals and voice-acting were great, but there is more to a game than watching trees sway and mist roll over hills. It seems the game developers focused too much on the ambience and less on gameplay.

The most appealing factor of warhammer is the strategic and tactical aspects of the game. Relic made a great transition with the Dawn of War franchise where it wasn't necessarily faithful to the tabletop game, but they combined both elements to deliver a fun game.

There is nothing really fun about this game. Your units bunch together on the map and you fight other units bunched together and they all slog it out. The maps are linear, cramped with no room for manuevering or grand-scale battles for the most part. In some instances during the campaign or on the multi-player maps you can face off and have a big battle, but it just turns into a slogging match of who has the most powerful units, not who can outplay the other. To top it off the game is very short.

They tried to take a page from the Total War franchise it seems to me. Having played the latest Medieval 2 and looking at it side by side there is much that could have been improved. However, it is not necessarily fair to compare and rather judge Mark of Chaos on its own merits and it doesn't stand very tall.

I'm generally lenient with bugs, that can be fixed with a patch. Even after a collosal 225ish MB patch the game still has technical problems. Could I slog through it to finish the campaigns? Yes.., but I got the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" and that has no excuse. If a company's software is so buggy it crashed my entire system and forces a reboot, file check, etc...then it has issues. Also, I have a 3.2 ghz, 1 gig ram, with a 6800 GT video card.

Overall, once I overcame the technical problems, I did enjoy some aspects like designing a hero, leveling up my units, but those good moments were few and far between the bad ones.

It has potential, but a 2.5 star game for me.

Pros:
- Beautiful Graphics
- Great tutorial
- Great voice-acting
- Heroes are fun to design.

Cons:
- Bugs...oh yes, bugs.
- Not very fun gameplay.
- Too much Real and Time, not enough Strategy.
- Blue Screen of Death included.
- The game is very short.

One battle lost = game over!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: December 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you lose too many units in a single battle you might as well give up because you can progress no further in the campaign because there's no way to get additional gold to buy units without continually conquering. Which means if you lose even one or two units near the beginning you are done for. Might as well start over and replay the same scenarios you just played.

Plus this came on six CDs and doesn't even have a DVD version so it took forever to install this monkey. Utterly worthless on all counts, what a waste of $50. I blame the gamespot review that said this game was good.

Might be okay, if it worked.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

nvidia 6800gt
2gb ram
4ghz amd64
win xp fully updated

Graphics are nice. But sound stutters on occasion. My biggest problem is random game crashes when loading new maps. I find its not a graphical issue, its database related. For some reason if I buy certain items for my characters, do certain things to my army ect - I can't load the next mission. I have to go back to a previous save, and buy something different, or arrange my army differently then the game will proceed.

Even after patching, reinstall/deleting saves, ect. Game still not stable.

Plus its incredibly short and linear with horrible constant loading. No you can't out manuever the enemy, since the map forces you to go a certain way. Want to attack from behind? Nope, invisible map lines keep you from doing that.

If I could get through the entire single player campaign without crashing it might be a nice short romp which was fun. I'm not interested in the multiplay part of this game. Maybe it is good? But don't buy this for the single player portion.

Warhammer: Loadscreens of Chaos

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: December 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have twin 10,000 rpm WD drives set up in a stripe raid, over 2 gigs of RAM and a 4.0 ghz processor. My machine exceeds what the manufacturer suggests on the box is a "really hot setup". Yet load times on this game are unbearable. I've had maps that actually took less time to play than the load screen to get into the map. And the load time is just as long to get from the tactical map to the world map, which has no real moving parts or interactivity other than to click on the next town in line for the story to continue. Once you arrive at the next town, you are treated to another couple minutes of load time while the computer asks if you want to fight or retreat. If you choose to fight (like you have an actual choice), there's another couple minutes of load time. I got almost to the end of chapter two and just stopped playing due to the frustration. It might be acceptable if the game were incredibly detailed or complex, but this game loads slower yet looks and plays far worse than the latest Total War game.

Let's just say that the makers of this game got my $40 this time around, but it will be a long time before I buy anything with the Warhammer name or from these game companies again.

Take a nap instead

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 19
Date: December 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had just finished THQ's Dawn of War series when I bought this. Expecting something of the same experience, I was horribly disappointed on several accounts:

1. First of all, this is NOT a Warhammer 40K game, it is based in the plain-jane warhammer world. It is a Dungeons and Dragons remake with a dash of WH40K plot thrown in. This human, dead people, dwarves, elves, orcs type of world is tired, let it rest people.

2. The graphics, despite what other people have said above, are good but not great. It is relatively useless to have beautifully modeled characters if you spend the entire game in bird's eye view to get a comprehensive view of the battlefield. They are also wasted in the sense that all the units come in geometric arrays of 20, 32, 48 or whatever. It's like playing Risk on a Harry Potter book.

3. Harry Potter books are larger than the maps you play on.

4. This game is so linear I used it to help me hang paintings. Seriously, how stupid is the 'let's just follow the plot along and see what happens' type of game? This is purely laziness on the designer's part, and I feel pretty robbed. Again, if you lose a siege unit early, start over. Lame.

5. Despite what you've heard, the voice acting is ATROCIOUS! I'm sick of Elves sounding like they're 13 year olds on qualudes, and why does every human that wears armor have to have a bad fake European accent? The actors quite obviously read their lines in a half-hour session, never interacted in person, and used the money to buy their next bottle of Mad Dog.

6. Leveling/Items/Unit Management screens are non-intuitive to navigate and ridiculously roundabout to use. I have to wait to be in combat before switching items between heroes? Come on...

7. A little nitpicky, but the art in the load screens (which you will have the opportunity to study IN DETAIL) is undetailed and uninspired. One of the things that makes the warhammer series so cool is the visceral connection you get with the characters through the amazing artwork. Just look at the intro to Dawn of War, that's qual-i-tay. These stills look like watercolors that were left in the rain. And the intro movie sucks donkey.

8. The heroes are one dimensional. No, less than that, they are Half dimensional. 'I have a scar on my face and my daddy was killed so now I have to prove i'm a good guy' (even that struggle was not obvious throughout the game). Boo hoo. 'I'm a big, mean orc and I wanna kill humies'. YAWN.

9. At least with 6 CD's I now have a set of coasters.

To sum up: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, ever. Don't let your friends buy it, don't even let them know it was made. It is an embarrasment. NAMCO should have their Game Designer's Union membership card torn up for this. I want my money back.

PS the art on the box is cool-ish.

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