Warhammer:
Mark of Chaos - Battle March has
some really cool new units and plenty of strategy
Just when the Hordes of Chaos thought they had conquered their foes, another rose to do battle...
This big fella here developed a pot belly because of his strict diet of human beings
The Dark Elves would have been the cool gang at school, because they're super evil and pose a lot
A wise man once said: the goose that lays the
golden eggs is probably not really a goose at all, but a feral
pygmy dog.
The 'wise man' turned out to be a 'drunk man', was
referring to a mongoose, and also happened to have served several years
in the clink for embezzlement in the late 1980s.
What does this have to do with the new expansion
pack for the well regarded Warhammer:
Mark of Chaos PC strategy game?
More than you may think...
It all started with the original game more than a
year ago. Mark of Chaos
had flaws - see my original and remarkably well-rounded review for
the truth - but it was a good game, all in all.
So yes, it was a golden goose that could have
laid eggs that, incidentally, would have been deadly if eaten with
bacon for breakfast.
Alas, Mark
of Chaos was forgotten and neutered and so no eggs of
great fortune were laid.
However, it seems that a golden egg was in fact
secreted from this game's metaphorical cloaca.
Though more than a year after the game first went
on sale, the expansion pack, Battle March, has
finally arrived. Should you punch the table with joy? Sure, why not.
This expansion is rather playable and quite
involving too. If you're unfamiliar with or didn't read my
review of the original game, it was a real-time strategy (RTS) that
focussed less on gathering resources, and more on strategy.
And it worked. It was cool. Addictive,
interesting gameplay managed to hide its flaws - so-so
visuals, poor camera work, long loading times.
You're units could gain battle experience, growing
stronger after each skirmish, which ensured that you didn't just throw
your troops to their deaths either, and the same happens here which
adds a nice RPG twist.
There were also hero units who could change the
course of battle with their skills, their magic, and their rancid
flatulence.
It was an entertaining game, and so
is this expansion.
Battle
March plays very similarly to the original game. The menus
are similar, the graphics are (slightly improved but) mainly similar,
and the excruciatingly long loading screens are similar.
Once you've deployed your units, you march them
around the map, looking for baddies to quash with both melee and ranged
units, and hope that your human brain will outsmart the AI opponents by
using the terrain to your advantage.
So what's the new stuff? New campaigns, new races.
And a spiffy new intro!
The war involving the Hordes of Chaos and the
Empire of the previous Warhammer game depleted both armies, and now an
angry Orc boss, Gorbash, has gathered together hundreds of orcs and
goblins to form the Greenskins.
His plan is to fill the power vacuum left by the
warring humanoids and make himself the grand pooh bah of all he surveys.
The other new race is the Dark Elves, a group of
canny individuals whose magical prowess, cunning tactics and
small sizes are in contrast with the bludgeoning approach and often
gigantic units of the Greenskins.
With these new races come a spate of new units and
a number of new missions to clobber your way through.
There's also some amusing sound effects in there
when you select your units, with the Greenskins in particular eliciting
some laughter with not only their choice of words, but their accents
too.
There's a good mixture of battles to wade your way
through here and level design is pretty good too, especially the siege
missions where you must storm heavily fortified, um, forts.
Furthermore, the alliance between the Greenskins
and Dark Elves ensures there's some variety in the types of battles
you'll fight your way through.
The orcs and goblins like to smash their way
through their enemies with brute force, while the Dark Elves prefer to
keep their hands clean, using arcane methods to rend flesh
from bone.
Despite no great shifts in the gameplay or
graphics, the new races and units necessitate plenty of new stratagems,
particularly as many of the missions are much tougher than before, and
I found this to be quite addictive.
Battle
March's developer, Black Hole, is assuming that everyone
who buys the expansion pack has finished the original game, hence the
increased challenge.
One of the more intriguing elements of the
original game that copped some criticism were the hero fights, when one
hero character gets to duel another without any interference.
In my opinion they were good fun to begin with,
and with cool new heroes these almost-turn-based fights are
even better.
Though it was also a feature of the original, I
also really like how you can equip your hero units with useful
trinkets, such as enchanted rings, magical cloaks and various talismans
to boost their combat effectiveness.
Oddly timed, the Battle March
expansion pack to Warhammer:
Mark of Chaos epitomises the old "better late than never"
maxim.
It's an enjoyable excursion through a new
storyline with some sweet new armies, a few surprising scenarios and
some epic battles to boot. Though the expansion doesn't bring anything
new to the table in terms of gameplay, it reminds you just how good the
original game was.
There's
some good, wholesome real-time strategy gaming in here, with some
half-decent graphics but it with the addictive levelling system
that kept me coming back for more. Having all my units gaining
experience by progressing through battles and getting kills was a lot
of fun.
This golden egg has a few cracks, kind of like the golden goose that laid it, but it still shines. If you had fun with the original game - and
haven't sold it on Ebay - you'll find a lot to like here.
Game: Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
- Battle March System: PC
Players: 1-multi Online: Yes Developer: Black
Hole Entertainment Distributor:
Red Ant
