I said in April that there were too many War hammer Games, and that’s what I stand for, but this month we still added a good one to the list, which we haven’t done for a while.
A big part of my problem with games workshops flooding the market with licensed games is that something that should be very cool – Space Marines !! – turned into white noise, a tasteless gray mass, while a shitty mobile game bleeds into another forgetful twist -based tactics excursion on PC, each with a name that sounds just like the last.
So when I told you there’s a new one 40K Play on the PC and it was called something Slaughter sector, and it was a turn-based tactical game, and it was released by a company responsible for so many of the franchise’s other boring entries that you wouldn’t feel a thing.
But you’d be missing out too, because Slaughter sector is pretty good !.
Yes, really! I know you have your doubts, so allow me to explain and I’ll start with who made it. Slaughter sector was developed by the Australian studio Black Lab Games, the team behind it another surprisingly excellent piece of licensed strategy from a few years ago, Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock.
These guys are clearly becoming masters of a certain type of licensed release where the game itself is cool, but the respect and use of the license despite clear budget and resource constraints is remarkable. That’s the quickest way to describe it dead end for you and it’s exactly the same experience here.
Slaughter sector is a thick, chunky, and challenging tactical game in itself. It’s also a wonderful display of the 40K Tabletop experience as you build an army through a campaign, adding new units every few missions, and adding a point cap to each level that allows you to easily place the type of unit on the map you want for the situation at hand.
Units are bursting with personality thanks to great little animation details and some great details, with hero units being the main stars. Each of them offers additional actions, cool support skills, even cooler outfits and the opportunity to unlock better equipment for yourself and yours, including regular units.
Since this is a game that lives and dies from its battle as well as its license, I was pleasantly surprised at how robust the battles felt. Tactical games like this live and die from their flexibility, because choosing the right unit to be in the right place at the right time against the right kind of enemy is the backbone of everything XCOM to Fire sign.
And Slaughter sector is damn flexible. Their ever-growing roster of marines and heroes ranges from nimble Assault Marines to clumsy Rhino tanks, and later in the game individual units can swap out their primary weapons, such as plasma weapons. This gives you a great sense of responsibility for any battle as it allows you to craft and deploy just the right type of army that you think you will need.
Combat feels hard, fun, and most importantly, fair because the expected hit points, expected hit accuracy, and the status of the enemy you are shooting at are all shown in the same popup when you hover a crosshair over it. Sometimes the AI proved to be a cunning adversary, using narrow city streets and canyons to outflank me and cut off my vulnerable units, while at other times it would revert to silly bug noise, though it’s hard to tell if that’s an AI fails or is just a consequence The villains of the game are the insect-like Tyranids.
Basically, it feels like a very nice, very entertaining tabletop game 40K. The relatively small scale of your armies here may not match art and lore or the precedent of games like Beginning of the war, but it’s perfect for recreating that table scale and more than any other 40K Game I’ve ever played felt like the version of this universe of “war of stars Chess against real chess ”.
Unfortunately, the campaign is a bit short and despite efforts to introduce new characters and keep the story going, it feels a little stale after a while with only two factions fighting the entire game, especially since one of those is the Tyranids who don’t exactly have a great personality. I would be shocked if there weren’t plans for more varied terrain and new armies later, but to be represented here only by two forces from such a huge universe, would be a bit exhausting.
The game also feels a little … cheap? As lavish and loving as all the attention to the fight was, everything else about the game feels oddly sparse, from campaign briefings to menus to cutscenes. For a universe that normally plays out on such a large scale, and the in-game action is so fantastic, it’s a shame to see the story that drives the campaign come up with just a few static works of art with some over-the-top narration.
But what narrative. My favorite thing about this entire game is the screen reader, which makes a solid strategy game a game to remember 40K Experience. One of the greatest attractions of 40K to me it’s just how ridiculously exaggerated everything is. Everything is big and epic and universe-defining, it’s all just one Property. The vast majority of War hammer Games released over the years fall short not only because they are bad games, but also because they only pay lip service to the license they are based on.
Slaughter sector indulges in it. Every mission briefing is a joy, and every debriefing is a chance to be flooded by those ridiculous male and female voices. Best of all is the constant chatter that animates the missions, all of which are delivered exactly how you want them to be 40K Character would sound. WE ARE THE WALLS, WE ARE THE GUN that your heavy troops might roar when they face certain death, while your main hero doesn’t say “affirmative” when you move him, he will scream things like I AM THE SWORD OF SANGUINIUS .
Later you meet the Battle Sisters and the voice acting of their hero character is good enough to make the whole game worth playing just for the sake of enjoying it.
I know it sounds wild to focus so much on the voice acting here, but I’m someone who has always flirted on the verge of flirting 40K Fandom, intrigued by the general premise, but constantly disappointed by fiction’s attempts to bring such incredible designs and works of art to life. The voice output (and the writing!) Here manages this effortlessly and takes me to a place that shows – how Black Lab has done it dead end-that a real love for the source material went into this game and not just a quick paycheck from Games Workshop.
So yes, there are still too many War hammer Games, but that’s exactly why it’s a problem because if you start ignoring them and let them flood you, you risk missing out on the good ones. To like Slaughter sector.
.
Table of Contents
