Title: Warhammer Quest
Publisher: Rodeo Games Ltd.
Platform: iOS (iPhone 4+ & iPad 2+)
Release Date: Out Now
Price: $4.99 (£2.99/€4.49)
High Points
- Simple but fun dungeon-crawling gameplay.
- Slick presentation captures the Warhammer feel.
- Well-written campaign storylines.
Low Points:
- Questionable longevity due to potentially repetitive gameplay.
- Limited character options.
- Shameful money-grabbing DLC.
Entering The Old World
As the game began, I was struck by the quality and polish of the art – unsurprising considering the wealth of source material available – and the rousing soundtrack. Already, I was pleased with my decision to eschew free-to-play games in favour of a premium title: I am a big fan of the Warhammer Fantasy world and was looking forward to settling in to play a game whose content I’d paid for in advance and could enjoy without stumbling across cynical free-to-play money-traps at every turn. Ahem. More on this later.
After a brief and informative tutorial, I had grasped the essentials. The core of the game involves guiding a party of four pre-set characters – a Marauder, a Wood Elf Waywatcher, a Dwarf Ironbreaker and a Grey Wizard – through monster-infested corridors and rooms in search of gold and glory (or death in the unlikely event that you’ve got a Trollslayer in your party).
Each character is moved in turn, but subsequent characters can be ordered as the previous one carries out his movement, making this relatively slick and painless process. As the party explores, the map – and any hostile dungeon dwellers – are revealed.
Revealing Brains
Despite the combat being based on the board-game’s mechanics, the dice-rolling all takes place “under the hood” giving a more organic, less mechanical feel to the proceedings. Personally, I think this is a good thing (see my article, ‘MMOs are a Lie‘ for my reasoning), but fans of the original tabletop game may miss seeing the cogs and gears in action.
The controls are intuitive and soon become second nature, with a simple double-tap executing both moving and context appropriate attacks. The graphics and animations are pleasing; beautifully capturing the rich, brooding menace of Warhammer’s Old World in the map environments and the character models. With every hefty swing of a weapon, combat animation feels nicely solid despite the camera being restricted to a zoomable bird’s-eye view.
Controlling Party
The user interface is easy to use, although better suited to the iPad – it’s a little fiddly on an iPhone, but still useable. A simple 90-degree rotation of the iOS device provides access to a fairly standard inventory view for some quick equipment switch-arounds and supplementary information is available for every item and creature encountered.
The dungeon crawls are nicely framed by a campaign map of a region of the Empire in the Old World. On entering a settlement, the party can rest and recover from their adventures, buy and sell equipment, visit the temple or recruit new party members (I seem to be in the market for a new meat shield quite regularly).
There are also some storyline-driven quests and random encounters which are well-written and in keeping with the Warhammer theme.
Published: Jun 5, 2013 10:52 am