Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
Title: Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
Maker: Bandai/Namco Games
Rating: M (Mature 17+) Blood and Gore, Language, and Violence
Available On: PC (11/14/06) Xbox 360 (10/26/07)
Preview:
"With Sigmar's Divine Blessing:
Champion your army.
Reclaim your family honor.
Crush the invading hordes of Chaos.
Take arms against Chaos with thousands of units clashing in intricate detail on a massive battlefield.
Hone your Champions into fearsome massive warriors and challenge enemy Champions in a duel to the death.
Test the might of your armies and Heroes online with a wide array of multiplayer modes in both casual and competitive games."
- From back of box
Overview:
Warhammer: Mark of Chaos is the next installment of the series of PC games based upon the table top battle games of Games Workshop (i.e. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War plus two expansions: Winter Assault and Dark Crusade). Dropping the space scene and taking up the medieval fantasy world of Warhammer, Mark of Chaos tells the story of two champions - Captain Stefan von Kessel of the Empire and Thorgar the Blooded One of the Chaos legions.
Review:
Mark of Chaos is an interesting game - it wasn't totally what I had expected it to be (or what advertisements claimed it to be) but nonetheless Mark of Chaos is worth a try if games like Warcraft 3 tickled your fancy...
- Graphics:
Quite possibly the selling point and most impressive part of this game are the graphics. This has to be one of the most beautiful games I've ever played on a PC. Each unit is immensely detailed down to the last stitch and brass button and you can actually see these on the models when you close in the camera during fighting.
It's not just the units though - the terrain, buildings, spell/power effects, blood sprays, and even the simple campaign travel map are detailed and well crafted pieces of art.
I will say this, although Mark of Chaos is extremely pretty if you don't have a fairly high end PC the game WILL lag when numerous units are on screen or (in my condition) when such things like castles and forts are on screen.
Graphical Specifications:
Minimum - 128 MB NVidia GeForce 4800, 128 MB ATI Radeon 9200
Recommended - 256 MB NVidia Geforce 6800GS, 256 MB ATI Radeon x800 or greater
For Best - 1Gig NVidia 7950 GX2
Graphics = 9/10
- Gameplay:
Overall the game is pretty fun to play. There are two full campaigns in which you can play as both the Empire (Good) and the Chaos (Evil) and each have you commanding two different races of creatures (Good = Empire/High Elves & Evil = Chaos/Skaven).
The campaigns are of medium length and can be challenging or not depending on what difficulty you choose to set the game at. On easy it took me maybe a grand total of 5 - 6 hours of gameplay to beat both campaigns.
The actual gameplay is basically like playing an RTS game with some Total War and RPG elements thrown in there. Units are in actual battalions instead of single soldiers, these units can be upgraded and have certain power-ups and such purchased for them, these units also level up for better stats.
Heroes are included in the game as well. Special warriors, wizards, warrior priest, etc are pretty much what each could be considered...each hero has their own part in the story and like the units can be leveled up, given special abilities, and have certain items either bought for them or collected from the battlefield. These items can include anything from simple health potions and mana restoring liquids to actual armor and weapons that add strengths to your hero.
A unique addition to the game is the duel system for heroes. When two opposing heroes come in contact with each other on the battlefield you can choose (via the screen) to engage one of your heroes in 1 v1 combat with the enemy hero. What takes place is a close combat whacking match between the two in the midst of battle, but other units cannot harm either of the two fighters.
During a duel each hero uses special abilities and their attacks to defeat the other...whoever dies loses and thus a massive morale drop is felt by the enemy soldiers.
Duels are not that impressive but they prove to be quite interesting to get into - the rewards vary, there could be special items achieved, extra experience gained, or just that morale drop I mentioned before.
Unlike other RTS games, there are neither training barracks nor resource collecting needed. Units are purchased by the player throughout the campaign as they collect sums of money for completing each level/mission.
To my disappointment though there is no simple single player skirmish game...the only way Mark of Chaos can be played in a skirmish is through the online multiplayer component - which is a negative in my book.
Gameplay = 7/10
- Audio:
Nothing too special here...some "epic" music tracks during battle and plenty combat noises to go around...The one beef I have with Mark of Chaos is the voice acting...it's terrible!
Audio = 2/5
- Replay Value:
I can't see there being too much replay value here, that is unless if you get hooked to the online portion of the game. Much like how Warcraft 3 is immensely liked/played on B.Net even months/years after the players have gone over the campaigns a few times.
Replay = 2/5
- Story/Plot:
The story is what one would expect for a game based on a tabletop miniature battle game...in other words it's not that strong and may remind you of a weaker knockoff of such epic stories as the Lord of the Rings, the Warcraft plots, and other fantasy-based movies/games
There are plenty of characters here to go around, most are pretty cool but you don't really get to know anything about them (which I wouldn't expect in an RTS anyway). The voice acting and dialog are just atrocious and the in game cut scenes are boring and also buggy (mouths will move before audio is heard).
Dialog is rushed and truthfully I think subtitles would've been better, the writers should've been fired or else never hired again.
Story/Plot = 6/10
Conclusion:
Mark of Chaos will appeal to fantasy RTS gamers and fans of the Warhammer series of PC games but I wouldn't expect your every day gamer to fall in love with it.
Mark of Chaos' strongest factor is it's visuals...it's an immensely pretty game to look at but that doesn't make up for its lake of substance and ridiculously long loading times (there are even loading screens FOR loading screens!). There are plenty of unique gameplay ideas at work here but a majority either aren't that interesting or most players won't even use them.
Bugs are another problem, the game lags and trips up every now and then and even though they're up to patch version 1.6 these bugs have not been fixed yet.
In closing - if you've thought about playing this game either a) buy it for a low price online or used in a game store, etc or b) wait till the shelf price drops to within 20 - 30 bucks. Also, it really is important to keep in mind that you shouldn't try to run this game if you don't have a high end performance PC - I can't see the point in buying this game if you can't totally take advantage of the graphics.
Final Score = 26/40 points - 65%
Originally Posted by Rapax
