Distraction Dinsdag – Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion

Welcome to anther Distraction Dinsdag folks. For those new to my blog, a hearty warm welcome. I do these posts from time to time to showcase something that might take me away from reading and doing frequent book review posts. Many who follow my blog know I have a weakness regarding anything Warhammer. Deathwatch has been keeping me company from time to time in this time of isolation. A cool thing to note is that I am currently reading book one of Steve Parker’s Deathwatch series which is great as I find myself even more immersed when putting this on.

Before I start let me give a small explanation of what I understand of the Deathwatch so far. It is an institution within the 40K universe that work closely with the Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos branch. Like many things the humans in 40K, where there is ONLY WAR, dislike anything alien or mutant and believe their sole purpose is to wipe these entities out. In many cases, the humans or other counterparts of the Astra Militarum or the desk jockeys over at the Ministorum seem to have difficulty dealing with these things, the Inquisition will be called upon. The Inquisition will assess the case and if necessary bring in the Deathwatch. It is up to the Deathwatch to decide who they send out to face the threat on the planet in question or if there is a giant piece of spaceship that just materialized out of nowhere. A Deathwatch team will evidently consist out of Space Marines from different loyalist Space Marine Chapters. They will also send out small groups, from what I have gathered it normally consists out of 5 or six Marines.

Having all that info dumped on you all shall we get to the game?
I found a little trailer to set up the scene:

So in Deathwatch Tyranid Invasion you control a group of Space Marines on a few missions to purge the Alien or acquire mission objectives while also purging the Alien. Tyranids are the 40K equivalent of H.R Geiger’s Alien nightmare. I do not know if Games Workshop fell in love with the drawings that spawned the original Alien film or if he inspired the 40K mini’s, but I am glad for it as I see resemblances throughout the range. To give a small example:

Some of the earlier Tyranid designs back in the day….

Deathwatch T.I is turn based and you see the events from above as you control your units and tell them where to go. You can also change the camera angles to your liking and zoom in a bit if you want to. The maps I have played so far were not so big that I had to play zoomed out constantly.

Examples of top view and zoomed in views. I feel that the atmosphere in this game is pretty spot on. The sounds of the weapons and the aliens tyranids you encounter are both to my liking.

There are different Space Marine units to control and even though the trailer says there are from 6 Chapters to choose from, these are not readily available to you.

Before every mission you can pick five Space Marines to take with you. Each Space Marine has his own set of skills that can either benefit himself or the team mates around him. You have heavy weapons users, tactical- or close combat specialists and a medic, if you are lucky to draw one of them from the card packs you get in game.

My current team all consist out of Ultramarines. Purely for the fact that one of the guys gives extra health for the amount of the same warriors of the same Chapter are in the group. I have one Devastator Space Marine equiped with a heavy bolter, two Tactical Marines with normal bolters, a Veteran with a Melta gun and an Apothecary, the medic in the group with a one handed Hand Flamer. Along your mission you will find different weapons that are suited to your unit’s skill set.

Just an example of my Medic, the skills I have unlocked so far along with the weapons on show. You can get a 360 degree view of all your units in this view and I like it to see how each weapon differs from others. You can also rename all your characters if you feel like it. I have kept my names so far as I am not good at assigning 40K names for characters…

After your mission is over your team will all get an amount of experience points that can be used to upgrade their skills or accuracy, health or critical damage points. These skills and points tend to cost a lot of experience points so there is a little bit of grinding involved with this game. I find that it is oke though as you can take other Marines on and try out different combinations. One thing that can be a little frustrating, like I recently had a scenario of, is that if your Space Marine dies on a mission, he will loose all experience points he had before the mission as well as will not be rewarded any that was accumulated during that mission. You will then be forced to play through previous missions to try build up enough to unlock that one skill you have been saving up and been playing for, for so long.

I am still early in the game and so far only have units from the Ultramarines, Space Wolves and Blood Angels. I wonder how long it will take for me to unlock the other three Chapters. You get a certain card pack to open after every 4 or so misions. These packs can also be bought with in-game currency and if you feel like spending a few extra dollars/euro’s you can do so at your own discretion, Deathwatch does not hammer on “must buy now” deals that are a constant on almost every other mobile game out there these days, which I give top points to for having. You can also play this game offline which is great. This is the third WH game I have on my phone that can be played like that.

Combat in game is fairly easy. Whatever your Marine sees in his line of vision he can shoot granted his weapon has the range. You can use action points to move him closer to a target but bare in mind that shooting and moving take up certain points. You can save action points to put your Marine on Overwatch, basically you make him aim in a direction and when it is the enemy’s turn to move and they move into that area, your marine will fire immediately. Overwatch has helped me out on a lot of occasions so far so I suggest giving it a go when you get to know how the enemy moves. Even if you finished a mission and replay it again, the enemy placements will be different, that keeps things fresh in my opinion.

The little I have played of Deathwatch certainly has kept me coming back for more from time to time and I will be continuing until I eventually finish it. It won’t be any time soon though… I play Deathwatch on an I-phone and think I bought it for under six Euro. I can honestly say, it has been 6 Euro well spent.

Check it out if you want. Also keep a look out for my Deatwatch book review that I have not even typed out yet as I am exactly in the middle of the book at the moment. 4 Star review in my opinion, for a re-read that says a lot I believe…

I hope my Distraction Dinsdag was oke, even if it is all over the place, I do not plan these posts, just write them as they come to mind. Is this a game you would be interested in seeing more of? I have a mind in maybe trying to do short stories off of the missions as I go along. I am trying to get my ass back into writing…

Hope you are all doing great.