Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels is a video game published by Electronic Arts in 1995 for the 3DO which was later ported to the PC, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn. It is based on Games Workshop's board game Space Hulk and is the sequel to the 1993 video game Space Hulk. Sep 11, 2017  Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels. Key Game (1996) PlayStation Posted on September 11, 2017 by Van Rockingham — 17 Comments What better way to indulge my current two favourite hobbies of Warhammer (Horus Heresy) and Retro Gaming than to play a game that manages to combine the two?

Space Hulk: Vengeance is based off of the Warhammer 40K tabletop games created by Games Workshop. I must admit that I am not familiar with them, so I'm approaching this review from a strictly video game standpoint. The game doesn't appear to be using any pen-and-paper or RPG rules anyway, so you can consider this game 'inspired by,' but not a replication of, the tabletop experience. Zombies ate my friends for mac 2017.

Vengeance centers around two warring factions. You play as fanatically religious marine-monks who pilot walking suits of armor called Terminators. They use pretty common weapons, so controlling them should be familiar to you. You fight a group of purple, shark-looking aliens called Genestealers. They have multiple arms, making them vicious in melee combat, but sport no ranged attacks. They do have numbers in their favor, and can swarm from multiple directions, or send relentless streams of foes down a hallway after you. A few missions will pit you against other enemy types, like 'hybrids' that look like two-armed Genestealers with guns, but most of the time its your long-range Marines against the short-range Stealers.

This is the basic point of the game, and what the entire strategy is based on. One marine can splatter Stealer after Stealer, as long as he has some distance to work with. On the other hand, though marines have some basic hand-to-hand capabilities, they will usually die if any alien gets too close. The maps throughout the game are made up entirely of long passages and 90-degree angles, so you have to figure out how to best place your marines to lay fire down key hallways and access points, or seal doors to keep the aliens out.

Genestealers 'spawn' from locked doors marked in red on your map. These presumably are coming from other areas of the ship, but in practical terms, it means that you will have a few key zones that your enemies are coming from. They literally pour out of these access points, and can overwhelm your forces in a matter of seconds, if you haven't set up to contain them. Once you've secured an entry area, mostly by putting marines at the end of any passages leading into it, you can send the rest of your squad to complete your mission. These range from having your one flamethrower marine burn specific rooms, to picking up bombs and taking them to specific areas, to simply digging in and surviving for a specified amount of time. There's a lot of variety here, and though some missions are certainly more difficult than others, all are generally enjoyable.

Controlling your marines is possible through a smart interface and some well-designed AI. By pressing the tab key, you bring up an overhead map showing the placement of your marines, objectives, enemy spawn points, and any enemies in the area. You have a set amount of 'freeze time' while this map is open, allowing you to cycle through marines and issue waypoints or orders. This time regenerates when the map is closed, or you can continue giving orders in real-time if you run out.

When you're not in the map, you're looking through the eyes of the last marine you selected. If you gave him orders, you can sit back and watch him carry them out, or you can override those orders and control him yourself. This allows you to personally wax some Stealers, or take over a key marine's task, if the job is too complicated to leave to the AI. As said before, marines are best used at the end of a long corridor, with his flanks secured. However, when it comes time to move down that hallway into a new position, or if aliens are coming from multiple directions, you will almost certainly be able to do a better job yourself.

The AI can accept a number of useful commands and carry them out competently. They can advance to up to four waypoints, or retreat backwards while firing. They can be ordered to open or lock doors, pick up and drop objects, or fire into a specific room - such as when you need to burn a critical area. You can have them watch a certain direction, or cover another marine by following him. They will automatically shoot at the nearest enemy as they move, and automatically engage in hand-to-hand combat, though they're not as good at it as you can be. Every one of these orders, and their ability to follow them to the letter, makes the game work quite well. Their reactions aren't that fast though, which is why you'll want to control them directly for difficult tasks.

Vengeance is a great looking game, with moody environments and nice detail and animation on the characters. The game looks the best when you're locked in close combat with a Stealer, and the animation switches to a highly detailed 2-D Stealer up in your face. The clear animations here allow you to see what kind of attack the Stealer is planning, and block accordingly, almost like Tyson's Punchout. Otherwise you'll be seeing a lot of gloomy corridors get splattered with alien blood and limbs, especially if you've set up a strong position. You do not have a great field of vision, and can only see a short distance in front of you before everything tapers into darkness. It doesn't affect the gameplay though - because of the long corridors you can fire blind and still hit bad guys, and actually works well for the atmosphere to see shapes of Stealers shuffling ahead in the darkness. The game's audio helps here as well, with squeals of nearby Stealers, beefy weapon effects, and helpful vocal reports from your marines.

The game controls well, except in two areas. One is hand-to-hand combat. It's not fair to say that fighting a Stealer is more difficult than it should be, because the current setting is probably just about right, though it is certainly more difficult that you expect it to be. A lot of patience and flawless timing is required to make a successful attack or block, and sometimes the keys can be sluggish to respond. You have to factor that into your timing.

The other area is in giving commands to your marines. The original Space Hulk had four screens showing the cameras from multiple marines at the same time. It was complicated, but worked reasonably well. Vengeance has only one screen for the current marine you are watching or controlling. Freeze-time, which regenerates rather quickly, helps offset the difficulty of trying to keep up with the every individual member of squads of marines, while looking through the eyes of only one. However, it is still difficult to know what kind of trouble every marine is encountering, especially in the larger maps. Expect to be heading back to the tactical screen often.

Vengeance isn't an easy game, nor one that should be taken lightly. It is, however, challenging enough for serious strategists, and rewarding enough to see to completion.

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Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels is a video game published by Electronic Arts in 1995 for the 3DO which was later ported to the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Microsoft Windows. It is based on Games Workshop's board game Space Hulk and is the sequel to the 1993 video game Space Hulk.

Like its predecessor, Vengeance of the Blood Angels combines first-person shooter gameplay with real-time tactical elements. Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels is part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.Plot and settingIt's the 41st Millennium.

For 20,000 years mankind has expanded forth throughout the galaxy aided by a phenomenal invention known as the Warp Drive, which allows huge spatial distances to be traversed in a matter of hours. Under the auspices of the Emperor; a psychic so powerful he is essentially immortal, a pan-galactic Imperium has been established in which mankind has spread and prospered. The defenders of the Imperium are the Adeptus Astartes, or Space Marines, bio-genetically engineered warriors of superhuman prowess, ever vigilant to destroy the many threats that face mankind across the cosmos.The player is one such Space Marine, belonging to one of the oldest and most honourable Chapters known as the Blood Angels, whose battle honours date back as long as the Imperium has existed. He finds himself assigned to the Terminator company.

Among the thousand warriors that compose a Space Marine Chapter, only the hundred most valorous and gifted brothers are deemed worthy enough of this honour. Terminators are the Chapter's ultimate warriors. They are protected by suits that make them all but impervious to conventional weaponry, and armed with the most devastating weaponry available.Among the most insidious of mankind's enemies are Genestealers, a strange and terrifying alien race. They are huge armored six-limbed beasts, preternaturally swift and unbelievably ferocious in combat.

A genestealer knows no fear, charging into combat irrespective of any threat to its life. Genestealers are incapable of reproducing amongst themselves, and must rely on other races to expand their population. Upon encountering a suitable host, such as a human being, a Genestealer fixes its eyes upon it, mesmerizing it. While the host is thus hypnotized, the Genestealer deposits an egg-like cell that contains the Genestealer's genetic profile. This cell behaves like a cancer, altering the host's genetic profile. The victim gains some of the Genestealer's remarkable strength, resilience and longevity, becoming healthier than he was before.

The offspring of any victim is born as a Hybrid, a corrupt creature exhibiting characteristics of both Genestealer and host species. The Hybrid passes on its genetic profile in a similar manner to its Purestrain parent. This cycle continues, with each new generation of Hybrid resembling the host species more closely. By the fourth generation, the offspring is barely detectable as alien save for a few give-away signs such as unnaturally sharp teeth and a purplish tinge to the skin.

This fourth generation procreates in the conventional manner, and can result in either a Hybrid, a normal member of the host species or a Purestrain Genestealer, the only manner in which Purestrains can be produced. All the generations are linked in a psychic community, so Purestrains, Hybrids, and hosts all conceive of themselves as constituents of the same brood.The manner in which Genestealers carry out their reproductive process is of exceptional danger to the Imperium, as whole planets can fall to the Genestealer threat; the affected humans look and act no different from normal, and the hosts are extremely secretive about the insidious curse they bear.

Indeed, the first an external agency may know about the presence of Genestealers is once a whole planet has been affected by the curse, requiring total cleansing and repopulation. Imperial authorities are thus extremely keen to terminate the Genestealer menace at source, before it has a chance to affect any nearby planet.The prime manner in which Genestealer came into contact with humanity is through the use of Space Hulks. These are spaceships of human origin which have become lost in Warpspace, either through a malfunction of the ship's Warp Drive, or just as a consequence of traveling in a medium as uncertain as Warpspace. The human occupants having died, Genestealers and their Hybrid brood move in, settling down to hibernation until the drifting Space Hulk comes into contact with a species riper for infiltration and domination.So thus, it is that whenever a Space Hulk is detected in the proximity of a human planet, the stalwart warriors of the Space Marines are detached to rid the Hulk of its Genestealer cargo, preventing any chance of another planet falling victim to the Genestealer curse.

Such is the combat prowess of the Genestealer that only the Terminator squads have met with any success. That is the player's status and this is the player's mission: rid the galaxy of the Genestealer menace once and for all.GameplayIn the initial stages of the game, the player controls a Terminator and must follow the orders given to them by the sergeant. As missions are completed and the story progresses, the player increases in rank and will subsequently have control of the squad or squads where there are more than five terminators under their command.

The enemies featured in this title include the Genestealer as well as Hybrids, Chaos Space Marines, Magus, and Patriarchs making their appearances from the middle through to the latter stages of the Campaign game mode with only the Genestealers fought at all stages of the campaign.Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, in addition to the main campaign storyline, has four training missions and thirty-four solo missions spread across three main categories: Space Hulk Originals, Classic Missions, and Famous Missions. All of these levels were also featured in the game's ten-player network mode, available over TCP or IPX networks with and additional six missions playable in either co-operative and a special deathmatch scenario in which players compete to kill the largest number of Genestealers in order to win the game. Video Review and Screenshots.