Gamerz Needs - For All Your Gaming Needs! - Article: Warhammer: Mark of Chaos

Having heavy focus on the Xbox 360 console, the strategy genre is seeing countless releases that are trying to find the right formula to entertain gamers. Whether it’s Electronic Arts’ Lord of the Rings and Command & Conquer franchises or Take-Two’s Civilization series, the Xbox 360 has several strategy titles that fit the bill as great options to start with. In fact, the calendar year is full of titles that could steal the spotlight such as Tom Clancy’s End War and Sega’s Stormrise. So when Warhammer: Battle March arrived at our doorsteps, we had high hopes for this superb franchise to turn into a real gem of a game, but the results are clearly disappointing.

The biggest concern of Warhammer: Battle March has to be that the controls don’t differentiate that much from the PC iteration. For being a console RTS, Warhammer is not a casual-friendly title when it comes to grasping a hold of the basics on how to play. Ripping the controls right out of Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, players will frantically try to keep up with the fast paced combat on the screen with their controller and fail in doing so. The developers needed to give attention to a better control system.

When it comes to ordering your units across the map, Battle March doesn’t make things easy. You’ll have to go through a lot of commands through your triggers and bumpers to group your units, select a hero, and even activate an item on the map. This is an unnecessary setback that removes the entertainment value out of Battle March. Having to hit the buttons in the correct order to keep up with the pace of the battle, players will be frustrated without being eligible of having full control of their units. The only upside – if you consider it one – is that the enemy AI is at a novice difficulty level, thus making the game tremendously easier to trek through.

Not making things enhanced are the straightforward campaigns that suffer from stage fright when it comes to delivering exposition. The story is the standard affair of revenge and reclaiming one’s honor. The Horde of Chaos are out to claim the land for themselves, the Empire must defend it with all of their will, and the Greenskin tribes are the middle men stuck trying to make a living for themselves. Each has their own campaign to slowly push through, but they’re all equally tiresome to complete. So when you start up Warhammer, don’t expect anything that’ll light your world on fire.

The missions and objectives throughout the campaign are generic – they’ll have you scratching your head if the developers ever thought about including a compelling storyline. After the opening cinematic, it’s all downhill in terms of the plot and overall entertainment value of the title. Sure, it does faithfully create – as far as I can tell – the tabletop miniatures but that’s the extent of the interesting aspects of the campaign. Who in their right mind would use text scroll as the main storytelling technique? Warhammer: Battle March is unimpressive to say the least.

The combat of Battle March doesn’t do much to supply reasons for gamers to stick around for the remainder of the ride. Enemy A.I. is laughable and downright a disgrace for gamers looking for some competition. The main form of attack the enemies have is to rush as fast as they can without any tactical substance behind their attacks. Players should have no problem overcoming the odds if they manage to learn the shoddy controls found in Battle March. With a simple set of defend, attack and rescue missions, the objectives aren’t taxing on the player to figure out.

As for the technical department, Warhammer: Battle March is a mixed bag of horrible voice-acting, bland environments, and a superb soundtrack. Outside of that, you’ll find that the units within the game are impressively created, but with the lack of concentration for graphical output, they are easily tossed aside and forgotten about. Warhammer needed better detailed environments and a voice-cast that would’ve inspired players to continue forth with the campaigns.
What does one come away with after playing Warhammer: Battle March? It’s a run-of-the-mill strategy title that offers no reasons to choose it over the handful of other titles in the genre. Even with the Xbox Live capabilities, there aren’t many incentives to pick up and play Warhammer on the Xbox 360.