Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team

Let down by a minimal budget and lack of innovation. [Issue#75, p.102]

It's a shame it was released in such a crowded downloadable game window, as it's an enjoyable diversion for the price.

Instead of simply clicking around a screen and hotkeying special moves like in Dawn of War, it's fun to actually control a Space Marine in a more personal, focused way.

It may not blow your mind, but you'll be too busy blasting everything that moves to care.

Overall, you can't really expect a whole lot from Kill Team in terms of diversity – at it's core, it's a hack and slash/twin stick shooter with slight RPG elements. While I had a lot of fun with it, one can only hope THQ will branch out, show us more of the grimdarkness of the 40K world, and fix a few technical snags along the way.

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is a nice twin analog shooter, packed with good graphics, four different units to choose and a lot of weapons and upgrades. What a pity the game has no online multiplayer and only five levels.

Addictive gameplay, despite a short completion time. But the lack of online multiplayer is the real nasty culprit.

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is for hardcore Warhammer 40,000 fans only, who happen to have another Warhammer fan sitting next to them.

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is a pretty fun arcade shooter when someone is sitting beside you. Co-op is the only good part of this game because the singleplayer is seriously lacking and online support is nowhere to be found.

The raw entertainment is there, but the shortcomings make it a disappointing game.

"Also-ran" hangs all over Warhammer 40K Kill Team, really. It isn't actively bad, but it makes enough missteps to fall short of good.

Amazingly enough, Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is still an enjoyable game in spite of all its technical issues, and that's a credit to the purity of its design. If you're a fan of Warhammer 40,000 or killing stuff in general, chances are good you'll enjoy giving this one a go. Just don't be surprised if it feels like the Orks did some of the programming.

The latest DLC content delivered by THQ is nothing more than an approach to Space Marines. It's fun and compelling, but lacks any feature that's worth underlining. Buy it if you're a die-hard. Look away if you're looking for something different.

If you are looking for a simple action game that you can play with a friend in local co-op to kill a few hours, may be Warhammer 40.000 Kill: Team is your game.

To conceive a cooperative game without giving the player the chance to play along with a teammate across the net, is a sort of heresy, especially for a game like this.

Kill Team is not a bad game, but it's also one that never really shines. Unless you're a die hard WH40K fan, or are in desperate need of some local multiplayer action, you can safely skip this.

If you're after a simple, mindless distraction that can be enjoyed by you and a buddy on the couch… well, there are plenty of other games on Live Arcade and elsewhere that can do that, and do it better.

Warhammer 40.000: Kill Team is brain off, guns out. The "Orc slicing" is fun especially at the beginning but is more and more running out of air the further you get. Warhammer fans may consider a buy everyone else should probably keep his/her axe at home considering a 800 MS Points price point.

Kill Team's dual-stick shooting action has an old-fashioned arcade appeal, but it's too simple to stand out from the crowd.

A decent little shooter for fans of the franchise, but it's really not fun when played on its own, and the lack of online is a glaring limitation that's difficult to discount.

In this case, I think simpler would have been better. Stripping out some of the needless camera angles and the slow-mo would make it to focus on Kill Team's strengths, like the fact that it's impressively fun to annihilate a horde of Orks with a rocket launcher. As it is, Kill Team is a reasonably fun promotional vehicle for Space Marine, but a sloppy one.

Most twin stick shooters are good fun for a while, and this is no exception. Cutting down orks with constant streams of bullets is definitely entertaining, especially with a friend. It provides terribly little variation though, and you won't be sad when it's over.

Unfortunately the only thing that differentiates Kill Team from other twin-stick shooters is the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game is very short and you can find fault in its every element. [August 2011, p.72]

It works. And you can kill some stuff. But that's about the only positive things I can say about it.

Quotation forthcoming.