War Hammer 40k Martyr How to Fight Bosses Again
Every Warhammer xl,000 game, ranked
PC Gamer Ranked are our ridiculously comprehensive lists of the best, worst, and everything in-between from every corner of PC gaming.
The showtime edition of tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000 in 1987 nailed the setting's tone right away. It described humanity'southward futurity in bleak terms, summing up what information technology's like to be a citizen of the Imperium like this: "To be a human being in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable."
The dorsum encompass blurb was no less pessimistic. "There is no time for Peace," information technology declared. "No respite, No forgiveness. At that place is only State of war."
Though ofttimes balanced by a tongue-in-cheek sense of the cool, the diverse adaptations of Warhammer 40,000 that followed delighted in its grimness. In the board game Space Hulk, doomed infinite marines are beamed onto derelict craft in oversized power armor and so hunted by aliens through corridors they can barely turn around in. In the Eisenhorn novels, an Majestic Inquisitor, so scarred by torture he loses the power to smiling, makes compromise after compromise until he's indistinguishable from those he hunts. In the miniatures game Necromunda, the underclass at the bottom of the hive metropolis live on a nutrition of mould, rats, and food made from the recycled dead. You lot tin practically hear the writers striving to outdo each other.
At their best, videogames have taken the same glee in depicting this baroque world, its cursed inhabitants, and their atrocious fates. At other times they seem more similar the cyberpunk Cool Future meme with ability armor on. And in that location are a lot of them. They tin't all be winners.
The Criteria
Number of entries: 44. New and altered entries in the latest update are marked 💀.
What'due south included: Every Warhammer 40,000 game on PC, including those in the Horus Heresy setting, which rewinds the clock 10,000 years to depict the downfall of the Imperium and how information technology got so messed up.
What'south not included: Games that were cancelled before full release like the MOBA Night Nexus Loonshit, which was briefly available in Early on Admission. Standalone expansions like Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and Inquisitor—Prophecy are considered part of the original game, similar regular expansions. Games in the Former World and Age of Sigmar settings are in a separate ranking of every Warhammer Fantasy game.
And at present: Every Warhammer 40,000 game, ranked from worst to best.
44. Carnage Champions (2016)
Roadhouse Games
Carnage was a sidescrolling autorunner, Canabalt with a thunder hammer and a heavy metallic soundtrack. At some point the server was taken offline and now this game—this entirely singleplayer game, I should note—no longer runs whether yous got the costless-to-play mobile version or paid actual coin for the now-delisted Steam version. This, evidently, sucks.
43. Kill Team (2014)
Nomad Games/Sega
Steam
No relation to the tabletop game called Kill Team that lets you play 40K on a upkeep, this is a twin-stick shooter made with repackaged assets courtesy of Relic's Dawn of War two and Infinite Marine. The co-op is local only, which is a shame, and checkpoints before boss introductions are always annoying, but what really sinks it is the camera consistently swinging into the worst positions. You'll be staring at some pipes and a gantry while 15 orks shout the same recycled "Waaagh!" and murder you somewhere in the black taking upwardly the rest of your screen.
42. Talisman: The Horus Heresy (2016)
Nomad Games
Games Workshop released the commencement version of Talisman: The Magical Quest Game in 1983. It was a race-to-the-centre board game, half of which you lot spent finding a talisman to let yous admission the middle of the board, and the other one-half non letting someone else steal information technology from y'all. Even if the other players didn't elevate you down, the luck of the cards and dice would. Information technology was fantasy Snakes & Ladders with PvP.
This videogame reskins it with The Horus Heresy, a prequel setting 10,000 years in 40K's past that'southward been the basis for a huge amount of novels, some of which are actually good. It's an even more desperate and serious version of Warhammer 40,000, completely at odds with a chaotic beer-and-pretzels game nearly chucking die and laughing at your latest misfortune. In the original board game players got turned into toads on the regular. In Talisman: The Horus Heresy someone might find a card that gives them +1 to the Resource stat and consider it an heady plow.
41. Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels (1996)
Krisalis/Electronic Arts
This was the second attempt at adapting the board game Space Hulk, and the worst. It's a first-person shooter where you get to control a squad, except the first six missions of the campaign don't actually let you. Once you do accept command, it'due south just pausing to driblet commands on the map, which is both less innovative than its 1993 predecessor with its realtime/plow-based combo and less satisfying than having total control over them.
The large problem with Vengeance of the Blood Angels is that it came out when 3D graphics and CD audio were new and experimental and rarely any proficient. Everything's stuttery and enemies awkwardly pop into rendered CG when they're close enough for a melee animation. The marines are chatty, only their dialogue is stitched together from samples. The way they bark "SAPHON / search this area for / AN ARCHIVED Tape" and "I oasis't found / AN ARCHIVED Tape" at each other will make y'all long for their expiry, especially when BETH-OR! shouts his name with the same cadency every time he'south selected. Information technology's entirely charmless, and not worth setting upwardly the virtual machine you'll need to get it running today.
40. Space Wolf (2017)
HeroCraft PC
Steam
40K + XCOM is such an obvious idea the Steam Workshop is full of mods for XCOM 2 that combine the ii. Games that attempt the aforementioned have been a mixed pocketbook. Space Wolf looks the part, even zooming in on dramatic attacks just like XCOM does, simply it doesn't play the office as well.
The levels are tiny, which makes weapon ranges weird—a boltgun is only able to shoot four squares—and when new enemies spawn they're immediately next to yous. Plus, every character has a deck of cards and the only manner to attack is to play 1 of the weapon cards you've randomly drawn. Your marine can shoot a plasma gun when he'due south got the card for information technology, and then simply forget it exists until yous draw another plasma gun bill of fare. Depending on the luck of the depict, in the concurrently he might suddenly have three dissimilar heavy weapons, somehow pulling them out of nowhere like they're in a purse of property.
39. Storm of Vengeance (2014)
Eutechnyx
Tempest of Vengeance is a lane defence game, sort of like Plants vs. Zombies only instead of spending sunshine to grow plants you're spending redemption points to make Night Angels pop out of their drop pods. Really, what it's more than like is Ninja Cats vs Samurai Dogs, an earlier game from Eutechnyx. Tempest of Vengeance is the same game, only with a progression tree so y'all can unlock frag grenades, a multiplayer mode, and 3D models of orks and infinite marines where the ninja cats and samurai dogs used to exist.
💀 38. Battle Sister (2020/2021)
Pixel Toys
Oculus Quest (2020) | Oculus Rift (2021)
The first VR-exclusive 40K game is a disappointment. Impressive every bit it is to have that sense of presence, whether you're poking effectually a starship or looking upwards at a space marine, it's a rudimentary corridor shooter. Plus, the concrete controls for everything from throwing grenades to holstering weapons are unreliable, and when that gets you killed in one of the levels with a savepoint on the wrong side of a tutorial or an elevator ride? That's unforgivable.
37. Dawn of War iii (2017)
Relic/Sega
Steam
If yous like the kind of RTS where you manufacture a huge corporeality of troops then drag them together in a glorious blob, the first Dawn of State of war is for you lot. If yous adopt a scattering of units and heroes with their own special abilities to carefully manage, that is Dawn of State of war 2'south whole deal. Dawn of War 3 tries to divide the difference, and information technology'due south an awkward compromise. Elites all have different things they tin practise and some of your units take an ability or ii, but there are long stretches where it feels like you should exist using them still in that location's nil for you to do.
In the story campaign yous alternate between marines, orks, and eldar ane mission at a fourth dimension, never playing whatsoever 1 group for long enough to go comfortable with them—about every level feeling like a reintroduction of abilities and tech information technology expects you to have forgotten, as if the tutorial never ends. While the commencement 2 games are divisive and there are enough of passionate defenders of each, Dawn of War 3 didn't end upwardly highly-seasoned to anyone.
36. Fire Warrior (2003)
Kuju/Chilled Mouse
GOG
There are surprisingly few 40K first-person shooters, and not many games where y'all get to be the T'au, the mech-loving weebs of the setting. Burn down Warrior isn't nigh mechs, however. Information technology's a corridor shooter ported over from the PlayStation two, a fine console that didn't have a single decent FPS to its name. (Red Faction fans, y'all're kidding yourselves.)
You'll have to turn auto-aim on to fix the busted mouse controls in Fire Warrior, merely nil volition fix the tiresome guns or unreactive enemies. Two things elevate it, however. One is that the showtime time you have to fight a space marine he seems deadline unstoppable in a fashion that feels right, and the second is that Tom Baker recorded some glorious narration for the intro.
35. Eisenhorn: Xenos (2016)
Pixel Hero Games
The Eisenhorn novels are some of the amend 40K books, hard-boiled Raymond Chandler detective stories almost an inquisitor who finds himself making trade-offs with his principles while he hunts heretics and slowly comes to grips with the Inquisition'south corruption. This adaptation of the first volume did ane thing right by casting Marking Strong equally Eisenhorn. He'southward perfect, but the vox management is weak and every cutscene is total of characters at wildly unlike levels of intensity.
Between the story $.25 is a mish-mash of third-person combat, collectible hunts, hacking minigames, that affair where you spin clues around to examine them—a bundle of features lifted from other games and artlessly glued together to fill the gaps. Information technology feels like the kind of budget pic tie-in game that used to be commonplace, only this time it's a book necktie-in.
34. The Horus Heresy: Betrayal at Calth (2020)
Steel Wool Studios
Steam
In that location are plenty of turn-based 40K games virtually squads of space marines jogging from hex to hex, but what makes Expose at Calth different is its viewpoint. You command from the perspective of a servo-skull, a camera that swoops around the battleground and lets you appreciate the compages of the Horus Heresy-era up close. Y'all can even play in VR.
Information technology'south a cool idea. Unfortunately, you tin experience where the coin ran out. A limited number of unit barks repeat (ofttimes from a different direction to the acting unit), some weapons accept animations while others don't, and the mission objectives occasionally leave out details you need to know. Information technology started in Early Access and clearly didn't brand plenty coin to keep it there until it was done. It's out now with a version number on information technology, but it doesn't feel finished.
33. Warhammer Combat Cards (2021)
Well Played Games/The Phoenix Lighthouse
Steam | Microsoft Store
In 1998 Games Workshop released collectible cards with photos of Warhammer miniatures that had stats and then y'all could play a rudimentary Elevation Trumps kind of game with them. Information technology went through several iterations, and the 2022 version became a complimentary-to-play videogame with painted 40K miniatures on the cards.
Don't await Magic: The Gathering. Yous build a deck of one warlord and a parcel of bodyguards, keeping iii of them in play, replacing bodyguards as they dice. Each turn you lot cull whether to brand a ranged, melee, or psychic attack and the relevant numbers get added up and damage exchanged. Tactical choice comes via buffs to the attacks you don't choose (which can pay off in later turns), and deciding when to play your warlord (a powerful card whose death ways you lose).
Oddly, the just PvP is inside your association and mostly you lot play confronting AI that uses other players' decks. Not that Warhammer Combat Cards tells you this, or much of anything else. Expert luck trying to join a clan fifty-fifty after you've leveled-upwards the appropriate amount, thanks to a designed-for-mobile interface.
32. Inquisitor—Martyr (2018)
NeocoreGames
Steam | Microsoft Store
Inquisitor—Martyr is pulling in three directions at one time. It's a game near being an Inquisitor, investigating the mysteries of the Caligari Sector, chief among them a ghost ship called the Martyr. It'southward also an action-RPG, which means if it goes for more than than 5 minutes without a fight something's wrong, and among the most of import qualities your heretic-hunting infinite detective genius possesses are their bonus to crit damage and the quality of their loot. Finally, it's a live-service game with shifting seasonal content, global events, express-duration vendors, daily quests, heroic deeds, no offline mode, and the expectation you'll replay samey missions for hundreds of hours every time in that location's a content update.
The activity-RPG office is OK, Diablo with guns, merely it doesn't mesh with the residuum. Why would an Inquisitor spend so much fourth dimension crafting new gear? Why do I need to collect a different color of shards every fourth dimension there's a new "Void Crusade"? Every game wants me to collect shards of something and I'1000 just and then tired.
31. Adeptus Titanicus: Dominus (2021)
Membraine Studios
Steam | GOG
Calibration is important in a setting where billions die and nobody blinks. Mechs can't but be mechs in 40K. They're titans, god-machines up to 100-feet tall that stomp through fancy gothic megacathedrals without slowing downward.
Dominus pits maniples of titans belonging to the Imperium and Chaos against each other in turn-based combat. You order a titan to move and a hologram appears at its end position; you lot choose who it'due south going to target and color-coded projections testify which weapons will exist in range. You commit and the titan spends 10 seconds stomping to its endpoint, firing continuously the entire time—simply spaffing out barrages of missiles and lasers while walking through buildings.
You become a lot of odd-looking turns where most of the shooting is at impenetrable rocks that happen to exist betwixt titans, which isn't helped by the AI's trend to shoot when information technology has no adventure of hit, or the cinematic camera's tendency to clip inside mountains. Another oddity: you don't plot out moves merely simply pick where to finish. Sometimes you lot'll select a position within the movement radius and the hologram will instead appear on the opposite side of where you started because patently y'all need to become the long way round and don't have enough movement later on all.
Some missions requite yous a fresh maniple, but partway through the campaign all of a sudden half the missions have to exist completed with the titans that survived the previous 1, a fact Dominus doesn't bother to tell you lot.
xxx. Chaos Gate (1998)
Random Games/SSI
GOG
A squad tactics game reminiscent of Jagged Alliance or X-COM, but with less of a strategy layer. If the specific flavor of original X-COM is more to your liking than modern, hyphen-less XCOM then Chaos Gate may be your thing, only it does lack enemy variety. You're up confronting the forces of Chaos, which ways Chaos Cultists, Traitor Marines, and one-half-a-dozen varieties of daemon. Meanwhile y'all're in charge of the Ultramarines, and while you tin can rename your troops and assign a limited number of heavy weapons per squad, after a while every boxing feels the same. They drag on also, thanks to the Traitor Marines who litter most maps being able to survive multiple krak grenades and heavy bolter rounds.
29. Sanctus Attain (2017)
Straylight Entertainment/Slitherine
Steam | GOG
The classic hex-and-counter wargame Panzer General has inspired a lot of 40K games, and Sanctus Reach, which pits Space Wolves against orks, is certainly one of them. It's bang-up, simply it is basic. The objectives are oft just capturing or defending victory points and only after iii levels of those will yous go something different like an escort mission or something, the story's a paragraph of text between maps, there'due south no strategy layer, and everything on the presentation side, from unit of measurement types to blitheness to level furniture, feels like the absolute minimum, where 40K should be all near maximalism. Other games practice this identical matter better.
28. Gladius—Relics of War (2018)
Proxy Studios/Slitherine
Steam | GOG | Epic
Take Culture five (or maybe Warlock: The Exiled, or Historic period of Wonders), then remove the diplomacy and then it'southward all about war. Add together some inspiration from RTS base-building, with carve up barracks for infantry and vehicles around your metropolis, and then add heroes who level up and proceeds some quite Warcraft 3 abilities on top of that. Gladius is an intriguing strategy game Frankenstein, but it's got issues.
On enemy turns information technology'll show a random battle happening to an ally rather than your own troops being slaughtered. There's a storyline scattered about in quests, but to get anywhere with them you accept to play an artificially long game or you'll defeat all the enemies and win by conquest earlier uncovering any of the tantalizing secrets it hints at. Finally, even with wild fauna turned downward to Very Low, the early turns of every game are spent fighting alien dogs and bugs and floating mind-control jellyfish for manner too long before actually going to war with the other factions.
27. Space Hulk: Deathwing (2016)
Streum On Studio/Focus Dwelling Interactive
Steam | GOG | Microsoft Store
A multiplayer co-op FPS, Deathwing is Left iv Expressionless with genestealers. Although information technology launched in a terribly buggy and unoptimized country, an enhanced edition rerelease fixed some of its worst problems. At present it's a competent claustrophobic multiplayer game where you tin dress upwardly your terminators real fancy. As a singleplayer feel information technology's permit downwards past daft AI, and fifty-fifty with friends y'all'll have to overlook whiffy melee weapons and shooting that feels more like you're turning on a hose than opening up with a marker-2 tempest bolter.
26. Infinite Crusade (1992)
Gremlin Interactive
Milton Bradley'southward follow-upwards to HeroQuest was a version of Warhammer xl,000 for ages 10 to adult, and Gremlin Interactive were in one case over again responsible for the videogame. Like the adaptation of HeroQuest, information technology'southward a pretty straight replication—although for some reason the genestealers accept been replaced past dissimilar aliens called "soulsuckers."
It'due south quite slow-paced and you have to cull between music or cheerfully rinky-dink sound effects because it tin can't exercise both at once, and of course information technology's lacking the board game's slick miniatures and card art. Nostalgia's a powerful thing though, and I adore these goofy pixel space marines.
25. Space Hulk (2013)
Total Control
This was our outset await into the grim darkness of a well-nigh time to come where there are simply PC ports of 40K games made for tablets. Infinite Hulk comes with all the limitations you'd expect from a game designed to run on an iPad Mini. This fine if unambitious version of the lath game plays the same limited animations over and over, whether it'south sprays of blood that appear sort of around genestealers every bit they're shot, or three blood-red lines actualization in mid-air to mark a terminator falling to their claws. The manner genestealers of a sudden transform into a pair of bleeding leg-stumps when hit by an assault cannon is unintentionally hilarious.
Thanks to some patched-in improvements, like the ability to speed upward terminators and then your turns don't take forever, this take on Space Hulk ended up OK if all you want is a version of the board game with a singleplayer mode where y'all're the infinite marines.
24. Space Hulk Ascension (2014)
Full Command
After the negative response to the PC version of their previous Space Hulk game, Full Control retooled it into Ascension, giving information technology a welcome visual upgrade and customizable marines. More divisively it plays less like a board game, with reduced randomness, an upgrade system based on feel points, and tweaks to the fashion weapons piece of work. Storm bolters proceeds heat when fired and jam when it maxes out, and instead of just filling an unabridged room or corridor with fire, the flamethrower has multiple modes of spray. And to make it look less like a board game there'due south fog of war, rendering the map dark beyond a tiny zone of vision. Some of the changes are fussy and don't add much, but it'south a slight comeback overall.
23. Dakka Squadron (2021)
Phosphor Game Studios
Steam | GOG
Non many 40K games let you lot play aliens, merely Dakka Squadron isn't just a game that lets you exist an ork, information technology's committed to the flake. This is arcade aerial combat if Star Fob was violently Cockney and everything was soundtracked by wailing deedly-deedly guitar and shouts of "Dakka dakka dakka!"
It's peradventure a bit too orky. Multiplayer is orks versus orks, and then is most of the singleplayer, though eventually you lot go to shoot downwards some Adeptus Mechanicus craft that look similar flying boxes full of lasers, a few of the necrons' tin death croissants, and so on. More often than not though it'south endless orks in World War II fighter jets with nose-mounted spikes laughing every bit they krump each other.
Missions drag on, with wave after moving ridge of enemies and the same combat barks as you shoot them down, simply fortunately a three-lives system was patched in and then you lot don't accept to re-do an unabridged mission because yous got krumped at the finish. I did plow down the guitars, though.
22. The Horus Heresy: Legions (2019)
Everguild Ltd.
Steam
It's the Horus Heresy era again, only this fourth dimension in the grade of a free-to-play collectible card game. Though it plays a lot like them information technology'due south not equally flashy as the large names in the genre, with the quality of the card art being all over the place. But if y'all've got the time or money it'southward a solid enough example of the form, and if you've read the books and the phrase "the Fall of Isstvan III" makes yous feel like a 19th century French campaigner hearing the word "Waterloo," and so in that location's a stirring singleplayer campaign that volition permit you feel that in bill of fare game form.
21. Freeblade (2017)
Pixel Toys
Microsoft Store
I went into this with depression expectations. A free-to-play adaptation of a mobile game, complete with loot boxes and multiple currencies and all that jazz? Just Freeblade scores points for letting yous play an Imperial Knight, a mech that's bigger than a house, and letting yous color and customize your walker like you're choosing paints and decals for a miniature. It's a simple rail shooter, basically a version of Time Crisis where you're the size of Godzilla, and improve than I thought information technology would be.
xx. Aeronautica Imperialis: Flight Command (2020)
Binary Planets/Light-green Man Gaming Publishing
Steam
When your ace pilots in Aeronautica Imperialis: Flying Command boot the bucket, shot down past ork fighters in rustbucket planes fabricated out of scrap in a cavern, a commander slides onto the between-mission screen. "Your pilot numbers are depleted," she says, "You may call on reserves." At that place's no judgment in this considering every randomly generated pilot is entirely disposable.
Flight Command is an aerial-gainsay simulator where y'all program your planes with maneuvers and then watch 10 seconds of dogfighting play out in real-time. It'due south somewhere between Sid Meier's Ace Gainsay and the simultaneous turns of Frozen Synapse. Those 10 seconds contain a bewildering corporeality of stuff, as one plane powerdives to avert an attack from backside, another explodes, and i of your pilots pulls off a loftier-Chiliad turn then blacks out. Switching to theater mode, which lets y'all see all this at once rather than post-obit each airplane pilot in plough, makes it easier, though I could do with a simple fashion to scrub the timeline back and along.
Planes tin can switch loadouts if you remove the default missiles, and pilots might gain skills if they shoot down plenty enemies, only one fighter is much like some other. Even tiptop guns are replaceable in 40K.
xix. Legacy of Dorn: Herald of Oblivion (2015)
Tin can Homo Games
Games Workshop published several pick-a-path gamebooks under the Path to Victory label, and this ane was turned into a visual novel. If you ever read the kind of Fighting Fantasy/Lone Wolf/choose-your-own-adventure books that declared, "YOU can be the hero," that's what this is, only YOU are a lone space marine cut off from his squad on a space hulk, striving to observe your battle-brothers.
Legacy of Dorn really gets across the oddness of a send made out of the fused remains of multiple wrecks, and equally you explore each department feels distinct, whether fungal and orkoid or sanctified by the Sisters of Boxing. The turn-based combat is nothing to write home nearly, but the difficulty options include the ability to skip the boring fights and cheat as if yous're leaving your fingers in the pages, every bit is only right.
18. Regicide (2015)
Hammerfall
Steam
Have chess, but brand it 40K. That'southward Regicide, which yous can play in classic manner using the boring rules of existent chess, or in Regicide mode, which adds an initiative stage after every turn where pawns shoot boltguns and queens launch psychic lightning. While taking a piece the usual way is an instakill, consummate with gorey duels reminiscent of Battle Chess, attacks in the initiative stage flake away at the hit points of your target. At first it feels similar regular chess, only focus fire and combine the right abilities and you'll soon remove a bishop from across the board. It feels similar cheating in the best way, like you have outsmarted the centuries-erstwhile game of chess itself.
There's a story mode, only some of its puzzle matches can grind to annoying stalemate halts. Stick to skirmish play and Regicide does a better job with its ridiculous concept than you might think.
17. Eternal Crusade (2017)
Behaviour Interactive Inc.
Steam
Initially billed as a Planetside-esque MMO with a persistent world for players to fight over, Eternal Cause was scaled downward in development. What eventually released was a lobby shooter that took the multiplayer combat from Relic'south Space Marine and added vehicles, eldar and orks, also as a branch PvE manner where 4 players accept on tyranids.
Players who'd bought in early on were disappointed at the reduction, simply hither'due south the thing: Relic'due south Space Marine was bang-up, and then was its multiplayer. Building on that with missions where you might be defending a fortress while other players tried to blast through its gate in Predator tanks, or hovering over victory points as an eldar swooping militarist, made for some thrilling battles. Hardly anybody gave information technology a chance though, and even after being released for free it's notwithstanding nigh empty. If you tin can get together some people or luck into a friction match, Eternal Crusade is better than its reputation.
xvi. Deathwatch—Enhanced Edition (2015)
Rodeo Games
Steam
The Deathwatch are elite conflicting-busting marines who draw their recruits from other capacity, and this turn-based tactics game gives you command of a squad of them. Yous tin can have a Space Wolf and a Blood Angel and an Ultramarine, all hunting tyranids next.
Deathwatch is another game originally made for tablet, which you tin can tell by the fashion you get new wargear and marines out of random packs with lootbox sparkle, though they're earned through play rather than microtransactions. This Enhanced Edition for PC remastered the original's graphics and gave it a mouse-and-keyboard UI, though information technology could practice with tooltips for the many buff icons each marine ends upwards with. If yous want a budget version of a Firaxis-style XCOM merely with space marines, information technology's a decent option.
15. Necromunda: Underhive Wars (2020)
Rogue Factor/Focus Home Interactive
Steam | Microsoft Store
Hive cities cram billions of people into illustrations of the class arrangement someone drew winged skulls on. At the bottom of the hive, gangs who work for mid-level Houses fight over scavenger rights and who has the coolest mohawk.
Underhive Wars is another turn-based tactics game that isn't content to copy XCOM and instead has to go and mess with it. Every map'southward covered in ziplines and elevators, and gangers have enough movement to whip upward and downwards them. Seen in over-the-shoulder third-person, the AI's moves are often baffling. Gangers run past enemies they could attack, deploy buffs for opaque reasons, pick up mission objectives then end their turn exposed, sometimes just jog on the spot for a bit.
And even so, if you lot ditch the story campaign afterwards the intro missions and get stuck into the procedurally generated Operations mode, there's a fun game hither. Though each gang has admission to the same classes, gear, and simply slightly dissimilar skills, over the course of an countless war of territorial pissing they feel like your own. Customization makes your leather-fetish wrestlers or leopard-print amazons look rad every bit hell, and successive injuries, bionic implants, and limb replacements plough them into individuals with stories.
14. The Horus Heresy: Battle of Tallarn (2017)
HexWar Games
HexWar Games has its own take on the Panzer General serial called Tank Battle, with multiple iterations similar Tank Battle: 1944 and Tank Boxing: 1945. Battle of Tallarn reskins the WWII game to be virtually the largest tank confrontation of the Horus Heresy era. It'due south essentially Tank Battle: 30,000.
It'southward a especially rock-paper-pair of scissors wargame, with tanks, infantry, fliers, walkers and titans every bit counters to each other in specific situations, and terrain that's either dissentious, difficult-stopping, crossable just past fiers, or encompass but only for infantry. Similar all the Horus Heresy games and books it demands a dedication to the fictional history of Warhammer xl,000 as passionate as any WWII nut to become the most out of information technology, but if that'south you then you probably already know Boxing of Tallarn and are humming the theme tune right at present.
13. Armageddon (2014)
Flashback Games/The Lordz Games Studio/Slitherine
Steam | GOG
Another take on the Panzer General turn-based hexgrid wargame, Armageddon is assault a hive world and then polluted it's all fire wastes, lava canyons, and acid rivers, which the armies of the Imperium have to defend from hordes of orks. Each scenario is a puzzle where you'll have to make up one's mind whether to separate your battlegroups or unite them in a single wedge, lock downwards the bridges or move into the bombed-out buildings, scout ahead with walkers or fliers, so on.
At that place'south DLC for various other conflicts that have played out on the well-named planet Armageddon, merely skip the expandalone called Da Orks, which lets y'all feel the other side of the conflict. Instead of handing you lot control of a horde it makes you play a counterbalanced strength that feels like a green reskin of the humies.
12. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (2016)
Tindalos Interactive/Focus Dwelling Interactive
Steam | GOG | Microsoft Shop
The Imperial spacecraft of Warhammer 40,000 are one of its most distinctive elements. Each one looks like someone painted Westminster Abbey blackness, chucked a prow on the terminate, and hooked it off into deep space. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada is an RTS where these stately, miles-long ships swing about on a 2d plane that emulates both a tabletop and the ocean. They do battle similar information technology'south the historic period of sheet, complete with broadsides and boarding deportment, though troops insert via torpedo rather than swinging over on a rope with knives between their teeth.
The other thing about Battlefleet Gothic: Armada that feels like the historic period of sail is the fourth dimension scale. Even with the speed set to its fastest, getting into position at the start of an engagement takes a off-white old while. And then by the time the fleets make contact, at that place'south so much micromanagement it can feel overwhelming even slowed down. It'due south deliberately paced this way, tempting you into mistakes and collisions that will cost you a uppercase ship with the population of a urban center inside it.
xi. Necromunda: Hired Gun (2021)
Streum On Studio/Focus Habitation Interactive
Steam | GOG
A singleplayer FPS that'south part looter-shooter, where yous'll discover a bolter and v minutes later bandy information technology for a lasrifle because information technology'southward a college rarity tier. It'south besides a movement-shooter, with wall-running, dashing, sliding, a grapnel, and augmetics that let y'all double-jump, slow downwardly fourth dimension, and more. Fifty-fifty your canis familiaris has an upgrade tree. Each fight's a high-speed nil around a huge environment, abusing automatic takedowns for a window of invincibility and some wellness.
That said, the animations often await garbage and sometimes the whole matter breaks. There'south a nonsense story that expects you to take read all the Kal Jerico comics (I have), and cared (I didn't). Side missions, which increase your rep with factions including genestealers and Anarchy cults, are separated by difficulty grade—but some are always hard and others, where you can ignore the incessantly spawning enemies to zipline around completing objectives, are ever easy.
And yet, it's really fun. The combat'due south hectic, and y'all stop up with so many abilities it'south similar Borderlands only yous're playing all the classes at in one case. Every level is a perfect evocation of the setting, whether corpse-grinding mill or maglev megatrain, with dead-donkey servitors controlling doors, cargo ships, and even the bounty board. I of the villains looks like Marie Antoinette gone Mad Max. If you like 40K plenty to read this list, yous'll probably like Hired Gun.
💀 10. Battlesector (2021)
Blackness Lab Games/Slitherine
Steam | GOG | Ballsy
When I wrote nearly Sanctus Reach, I said other games exercise what it does amend. That was earlier Battlesector came out, just information technology's a perfect example. It'due south the same kind of mid-sized plow-based tactics game where you control squads and vehicles rather than a scattering of individuals or massive armies, simply what Battlesector gets correct is that information technology gives troops personality.
That's thanks to a momentum system that rewards y'all for playing to type, with bloodthirsty Blood Angels scoring points for killing enemies shut enough to see the whites of their eyes, the swarming tyranids for staying within range of a hive leader, and the sadomasochistic Sisters of Boxing for taking damage as well every bit dealing it. It would be even better with some kind of veterancy system for squads rather than just HQ units, but Battlesector remains a cut above.
nine. Rites of War (1999)
DreamForge/SSI
GOG
There are other Panzer Full general-alikes with 40K trappings, only this one was straight-up made in the Panzer General ii engine. It's got the tactical depth y'all want thank you to a collection of pixel units who all work slightly differently, with every turn a stream-of-consciousness where you're thinking things like, "If I attack this guy the heavy weapons volition be able to support, but the jetbikes are in cover so they tin can make a popular-up attack, but and then there's a unit of measurement who tin set on and fall back in the same turn..."
The campaign lets you play as the eldar, colorful but rock-faced murder elves with psychic powers and a weapon that unspools a long monofilament wire inside your poor enemy'due south torso to reduce their organs to soup. They can summon an incarnation of their war god inside a shell of superheated atomic number 26, and they charge into boxing wearing harlequin pants. It'due south a law-breaking more 40K games aren't about them instead of the same iv capacity of infinite marines every time.
eight. Space Hulk (1993)
Electronic Arts
The first of the many attempts to plow the Space Blob board game into a videogame remains ane of the best for two reasons. An innovative freeze-time mechanic lets you transition into turn-based mode where you can motility your five infinite marine terminators effectually like you were playing on a tabletop—but gives you a timer. When it runs out, you have to play in existent-time, billowy between them in first-person and the map to keep your squad alive while genestealers boil out of the walls. Manage that for long plenty and y'all earn more than freeze-time, and the relief of switching back is intense.
The other thing it gets right is the atmosphere. Spinning wall fans chunk away, unknowable alien sounds echo down the corridors, and somewhere in the distance there's a scream. When marines dice their screen goes to static, fuzzing out one by one. Plenty of videogames have been inspired past Aliens, only few of them practise the panicky "game over, man, game over" moment as well equally this. It's brutally difficult, simply that's considering it's not actually a strategy game—it's horror.
(You'll need DOSBox to play Space Hulk today and it doesn't similar version 0.74 for some reason, so download DOSBox-0.73 instead.)
vii. Battlefleet Gothic: Fleet 2 (2019)
Tindalos Interactive/Focus Habitation Interactive
Steam | GOG | Microsoft Store
In the 40K universe faster-than-light travel is made possible by briefly hopping over to a universe next door called Warpspace, where distances are contracted. The downside to Warpspace is that it'south inhabited by the Ruinous Powers of Anarchy, gods who correspond and are fueled by the dark urges of mortals. Anarchy wants to spill out of the Warp into realspace, and when they exercise yous get places like the Heart of Terror, a hellish overlap at the edge of the milky way. Near its border is the Regal world Cadia, a bastion that stood firm confronting multiple excursions led past the forces of Chaos—until the 13th Blackness Crusade, when Abaddon the Despoiler crashed a gigantic alien starfortress into information technology.
This happens several minutes into Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ii while you lot're playing the prologue campaign. It'due south a hell of a spectacle. This sequel improves diverse small things most the spacefleet RTS game, adds campaigns from the perspective of the insectile tyranids and Egyptian robot necrons, and leaves its core of second sailing ship combat intact. The one large thing it changes is that sense of spectacle, understanding what nosotros desire to encounter is entire worlds falling and a galaxy in flames.
six. Dawn of War two (2009)
Relic Entertainment/THQ/Sega
Steam
Where the commencement Dawn of War is about masses of tanks and a screen full of lasers, Dawn of War two gives yous just four badasses, maybe viii replaceable squadmates, and a bunch of special abilities. It's not nigh researching at your base of operations until you've put together an unstoppable force—nigh missions brainstorm with you lot falling out of the heaven, sometimes squashing a few enemies, and then it's on. A typical boxing involves parking the heavy weapons and sniper in cover, charging in with your commander, then telling the assault team to jump-pack over the peak. Afterwards that information technology's a matter of setting off abilities equally they come off absurd-down.
The dominate fights can be chores, but maps where you're on the defensive, outnumbered by hordes of tyranids or whatsoever, are fantabulous—both in singleplayer and the Last Stand, a three-actor mode with waves of enemies and unlockable wargear. In a fair and only universe the Last Stand up was more popular than Defense of the Ancients and inspired a whole genre and MOBAs don't suck.
The Top 5
v. Last Liberation: Ballsy 40,000 (1997)
Holistic Pattern/SSI
GOG
"Ballsy" is correct. Final Liberation is a strategy game that gets the scale of conflict in the 41st millennium spot on, with a mixed force of Regal Guard and Ultramarines having to not simply pool their forces, only then unearth an entire lost legion of titans to repel an ork invasion on a planetary scale. The orks are faster and brutishly hard to put down in hand-to-hand, just yous accept artillery on your side and, as the Tyrant of Badab said, "Big guns never tire."
Every plough is a cautious advance, trying to keep the speed freeks away from your bombards and flatten buildings with thudd guns just in case orks are about to pop out of them, while staying the hell away from the gut buster mega-cannon that obscenely juts out of the gargant'south undercarriage.
The peak of the 40K games to come out of the 1990s, Final Liberation has two extremely 1990s things about information technology. The commencement is its heavy metal soundtrack, and the second its FMV cutscenes. Both are cheesy in exactly the right manner, clearly being taken seriously past people unconcerned with the ridiculousness of what they're doing.
4. Space Hulk Tactics (2018)
Cyanide Studio | Focus Home Interactive
Steam | Microsoft Shop
Criminally underrated because information technology came out after a cord of middling games with the words Space Hulk in the name, Tactics is the best of them. It'due south an adaptation of the board game that understands what makes it fun—the asymmetry of v clunky walking tanks pitted against limitless numbers of speedy melee monsters—and as well understands that it's even more fun if you lot can play either. Tactics has an entire genestealer entrada, and finally getting to exist the aliens is a blast. It doesn't skimp on the marine side either, and the AI plays genestealers like a tabletop actor would, lurking around corners until enough gribblies have gathered to charge an overwatching marine en masse, knowing his bolter's going to jam somewhen.
Where Space Hulk Tactics makes additions to the board game's rules, similar cards that requite unmarried-utilize bonuses, and a maze-similar map of the blob to explore, they're well-balanced and complement the base. In fact, they feel like they could be from one of Games Workshop'south own expansions to the original. While you lot tin can control from get-go-person for that 1993 Space Hulk experience, played in isometric view this is finally the XCOM-but-with-infinite-marines everyone wanted.
3. Space Marine (2011)
Relic/THQ/Sega
Steam
During the nighttime heyday of the tertiary-person cover shooter, Space Marine was a revelation. Why would an armored superhuman demand to crouch behind a waist-high wall? Space Marine isn't having a bar of that. You regain health past killing bad guys upwardly close, charging forward with your chainsword or slamming down out of the heaven cheers to the all-time jetpack ever. Each fight reminds you this is what y'all're genetically engineered to do, and early in that location'southward a serenity moment where you lot enter an Majestic Guard base of operations and wounded soldiers several anxiety shorter than you look upwards in awe. Information technology nails the fantasy of being a space marine.
Specifically, of being Captain Titus of the Ultramarines (voiced by Mark Stiff, a man born 39 millennia too early). The Ultramarines are the affiliate of choice for 40K videogames considering they stick to the book. They aren't similar the Space Wolves with their fangs and Viking schtick, or the Claret Angels and their periodic descent into the Black Rage. You don't have to explain anything extra to an audience who don't know the setting with the Ultramarines. Because they're boring.
Space Marine lets them be wearisome so Titus has something to rebel against. His brothers follow tactics from ancient tomes. Titus jumps out of a spaceship to fight orks across the deck of a flying pirate ship—and that's the tutorial.
2. Mechanicus (2018)
Barrier Studios/Kasedo Games
Steam | GOG
What Space Marine did for the third-person shooter, Mechanicus does for plough-based squad tactics. Your band of Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priests don't need cover. They've got disposable cannon fodder instead, servitors and skitarii soldiers to soak up the necron lasers. Those predictable enemies will only attack the closest target, and that closest target should be a replaceable cyberzombie rather than one of your leveled-up tech-priests.
The psychologically aberrant scientists of the AdMech see everything as a learning opportunity, and while their subordinates are dying they're off examining the architecture and sending servo-skulls to audit alien glyphs, all of which gives you cognition points. These can be spent on extra motility or activating special abilities, and when you defeat a necron yous get more of them, with a bonus for reaching the corpse inside a plough to stand over them creepily watching the light in their bogus eyes get out. For scientific discipline.
Spend those points right and you lot snowball, catastrophe each plow in the right spot to earn more. Your robed worshippers of the Auto God null around the necron tomb they're investigating with a force axe in one hand and a data tablet in the other, six more Doctor Octopus cyberlimbs whipping around just for fun. The AdMech usually show up as support in other games, but hither they're the stars and everything from the way the mechanics accentuate their oddity, to the droning music, to the mechanical garble that serves equally their voices fits perfectly.
1. Dawn of War (2004)
Relic Amusement/THQ
Steam
Because Dawn of War ii ditched the base-building, its predecessor has get a standard bearer for fans of build orders who miss that particular flavor of RTS. The thing is, what made Dawn of War's base-building neat was how downplayed it was compared to the RTS games that came earlier it. It's non well-nigh carefully managing walls and cranking out more gatherers than the other players then your economic system tin can triumph. At that place'south no gilt, no spice, no vespene bloody gas. The primary way to get together resources in Dawn of War is to impale for them.
Nodes are spread across the map and you might take hold of a couple peacefully in those early moments where everyone is scouting and constructing their get-go ability found, just sooner than y'all recall it'due south going to kick off. Dawn of War is the RTS accelerated. Instead of marching individual soldiers out of the barracks one at a fourth dimension and click-dragging them into control groups they come in ready-made squads, and if yous want a team to be bigger you can teleport more troops in while in the field. Same for reinforcements. Instead of constantly flicking dorsum to the barracks to replace losses, you just teleport them in. This team needs a missile launcher because they saw an armored vehicle over the adjacent hill? Teleporter goes brrr.
Dawn of War is fast plenty that you'll shortly hit the unit cap and be leading a massive strength that includes vehicles and robotic dreadnoughts who pick up individual enemies to fling around. Zoomed-out it'due south a glorious mess of lasers and explosions, and zoomed-in you'll see sync kills where someone gets pinned to the footing with a spear or has their head lopped off by a daemon. In that location is Only War and honestly information technology rules.
The base of operations game's story builds to something unexpected, while the Winter Set on expansion is very much for fans of the Imperial Guard, but where it's really at is the Night Crusade expansion's entrada style, which has eight factions fighting over persistent maps where you return to one of your territories under siege and discover all the defenses you built last time waiting. If that's not enough, the Soulstorm expansion has received the most love from modders and its Ultimate Apocalypse mod takes away the unit cap and ups the calibration fifty-fifty more. It's 40K in its final grade, eating worlds and firing missiles from a tank shaped like a church organ.
Warhammer twoscore,000: What to read adjacent
Playing all of those Warhammer 40K games could proceed yous busy for xl,000 hours. Simply if you want to read more nigh some of our favorites and the 40K universe, here are some more than stories.
- The all-time Warhammer xl,000 novels
- Major events in the Warhammer xl,000 timeline
- The best Warhammer 40K starter gear up guide, and beginners tips
- Why so many games fail at 40K, and why Darktide might succeed
- Why Necromunda is a large deal
- Dawn of State of war's modders accept turned it into the ultimate 40K game
- Great moments: Going on the defensive in Dawn of State of war ii
- Dandy moments: Conquering Kronus in Dawn of War—Night Cause
- What's your dream Warhammer 40k game?
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/best-warhammer-40k-games/
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