Eisenhorn Xenos

Warhammer is beloved by millions, as great table top battler that has spanned over other media including countless novels, animations and of course Video games. We get our fantastic Dawn of War series that brings a brilliant and gritty RTS of epic proportions. Then we get those lovable scamps who aren’t perfect yet they have heart and soul such as Fire Warrior and Space Marine.

Then we get games like Xenos.

Ok, now I don’t want to sound like the bad guy and believe me I understand how difficult it can be to make a game. But to say it kindly this game is a mess. I don’t mean to sound harsh but this game is not without its faults and there are plenty. What becomes apparent early on is that much of the game offers a hollow and rather dull experience that lacks any sense of identity. Xenos attempts to recreate the Batman Arkham series set within the world of Warhammer. That sounds perfect and this is what drew me in. But in return we get a game filled with lifeless, stilted character models, lazy level design and just the simplest and uninteresting gameplay mechanics.
While though the game doesn’t have that engaging factor to it, I do admire the beautiful looking landscapes you often see in the backdrops. They do look great at times I did just find myself staring out at the highly detailed city landscape and get a sense of fully fleshed out world. Only to be disappointed by the remainder of the game looking lacklustre in the presentation. The interiors of buildings are shockingly bland with mostly everything covered up in dust sheets, litter with storage creates or just looking empty. The game feels like it’s packing up to move yet no one has unpacked anything. That or the designers just couldn’t be bothered to make the worlds look interesting.

To describe what the main issue with the game is down to one word, simplicity. Now simple mechanics and gameplay can be fine if you make it engaging through great level designs and dynamic elements. Yet Xenos fails with missing these notes, lacking tension in combat, engaging lateral components or good level design. Stealth feels very generic and too simple with poor enemy A.I, pathetic patrolling patterns and everything is laid out in a manner which makes it easy to overcome. Even the enemies don’t react when they see dead bodies. Most stealth sections are also pretty similar to one another, with usually the same layouts and enemy counts making them all feel same as you play them. At least your A.I partners retain some sensibility but during most combat encounters remain fairly useless. They often just take forever to kill any NPCs and most of the time; the game just rids them so you can do more uninteresting stealth sections.

Combat doesn’t fair better, though there is a great selection of weapons to buy this means nothing when the combat is just flat. It consists of the same attacking methods and never builds with new and interesting adaptions and skills. It just feels massively repetitive and mind numbing as you repeat the same attacks on the same types of enemies with very little changes between each encounter. Even bosses just feel like slightly over powered generic NPCs. Outside of combat there are some puzzle elements which require very little lateral thinking to them. There were one or two decent ideas that could have been developed into something more interesting but just end up feeling the same as each other. Such as the mind hacking, it’s just like another two puzzle types in the game and doesn’t expand outside of hit the button at the right time for most puzzles.

Xenos harbours some pretty bad voice acting but I can sense the actors were trying; even our lead has some decent moments and a sense of gravitas for the role. Yet the game flushes that away with poorly animated interactions and actions. The cut scenes can be painful to watch as character models look like they’re massively constipated when moving and much of these cut scenes play out like early 2000 games and no music as well makes them uncomfortable to watch. It's a shame as the story does have some interesting concepts and characters, but overall the is diluted and muddled. On a plus note, the sound track is pretty decent with some epic orchestral scores with a mixture of grimy electro making good on building some tension or making the game have somewhat a personality.

What Xenos is trying to capture is the same essence of the highly renowned Batman: Arkham series. Yet this fails to capture the charm, immersion factor and the tightly designed gameplay elements that made Arkham a captivating and engaging game that combined action and stealth. There are some good ideas here, yet the game is pretty underwhelming and under developed that it’s a dull snooze fest to embark on. I hope that someone could make a sequel with more effort but sadly unlike Fire Warrior or Space Marine, this lacks any charm or interesting gameplay features to make it a lovable scamp you know is trying and give it a pass because it does. Xenos, please try better next time.

+ Decent Soundtrack
+ Some good ideas ....

- Although they are not developed to a high standard
- Dull and repetitive
- Poor voice acting and story elements
- Never progresses or gets interesting

A Steam copy of Eisenhorn: Xenos was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review