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The developers for the upcoming new Chaos Gate game, Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters, have created a YouTube channel in which they post new videos. It started off a few months ago with the initial trailers, but some new videos have gone up over the last several days. I initially found this video here, which was released yesterday -



and then followed it back to the channel, which can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/c/ChaosGate/videos

People here have expressed interest in this game, largely due to the original Chaos Gate (and afaik, no one from that game is involved with this one), so I would imagine that there will be some interest in this channel.

Note that I personally haven't yet watched any of the videos in the channel aside from the one I linked, and the trailers a while back.

One item of particular note in the video I linked is that the developers mention that they're avoiding the "99% chance to hit, but you missed" thing, and they also mention that you will know exactly how much damage a shot will do before you take the shot. Given that, I suspect that they're going to use a combat model similar to that found in Phantom Doctrine. For those not familiar with that name, Phantom Doctrine is a "stale beer and cigarettes" espionage video game set during the Cold War, and much of the action takes place on tactical maps similar to those found in games such as X-Com, Chaos Gate, etc... (and note that most missions can be completed without firing a shot if you're careful, and manage to avoid any bad luck). Unlike other games in that genre, Phantom Doctrine doesn't use a "percentage to hit" system. Instead, the game calculates your base damage, and then applies modifiers to the final result. Cover reduces the amount of damage you do. Aiming increases the damage. And so on, and so forth. And the end result is calculated and presented to you before you decide whether to attack. Some people like it. Others don't, since - in addition to meaning that you always do lots of damage on those "sure thing" shots, it also means that you can still take a little damage if the computer takes a "1 chance in a million" shot at one of your agents (though it is possible to have the amount of damage reduced down to zero).

I'll also note that I like the badge that the Developer team gets.

This sounds interesting. I recall seeing mixed reception to the first trailer, so a bit of transperancy might certainly be beneficial.

The game is up for pre-order on Steam. The release date is in May. There's a new trailer up on YouTube.





The trailer also includes a brief introduction by one of the voice actors for the game. He's some English guy. Goes by the name of Andy Serkis.

Anyone heard of him before?

I knew absolutely heehaw about this game until that warcom article about Andy Serkis doing the voice. It's cool he's in it but does that mean the game will be worth playing?

 Olthannon wrote:
I knew absolutely heehaw about this game until that warcom article about Andy Serkis doing the voice. It's cool he's in it but does that mean the game will be worth playing?

That's the big question. And we have no way of knowing that. It's a new game that bears the title of a solid game, but by a group that is completely unrelated to the original game. The new XCom was a great game. Evil Genius 2, on the other hand, was not. I'm inclined to think that the developers have confidence in it. I don't think you spend money for someone like Serkis unless you believe you've got a decent product to support him. And I do generally enjoy XCom-style games. But until there are good preview reviews from trustworthy sources prior to release, it's all guesswork.

On the positive side, there are enough videos up on their YouTube channel to give you an idea of plenty of the game mechanics. You can at least determine whether those mechanics sound attractive.

Anyway, release is still three months away. We'll see what they do as May 5 draws closer.

The story is written by AD-B, who has penned one of the few, YMMV, actually good Grey Knight novels out there: the Emperor's Gift.

Red Flag #1: Game already has a cut-content "deluxe edition" for AUD$15 more than the base game.

Red Flag #2: Denuvo DRM.

Eumerin wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
I knew absolutely heehaw about this game until that warcom article about Andy Serkis doing the voice. It's cool he's in it but does that mean the game will be worth playing?

That's the big question. And we have no way of knowing that. It's a new game that bears the title of a solid game, but by a group that is completely unrelated to the original game. The new XCom was a great game. Evil Genius 2, on the other hand, was not. I'm inclined to think that the developers have confidence in it. I don't think you spend money for someone like Serkis unless you believe you've got a decent product to support him. And I do generally enjoy XCom-style games. But until there are good preview reviews from trustworthy sources prior to release, it's all guesswork.

On the positive side, there are enough videos up on their YouTube channel to give you an idea of plenty of the game mechanics. You can at least determine whether those mechanics sound attractive.

Anyway, release is still three months away. We'll see what they do as May 5 draws closer.

BrookM wrote:The story is written by AD-B, who has penned one of the few, YMMV, actually good Grey Knight novels out there: the Emperor's Gift.

Well I'm also a fan of squad turn based style games so I'm cautious at least. I haven't read Emperor's Gift but I'm always on the look out for genuinely good warhammer books.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Red Flag #1: Game already has a cut-content "deluxe edition" for AUD$15 more than the base game.

Are there any releases in the last few years that haven't done the exact same thing?

 Olthannon wrote:
Are there any releases in the last few years that haven't done the exact same thing?

And that is supposed to excuse it?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
Are there any releases in the last few years that haven't done the exact same thing?

And that is supposed to excuse it?

A "red flag" typically refers to unusual behavior that's a warning sign that the related thing will be a disaster. But adding a "deluxe content DLC" to a game's launch is so common these days that it can hardly be considered unusual.

 Olthannon wrote:
Well I'm also a fan of squad turn based style games so I'm cautious at least. I haven't read Emperor's Gift but I'm always on the look out for genuinely good warhammer books.

It's sadly only available as an ebook right now, but again, one of the few good books to come from that dark age of Wardian fluff. Sure as gak a whole lot better than the stuff put out be Ben Counter imho.

Eumerin wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
Are there any releases in the last few years that haven't done the exact same thing?

And that is supposed to excuse it?

A "red flag" typically refers to unusual behavior that's a warning sign that the related thing will be a disaster. But adding a "deluxe content DLC" to a game's launch is so common these days that it can hardly be considered unusual.

Eumerin knocked that for six. Nowt needed to add to that.

BrookM wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
Well I'm also a fan of squad turn based style games so I'm cautious at least. I haven't read Emperor's Gift but I'm always on the look out for genuinely good warhammer books.

It's sadly only available as an ebook right now, but again, one of the few good books to come from that dark age of Wardian fluff. Sure as gak a whole lot better than the stuff put out be Ben Counter imho.

I've got no space anyway so an ebook will do fine thanks for the recommendation!

Eumerin wrote:
A "red flag" typically refers to unusual behavior that's a warning sign that the related thing will be a disaster. But adding a "deluxe content DLC" to a game's launch is so common these days that it can hardly be considered unusual.

"This gakky thing publishers do is something everyone does, so we'll just ignore it."

It's a red flag as it speaks to further continued practices with this game that some might consider "consumer unfriendly". How much else from the game has been stripped out to make DLC?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
A "red flag" typically refers to unusual behavior that's a warning sign that the related thing will be a disaster. But adding a "deluxe content DLC" to a game's launch is so common these days that it can hardly be considered unusual.

"This gakky thing publishers do is something everyone does, so we'll just ignore it."

It's a red flag as it speaks to further continued practices with this game that some might consider "consumer unfriendly". How much else from the game has been stripped out to make DLC?

Again, a red flag is something unusual. "Deluxe edition content" isn't unusual. You might not like it, and I wouldn't say anything if you just said that you didn't like the practice. But it's hard to find games that *don't* do that these days, which means that it's not unusual, which means that it isn't a red flag. Calling that a red flag is about as useful as the "Prop 65 cancer warnings" in California. And if you've spent much time in California, you know how useless those "warnings" are since they're nearly *everywhere*.


Note that I haven't said anything about your "red flag" comment regarding the DRM.

Yeah that's.. not a red flag. That's genuinely just something everyone kinda does nowadays. Annoying, but that's misusing the term. It'd be a red flag if they put a gacha mechanic in a single player game or something of that note.

That's been the way of it for well over a decade. Any chance a company will get for some extra money they'll do it. A bit of up front extra DLC? That's just profit. Profit tops consumer satisfaction all day any day.

I mean if they didn't and instead a company built and developed something for the populace with the best effort they could at a reasonable, affordable price... why that would be madness. Some sort of hellish socialist paradise no doubt and we wouldn't want that HBMC? Far too many red flags waving there for a start eh?

Look how cowed you all are. So used to being treated like an idiot by game publishers that you just accept gak like this.

As I said, it's an indication of a continued intent to do this with the game. It's essentially saying that they will purposefully charge you extra for things that they have removed from the game pre-launch.

It's a big ol' red flag for anyone with any level of common sense who doesn't just roll over and go "Well, they all do it, so it's fine!" whenever this comes up.

Its two items for preorder and a character skin for the deluxe edition. Its dumb to pay for, but trivial non-content.

What you're really paying $10 for in the champion edition is the soundtrack, and if this game's soundtrack is anywhere near as good as the original's that might well be worthwhile.

One can only hope that the OST is as good as the one from the first game. I mainly bought the game on GOG just for that.

The developers have sent a few missions to video game streamers for gameplay videos. Based on what I've seen, it appears that everyone received the same three missions. Two were more or less standard missions. The third was a timed boss battle against a Great Unclean One, and from the sound of things was dramatically more difficult than the other two. Here's someone playing through the first mission -





Watching this should give you a pretty good idea of how the gameplay will work.

Took it for a spin. Some thoughts.

The character animations in cut-scenes are a bit outdated. They look a bit too animatronic. Nit-picking, sure. And it's not that big of a deal. But it's something that I noticed.

Power armor means that your marines can do some pretty super-human feats, like knocking over giant statues, running quickly across the battlefield (your marines are pretty mobile), and jump across gaps. They sound heavy and stompy, but they're pretty quick. Though given it's power armor, I suppose that fits with the lore. I have at least one marine that can equip terminator armor (it's a skill unlock), but haven't done so yet. So I don't know how that compares. The one drawback is that power armor doesn't actually seem to work as, you know, *armor*. You can argue that it's built into the basic defense against the various weapons used against you. But other forms of armor work more as a shield that gets used up (and then refills at the start of your turn). Power armor doesn't work like that. Again, I haven't tried the terminator armor yet.

Environmental items that you can interact with are clearly marked, along with an icon that shows how you interact with them. A crosshairs means that you shoot it. A sword icon means that you have to run up next to it and give it a shove. Most of the time these are things like explosive crates, or giant stone columns. But that's not always the case. I found one that allowed me to toss a "manhole cover" a short distance, and use it to perform an area attack. Another environmental object gave me some temporary bonuses.

As has been mentioned, all attacks hit. Instead of modifying the hit chance, things like cover modify the amount of damage taken.

When setting up overwatch, you position a cone that shows where your marine is targeting. Your marine can see over partial cover objects. However, if you're behind a full cover object, you can't set the cone over the object. And depending on how you angle the cone, you might pull your marine out of cover in order to get the necessary field of fire. This is obvious from the way that the cone lines up (it pulls away from your marine in the direction your marine will reposition to), but it isn't mentioned within the game. It's something you have to figure out on your own. Overwatch only lasts for a single shot.

Cultists with heavy stubbers get Suppressive Fire. What your told is that if the target takes an action, it will take damage. What you're not told is that the thin line between the heavy stubber and your marine is actually a very thin overwatch arc. ANYONE moving through that line will take damage. And unlike normal overwatch arcs, it doesn't go away after one hit.

At the start of the game, your ship is on its way back to Titan for badly needed repairs and replenishment. Then the inquisitor shows up and basically commandeers the ship. This doesn't go over very well, though a tacit agreement is reached to investigate the situation. Repairing the ship is the equivalent of base building in most games. Unlike in the original Chaos Gate, this game follows the more standard XCom model of your troop roster. You start with half a dozen marines, and can recruit more as needed - up to the amount allowed by your rebuilt barracks.

There's a "sector map" that has you flying between roughly a dozen different systems. On the one hand, that's not many systems. On the other hand, your ship is pretty slow. Missions will appear with a time bar indicating the amount of time left for you to complete them. If you can't reach the mission in time before the bar disappears, you can't complete the mission. The problem is that your ship is pretty slow at the start of the game compared to the mission timers. I've already had a situation in which three new missions appeared, and I couldn't reach any of them before they expired. Further, systems can gain corruption. And corrupted systems are clearly marked on the map. But you can't do anything about the corruption in those systems unless there's an active mission there. This can lead to a situation in which you're staring at your star map with multiple systems showing green corruption. But you press the "Pass Time" button because there aren't any missions that you can play to resolve the problems on those worlds.

Explosions throw enemies around like rag dolls. Sometimes this leads to an explosion victim taking even more damage after colliding with something. Or dying because the victim got blown off a drop.

Some of your characters can teleport on the battlefield. One of my teleporters started his turn in the middle of an enemy overwatch arc. So he teleported alongside the cultist that had set up the arc, and killed the cultist with a force sword.

I've fought cultists, pox-walkers, and explosive mutants (that blow up when they die) so far. No sign yet of Deathguard, or any Nurgle demons.


I'm enjoying it so far.

A nice run through of the tutorial mission.

One thought that occurred to me after playing it is that it's kind of a shame that Khorne (presumably) doesn't make any further appearances in the campaign. Unless there's a surprise guest appearance at some point, the scenery, as well as the models for the cultists and demons, only appear in that one mission.

I've had a chance to get more familiar with the game. While the basic idea is similar to XCom - i.e. a turn-based tactical game where you control individual members of a fire team against opponents on a grid map, the playstyle is different. Chaos Gate encourages a much more aggressive playstyle. There are two primary reasons for this. First, you have "The Bloom". This is a progress bar that increases by a preset amount at the end of each of your turns. Whenever it reaches 100%, something bad will happen. This could be a hazard zone that appears near you for a few turns, or a buff/debuff (depending on whether it affects you or the enemy), or even an enemy squad that is teleported into the area through the Warp. Camping out in an area while you wait for the enemy to make a mistake is, thus, discouraged. Wait too long, and you'll just make your life harder.

Second, many of the abilities award aggressive playstyle. For example, the Interceptor class is melee focused, and one of the branches of their skill tree has teleportation abilities. In one instance while confronting a group of three Plague Marines that were grouped closely together, I selected one of my Interceptors as my first character. For the first of his three action points, he activated his teleport attack ability. This is an ability that allows you to teleport a distance away and melee attack multiple enemies within a small area near your arrival point. I selected two of the Plague Marines as my targets, and launched the attack. This wasn't enough to kill any of the Chaos Marines, but it did hurt them. I followed this up with another melee attack against one of the marines. For my third and final action point, I teleported again. This time, my Interceptor swapped his position with a different marine who had - so far - not taken any actions. So my Interceptor, who was down to his last action, was replaced by a different marine who was fresh and ready to fight.

Needless to say, the Plague Marines didn't last long.

Abilities do have some drawbacks, though. Many of your Knights' abilities (such as the teleports described above) are psychic powers. Using these roils the Warp, causing the Bloom progress bar to increase slightly each time you use one. Additionally, most of your psychic abilities require Willpower Points. You start with a handful, and use them up by using abilities (more powerful abilities use up more points). But a Grey Knight replenishes his willpower by one each time he kills an enemy.

Another way in which the game awards aggressive play is in how it handles revealing enemy groups. If an enemy group is revealed during your turn, the group immediately gets a free move as in XCom. However, once this move is over, ALL of your Grey Knights get all of their AP back - unless they've taken an action that ends their turn (such as entering Overwatch). As a result, you're encouraged to go ahead and aggressively move down the map. It's best that your marines don't get too far from each other. But you don't need to worry about being caught flat-footed if one of your marines happens to reveal an enemy unit after all of your other marines have finished moving.

Finally, it's possible to stun enemies. If an enemy is stunned, and one of your Knights attacks that enemy with a melee weapon, you will usually get the option to "Execute" that enemy. Doing so immediately awards all of your knights one extra AP.

I just completed the game, after a pretty long playthrough. Pretty tense at the end :



This game is pretty damn awesome, story was decent, most of the visuals were amazing and it was really fun with alot of depth.. With some expansions and mod support, it might even beat X-com at its own game.

Update coming for this pretty good game :

Alert! The forces of Nurgle will soon receive new reinforcements and armaments in a FREE UPDATE for Warhammer 40, 000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters, coming this December.

Anti-Armour | Plague Marine:
Posing an unwavering threat to even the most heavily armored Grey Knights, this Plague Marine variant is equipped with armor-sundering arsenal, wielding a Meltagun and Krak Grenades.

Fleshmower | Foetid Bloat-drone:
New Foetid Bloat-drone variants come armed with a Fleshmower, capable of projecting punishing attacks through the land, and unforgivingly any Grey Knights who dare stand before them.

The Noxious Blightbringer:
Living conduits for the Garden of Nurgle, The Noxious Blightbringers render their rivals feeble as they strip away armor bonuses, effectively nullifying Aegis Shield, Fortress and other defensive Grey Knights abilities.

Alongside these Death Guard reinforcements, will also be a number of performance improvements and optimisations.

Not the expansion (come on, Khorne!) that I was hoping for, but its enough to get me excited to play another playthrough.

Techmarine and Dreadnought coming!

I see Cadians! Wonder how they will factor into the new missions. Also, new maps are very much welcome.

I just re-installed this game last night. Can't wait to face off against the War Dog Stalker.

Assassins coming to Chaos Gate :




My main worry is that there will be limited customization to their look and skills, given that their whole modus operandi is to be highly specialized. Looking forward to it though!

From today's Warcom article -

Hang Out and Paint returns for a special episode on Monday to celebrate Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters which is getting a console release any minute now. Stay tuned tomorrow!