Eisenhorn: Xenos Review

In the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40,000 universe there is only war. War and endless licence tie-ins. Games Workshop recently changed their videogame tactics from “no one gets anything” to “everyone gets everything”. A result has been a veritable tidal wave of games surging from the ether. Development teams have been snapping up sections of the Games Workshop IP with hungry abandon. Eisenhorn: Xenos is a result of that goldrush.

Gregor Eisenhorn is a name familiar to most, if not all, Warhammer 40k fans. Rising from the pages of fan-favourite author Dan Abnett’s book series, the inquisitor takes his first videogame steps. Developer Pixel Hero Games is a canny studio, putting its weight behind a character with an established story to tell. Eisenhorn is a man with near limitless authority, implacable and stern on the outside, troubled on the inside. He’s a complex character and the studio goes someway to capturing the man by casting British actor Mark Strong to voice his lines. Unfortunately, despite sticking as close to the story as possible, Eisenhorn: Xenos doesn’t really succeed in bringing it to life.

As a character piece, the game needs to warm the player to Eisenhorn from the get-go. The model for the inquisitor is accurate to his in-lore descriptions, complete with seals, armour and shining medallions. Strong, while a solid voice actor, seems to suffer from a lack of direction. Most of his deliveries are flat and toneless regardless of the situation. There’s little to no emotional weight to his statements and in sections where you would expect him to be shouting or loud Strong’s voice is kept at the same register as if he were having polite conversation at dinner.

Eisenhorn: Xenos was developed to be a mobile game. At some point during its development it was obviously decided that the game might have a market on PC, as well. Despite this, the game for the PC appears not to have moved much further than its mobile sibling. Combat, actions and quick-time events (of which there are many) are as simple as pressing one button over and over again. Character animations in combat are choppy and stiff and the AI is less than challenging. A combination of two button presses is all you need to defeat most foes and the game gifts the player with a fillable meter that gives Eisenhorn an adrenaline mode - essentially slowing down time - to help in tricky fights. You can do battle with a range of weapons, from pistols to swords and shotguns and along the way Eisenhorn is aided by companions who can be switched out as needed to help in combat. Their help is rarely needed but more often than not they help to distract mobs that rush the player in battle.

I mentioned in my preview that the game manages to capture the look and feel of the 40k universe quite well. That still rings true and Pixel Hero have worked hard on the environments that you find yourself in to really immerse the player in the grand scale of the setting. Unfortunately the game sullies this with an over-abundance of lens flares and lighting, which often obscures large parts of your surroundings. Textures and features much closer to the player character, to make matters worse, are often flat and dull or struggling to pop-in when the game switches to cinematic modes. The game gives PC players the ability to adjust graphics, Vsync, shadows and post-processing but that’s about it.

As a mobile game Eisenorn: Xenos would probably be a fairly robust title that is more than worth your time. Unfortunately the developers have ported the game to PC without much thought into the ins and outs of the market. When compared to other titles out there the game simply falls flat. Simple combat, poor mechanics, boring voice acting and some unpolished graphics mean that the fans of the book series might find themselves struggling to finish it. For those without a vested interest in the character or the story: this is one to avoid.