Overall, Squad Command is an excellent pickup for a strategy fan. You get a nice and difficult campaign to play through with a wide variety of weapons to rain destruction upon your enemies.
The world of Warhammer gets the XCom treatment in this attractively designed military turn-based strategy game. A bit of resource management, a few more weapons and a greater variety of enemies wouldn't have gone amiss, but it works and is a lot better than the DS version.
Squad Command strives to be as accessible as possible, and while the casual slant is clearly a great idea, a few basic issues prevent the game from being all it could be.
Warhammer fans: the ability to control classic Warhammer units may make this game more appealing to you, but anyone interested in the title should be extremely cautious before investing the time and money. The positive elements just barely outweigh the bad.
A great turn-based tactical game that is really suitable for the handheld and offers a few hours of sufficiently challenging battles. It could have had more variety in terms of races, guns etc. but it's still is a worthwhile title and a must-play for any Warhammer 40 000 fan!
Many reviewers have commented that Squad Command will appeal more to fans on 40k, who are liable to overlook the clunky interface and lack of plot, and just enjoy the familiar designs and characters of the franchise. This is false. Any 40k player will have to contend not only with wrestling the cursor into position and being unable to move the camera properly, but also with the fact that the weaponry and armour does not function in a way that reflects how things are balanced in the game, and many critical features of the game are entirely missing. On the contrary, I would say you're more likely to enjoy this game if you have never played 40k, or indeed any good squad-based shooter.
For example, vehicles take the same amount of damage no matter where they are hit. A blast from a combat shotgun does nearly twice the damage of a volley of bolter shells (not to mention automatically hitting every enemy within range; my record is five chaos cultists with a single shot!). Bolters themselves feel horribly under-powered, requiring at least two volleys to see off a lightly-armoured cultist, and something in the region of ten (around fifty shells) at point blank range to kill a chaos space marine. Because the game doesn't take account of the difference between toughness and armour, a heavy flamer is the perfect weapon to use against terminators (who, incidentally, only benefit from a health bonus of 25% compared to their power armoured brethren they should be more than twice as hard to kill). Plasma guns never overheat. Lascannons do not impede movement, and are actually more efficient to move-and-shoot with than plasma guns. Psychology is not taken into account in any sense (neither, therefore, is squad coherence). There are no squad composition rules, so not only is it possible to give all of your marines plasma guns, it's practically forced on you by the comparative weediness of bolters. The list goes on and on.
SummaryWarhammer 40,000: Squad Command features fast, action-packed combat through turn-based strategy and an engaging, authentic single-player storyline. Gamers play as the elite Space Marines of the Ultramarines chapter and strive to combat the encroaching evil of the ruthless and daemonic influenced Chaos Space Marines through 13 cinematical...