Storm of Vengeance has already been available to play on mobile for quite a while now but now it’s available on PC too. From my experience the transition from mobile to PC is pretty difficult to get right. More often than not you end up with a game that costs more than its mobile counterpart that looks nice but essentially runs on hardware that far exceeds the game’s requirements. And whilst that is the case Storm of Vengeance comes in at only £6.99 on Steam, which is actually pretty reasonable. But anyway, onwards to the gameplay.
The basics are similar to PopCap’s fantastic Plants Vs Zombies which is certainly not a bad game to be compared with. There are five lanes and at the end of each you can deploy a building which produces cards that represent units for you to deploy in those lanes. You also have to consider generating Storm of Vengeance’s primary resource – ‘manpower’ for the Dark Angels and ‘Teef’ for the Orks. It’s fine having loads of unit cards to deploy but that doesn’t help you much if you can’t afford any of them.
So there is an element of planning and strategy to be had but with only five lanes it’s very easy to find balances and tactics that work every time. After learning the basics and playing a few levels I found that the same tactics would be useful for me long into the future. There were certain levels were the balancing act was a little tricky but selling a building and deploying a new one soon got things back on track. I would have preferred the resource acquisition to be a more difficult balancing act but there’s only so much we can expect from a lane defence game. If we’d had more lanes though that would work nicely. Considering both teams would have more of everything balancing would be minimal but the game would require more thought as to what buildings to place in those lanes.
But unfortunately that’s not the case and those tactics I mentioned using very early on are just as relevant at the end of the game. It’s a shame really that there isn’t room in Storm of Vengeance for that sense of increasing challenge that keeps things fresh because I thoroughly enjoyed my first few hours. And I got pretty hooked, largely because of upgrades that you unlock by completing missions. But just like your tactics your upgrades will reach maturity long before you complete the campaign.
And the campaign can feel a little repetitive. The written speeches that serve to move the plot forwards soon lost my attention; but admittedly that was mainly because I just wanted to get back into the action. And again the limits of a lane defence title hindered things from moving forwards. Each area is very similar with only a few changes to the background but no alterations to the gameplay.
Once your done with the Dark Angels, who you will likely play as first, you can then move onto the Orks. Refreshingly they are surprisingly different from the Space Marines. Resources have different names and buildings but work almost the same – however units are different even beyond the obvious. The extent of Ork military strategy is ‘more units is betta’ while a few Dark Angels stomp about killing hordes of Orks. The simple, but expensive, upgrade system of the Marines is replaced by a frantic, fast paced and largely disposable system. The variation between the factions is impressive considering the limitations of the mobile origins of the game and it’s lane defence genre.
But it’s so frustrating that I unlocked all the upgrades so early. You have access to all the units very quickly. I can’t understand why there wasn’t a whole host of upgrades and units to unlock. The main reason I played for as long as I did was to level up and acquire unlocks but with only a handful of units and four upgrades for each it doesn’t last long. There are so many untapped units from the Warhammer 40K universe it’s criminal. Perhaps it’s out of the scope of Storm of Vengeance but tanks, bikes and Terminators instantly spring to mind and my Warhammer knowledge is rather dated now.
Storm of Vengeance is great fun and a decent addition to the underused lane strategy genre. Unfortunately it doesn’t follow through into the late game, or even mid game, with upgrades and units to acquire but rather lets itself stagnate all too quickly. The same goes for the strategy elements to the game that become simple and repetitive very early on.
With more units and upgrades there would have been way more to keep me interested. They wouldn’t even need to be all that clever. Just simple things like more unit health or faster resource generation would have given me something to aim for. And more lanes would definitely increase the capacity for strategy in a game like this.
So Storm of Vengeance is a lane strategy game that sadly has far too little strategy and not enough to keep you coming back. I certainly enjoyed my brief time with Storm of Vengeance although I wish it had been less brief. There’s certainly a feel that this is still a mobile game and that’s certainly where it belongs. As a PC title Storm of Vengeance needs quite a bit more content to be considered fully fledged, but it’s still a briefly enjoyable strategy game with Space Marines and Orks killing each other, and that’s fine by me.
