(Under the Freedom of Information Act of 40931, a selection of reports on one of the recent wars has now been made available to the public.)

Mission Report Fifteen, by the Leader of the Ultramarines Squad ‘DS’, during the War against the Word-Bearers of Chaos, on the Planet of Rhur III in the Forty First Millennium.

Commander, The campaign has been successfully concluded. We killed the heretic before he could summon a Greater Daemon from the warp. I personally would have like to fight the Greater Daemon, but I was told that it would be against our Health and Safety in the Workplace policy. That’s not the only problem I’ve had with this campaign.

The final battle was anti-climatic. I did lose a marine to the two large spider robots guarding the traitor during his summoning, but they were no match for my all-purpose tactic of sitting back and shelling the entire area with explosive weapons to remove cover and kill the chaos forces. Destroying the buildings means my units can shoot anywhere on the battlefield, provided there is a marine up ahead to act as a spotter. By not moving, they can get at least two accurate shots off before the enemy can do anything. An entire squad is easily able to take out a giant spider robot before it can do anything, especially if they are all armed with plasma guns. They are slightly weaker than the missile launchers and lascannon, but are much faster firing than the former and are explosive, unlike the latter.

All of those are safer than using the short-range weapons. The chainsword and powerfist, while they have a visceral appeal, are only good for hunting down the last hiding enemy. The shotgun can take out a group of enemies close together, but because of its wide range and the explosive barrels littering the battlefield, it is difficult to use without killing the marine.

The choice of primary weapons assigned to each soldier puzzles me. Why give them the weak and inaccurate bolter? I only used the more powerful secondary weapons, and despite the variety of options, usually just the plasma gun. Perhaps the marines could be equipped with plasma guns by as their primary weapon, as this would make them more effective.

I was frankly disappointed with the performance of the much vaunted terminators. Their only advantage over regular marines was that their increased toughness allowed them withstand an attack from the small daemons, but they weren’t allowed to use plasma guns.

There’s also disappointment about the mission briefings. We were promised state of the art, “cinematically-linked” mission briefings yet all we get are two sentences about the mission and a small irrelevant picture. I’ve heard that Squad ‘PSP’ were shown videos with voice overs before each mission. And perhaps a little more information into how our mission fits into the scheme of things. For most of the war, we were sent on missions with no idea of how critical our missions were or how the rest of the war was going.

Your running of this campaign has been adequate. However, I expected a lot more of you. This was basic straightforward set of missions. With your background, I hope that the next war we fight is more inventive and interesting. What’s the point of living the forty-first millennium if all we do is fight boring wars?

Oh, and thanks for not letting me use the Land Raider in the final mission. Was there something more important for it to be doing than preventing the emergence of a Greater Daemon?

Tags: games, Nintendo DS

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