The eldest of the four Chaos Gods of Warhammer is known as the Plague Lord, Fly Lord, The Lord Of Pestilence, or Nurgle for short
Warhammer: Chaosbane
This dungeon crawler sTrikes a (dia)blow for couch-co-opacTion rpgs ChrisBurke
PuBlisherBigBeninteractive/DeveloPerekoSoftware/releaseDateoutnow/Cost £39.99/$49.99
called Nurglings that pile themselves
on top of each other to form Nurgling
pyramids that spin-attack you, to
big, disgusting vomiting creatures.
At any given time, the game throws
a lot of enemies at you at once, with
no discernible slowing of framerates.
A bigger problem is likely to be losing
sight of yourself in the melee, as the
corridors fill up with enemies and
your character’s own flying weapons/
fireballs/lightning mayhem.
Chaosbane is playable with one
to four players at a time, either in
couch co-op (hooray!) or online, or
a combination of both. There are
four characters available, which, in
very traditional Gauntlet style, have
different classes and attacking
styles, and make up an archetypal
adventuring party. Vollen, the fighter/
warrior type has a straight-ahead
tank-style role. There’s a spellcaster,
Elontir, a dwarf berserker, Bragi, who
will carve up enemies as a typical
damage-dealing class, and Elessa theWarhammer has lent
itself to more decent
videogames than you
might realise, taking
in everything from
RTS games to Left
4 Dead-style first-person co-op, but
this is the first isometric action-RPG to
have sprung from Games Workshop’s
fantasy wargame loins. Don’t worry,
though, if painting miniatures and
making armies of orcs fight big fantasy
battles is not really your thing. And let
go the fact that the game’s Diablo, the
devil himself, the dark lord, is called
Nurgle. Yes, Nurgle.
You can mostly forget about the plot
too, seeing as it’s the old chestnut
of a threat to the Empire from an evil
sorceress who’s building an army of
evil cultists and monsters to serve the
dark lord. Yes, Nurgle. Still, it serves its
purpose to get you hacking through
swathes of beasties. And those
beasties are many and varied, from
the humanoid, via some tiny demons
elf who has ranged bow attacks and
moves fast. Whichever of these you
opt for, you can’t change your mind
without restarting the campaign, so
choose wisely, although you can have
all four characters on the go with
different save-games.Nuln points
The setting of Warhammer’s Old
World is beautifully realised for
Chaosbane. From the lofty spires of
Nuln to the ruins of Praag and the
many, many sewers and dungeons
you’ll be hacking and slashing your
way through in between, it all looks
fantastically detailed. The characters
themselves are nicely animated and
visually lovely, with their movements,
attacks and stances smooth and fluid.
You can tweak your control
configuration using all of the Xbox
controller’s functions. Each character
has a set of skills that include basic,
advanced and super-powerful God
skills, plus passives and even emotesshort
cutWhatis it?
aDiablo-alikesetin
gamesworkshop’s
warhammer fantasy
wargaming universe.
What’sit like?
Diabloiii,torchlight
Pathofexileetc.
Who’sitfor?
fansofDiabloand
anyisometricaction
rPg, andwarhammer
fans of course.078 the officialxBox magazine
review