Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000

It's an oldie but a goodie. Combining the oldschool wargaming style of SSI, with the flavorful and colorful 40k palette. Final Liberation makes for a fun time when you can't be bothered to get your models out. Also had some delightfully corny FMV cutscenes.

A Grand ol taste of Older edition 40k in all it's glory, replete with inexplicable survival of certain units due to a lucky Armor save/FNP, before tabletop simulator granted us access to 40k on a convenient PC bed, we had Final Liberation. It is really good but it is first and foremost a tabletop game, so luck of the dice is at play as much as tactics is, be prepared for the occasional casualty to (Of all things) basic lasguns or ork shootas.

Final Liberation. Wow. This is a true blast from the past. A risk style map, Titans, Space Marines, Orks, FMV's, what else could you want? Final Liberation's gameplay is solid if a bit simplistic. Every map requires strategy and a bit of luck, but the Orks really have a disadvantage over the Imperium, namely in the department of artillery. You will always have it and they will usually not, meaning you get 3+ free shots at any of their units every turn. However, on hard mode the game can be quite challenging, even the very first level! It's the atmosphere that really excels in this game. Units scream in horror when they die as bullets hit them with a satisfying SHUMP, wreckage of vehicles and Imperial buildings litter battlegrounds, and the music, composed by one of the friends (or maybe one of the programmers themselves), is heavy, apocalyptic and pretty damn catchy. The FMV's are what makes this game really stand out IMO. Some people throw out, "hilarious," and "bad," but I disagree. Certainly if you find 40K to be campy or silly the FMV's will not change your mind. But the actors are unusually strong, the sets and uniforms are impressively detailed (and all done on a shoestring budget), and the characters are memorable. You'll find yourself cheering for Commissar Holt time and time again. If you are a fan of 40K, sci-fi strategy, or that era when everyone thought FMV's were the way of the future, buy this game!

One of the few games I've bought on here that I never played back in the day. It does work on windows ten for me, with only a few freezes, but your milage may vary, from the looks of it. The basic core of the game is pretty much the same as that of the Panzer General series - you are dropped into a tactical map, where you take turns duking it out with the AI. Each unit has unique stats and weapons, as well as armour, movement, fire rates, and so on. If you like Warhammer, and you like Panzer General, you will probably get at least a few hours out of this. There are some relative improvements over SSI's other strategy titles. While Panzer General lets you gradually build up and customize your force, it's played over a series of sequencial maps. This one, however, allows you to select where your forces will attack next, on a strategic overview map, and gives you a little more leeway in how you build your force up. The cutscenes and such aren't half bad, especially considering the age. The sound effects are actually pretty solid. You can speed up the animations a bit to make the turns go quicker. That said, there are some flaws. A lot of the units are, more or less, just useless fluff. You can win most encounters without a scratch by simply using the same few units. The armour/weapon penetration system is a little wonky, though that does accurately reflect the tabletop rules it's based on. It's not pretty. The morale system is a little unintuitive. Above all, it's just not super challenging unless you choose to play in a specifically challenging way. All in all, it's not a particularly polished game - it's an old game, and not a bad one, but not something everyone will fall in love with.

Used to work. No doesn't.