14 DAY TRIAL // Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes is Electronic Arts’ newest attempt at capitalizing on the growing free-to-play market, this time offering a sort of MMORPG experience without actually forcing players to commit to certain characters and slowly level up their abilities.
Instead of letting players go on complicated quests, Wrath of Heroes just lets them choose a pre-configured character and jump into combat without worrying about loot or gear.
While the premise sounds very good, especially to gamers that don’t have enough time to invest in a proper MMO, it’s time we took a quick look at Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes and see if it can deliver on its promise.
When we got a chance to try out Wrath of Heroes at Gamescom 2011, there were only a few characters available. Now, in the first beta stage of the year, the team at BioWare Mythic has added quite a lot of new ones, allowing players to choose from all sorts of predetermined and preconfigured heroes.
While this sounds good, new players will certainly spend quite a lot of time trying to choose their preferred character. In order to help them out, the game’s client offers a simple overview of each hero before entering a game, while serving recommendations during matches to players that seem to be killed by a single sort of enemy.
This is what makes Wrath of Heroes fun, as you can start out with ranged heroes, who use bows or even crude guns, quickly change to melee-oriented ones, that swing giant clubs, axes or swords, and then, depending on your teammates, go for support characters that help heal the group or trap your enemies.
Sadly, while in theory this should make Wrath of Heroes a great experience, once you start the game things can get hectic extremely fast, especially in the beta where you don’t really have a tutorial to help you come to grips with the controls or mechanics.
Still, once you choose a character that fits your play style and try to work together with your teammates, you’ll have a good time.
For a brief taste of Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes, check out the video we made from the beta stage. You can still get in on the current beta by following these instructions.
