Space Hulk: Ascension Edition announced, a standalone follow-up to last year's strategy game

You can never have too many Space Hulks.

You can never have too many Space Hulks. If one of them is yer actual Hulk Hogan fighting bad guys on Mir, all the better, but for now we'll have to stick to titles based on Games Workshop's meaty sci-fi boardgame instead. Joining last year's Space Hulk, and some mystery future year's Space Hulk: Deathwing, is Full Control's standaloneapology for their poorly received strategy game of last year. Space Hulk Ascension Editionis an expansiony sequely do-over type thing that adds RPG elements and Ultramarines, beefy warriors who like long walks by the sea, killing, and the colour blue.

Let's look at a trailer, shall we?

For the videphobic, or those with really short memories, here's a summary: character/squad customisation, quite nice lighting effects, something about Genestealers and a release date. We can expect Space Hulk to ascend (like the name) in the fourth quarter of this year, AKA sometime in October, November or December. Let's take bets! 50 quatloos on...November?

There was nothing about Ascension's RPG shenanigans in the above video, but Full Control have us covered via the website. In their own words, "Space Hulk: Ascension Edition is a 3D, digital, turn based, strategy game, which recreates the classic board game experience, and adds new RPG style mechanics, new weapons and missions, new enemy types, an all-new chapter and loads of other new features to the single player and multiplayer experience".

In my own words, "that sounds kinda neat". What the above boils down to is a new chapter of Space Marines, entitled Ultramarines (or Onedownfromhypermarines), XP, skills and terminator customisation, three new campaigns, and more variation when it comes to the Genestealer enemies. It's certainly a nice list of features, if a slightly surprising one after its predecessor's, which was more slavish to the original Games Workshop game.

In other news, Space Hulk: Deathwing is apparently still alive, according to a recent trailer at least. Worryingly, nearly a year after its announcement, there's still nary a hint of a screenshot or in-game footage, but you can watch a short video of some guys killing some enemies below.