The tabletop game Warhammer 40,000 gets some good innings this past month with the release of both the excellent Space Marine for consoles and the coop Arcade Game Killteam on Live and PSN. While Killteam is a blast and an obvious buy for Warhammer fans, some rough edges may put off other players.

After choosing one of four classes, the long range tank Sternguard, the melee psyker Librarian, the balanced Vanguard or the engineer styled Techmarine, you begin your assault on an Ork warship. Your goal is to storm through the ship, slaughtering wave after wave of green skinned aliens and destroy the ships various facilities. The game plays with a familiar top down Gauntlet style viewpoint, movement handled by the left stick, directional shooting with the right. I should mention you can choose from several different chapters, the clans of the Space Marine universe, for a purely cosmetic change.

It's a thumb friendly shooter

Like Space Marine the game is dark, gothic and super violent with gore splattering around the place like a blood bank delivery truck crashed into a fireworks factory. Meeting certain milestones of slaughter unlock new weapons and upgrade abilities for each of the classes to buff your health, damage and the effects of power ups.

You always think you get them all with the comb, but you forget the eggs

Coop play is a must and adds to what quickly becomes a rather repetitive game as a single player. Strangely, and perhaps the first indication Killteam was a bit of a rush job, only local coop is available so if you’re a lonely agoraphobic shut in you’re (even more) out of luck. To add some longevity each completed level opens up a timed survival game in a section of that level where you fend of the Orks as long as you can for a ranked high score.

Fans will gush for the option to choose from several different colour and appearances

The game is buggy in parts and sometimes a triggered cut scene doesn’t trigger, forcing you to either back track to set it off and open up the next area or reload your last checkpoint. Sometimes objectives to be destroyed become invulnerable for no reason, again requiring a checkpoint reload to try the section again. Weird moments like this highlight a game that was taken out of the oven too early. Checkpoints are spaced at odd times that reek of lack of play testing.

It's like an alternative game of Lemmings, where you're the thing that kills all the Lemmings

For fans of the Warhammer 40k universe this an easy pick up (and if it’s not all ready would the words ‘Tyranid Guest Appearance’ tip you over?) with plenty to enjoy, bumping an extra star for familiarity, and as an added bonus completing the first level unlocks a Power Sword for use in the main version of Space Marine. For regular folk it’s a reasonable shooter worth a few hours fun, but the lack of polish and missing features like online coop is irritating. If you’re a new fan who adored Space Marine and were looking for a few extra hours of Warhammer to geek out over Killteam will provide a fix. But you’d be better served investing in Dawn of War.