by Nerds of a certain age are sure to have fond memories of Space Hulk), one of the great board games of the late 1980s. Set in the same grim, futuristic universe as Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame, Space Hulk for iPad is an altogether tighter experience that Warhammer’s grand, sprawling battles—Space Hulk is condensed into a claustrophobic system of ducts and corridors. It’s a game of rare simplicity, elegance, and tension.
Space Hulk was originally for two players, although in the iPad version you can play against the computer. (There’s also local and online multiplayer, although the latter can involve a certain amount of tedious waiting around.) One player controls the humans: a handful of space marines in massive suits of armor, clanking around the derelict space ship of the game’s title and trying to accomplish their quest objectives. The other player gets an unlimited number of vicious, six-limbed aliens called Genestealers because of their parasitical lifecycle (as you may come to observe, Space Hulk owes something of a cultural debt to the Alien films). The Genestealers do their best to overwhelm the humans and claw them to pieces.
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