Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch Steam In Home Streaming Review

Hello Gamersworldbd readers! Today we have another exciting game to test via Steam’s In Home Streaming and that is Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch Enhanced Edition. That’s a mouthfull so let’s call it Deathwatch for short.

Deathwatch is a PC port of an iOS game with the same title but “Tyranid” tacked on the end. In the game you control a group of hardened Warhammer veterans in a turn based tactical strategy setting. I’ve been a Warhammer fan ever since Relic’s excellent Dawn of War 2 and it’s tactical squad based gameplay. So, when this released on Steam, I couldn’t wait to try out Deathwatch.

First thing’s first. If you’re new here, you may want to read up the system specs and the testing methodology. The highlights include the main host PC, Core i7 6700K, an EVGA Superclocked Geforce 980 4GB with the ACX 2.0 cooler and 32GB Ripjaws DDR4 2400MHz RAM. Intel NIC. Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit. The Surface Pro 3 is the i5 model and the Razer Blade is the 2014 model. And the NUC is D34010WYK, with a Core i3-4010U, 8GB RAM. Finally, everything is connected to an ASUS RT AC87U Router.

Let’s get straight to the review then!

Surface Pro 3 10 Feet, 5GHz, Wi Fi AC, “Balanced” Setting:

I was pleasantly surprised that Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch launched without a hiccup unlike other games. However, the game doesn’t natively support the Xbox 360 controller and I didn’t have the Microsoft Type cover on the Surface Pro 3. Although I could’ve hooked up a spare mouse and got to town with it but remember, it is a port of a mobile game. So, surely it should support the Surface Pro 3’s touchscreen, right? Well I’m sad to say that the touchscreen controls don’t exactly work how you expect it to. This could be a limitation of the Steam streaming protocol or maybe the game requires a few tweaks to make it work but I don’t know.

Navigating the menus is fine, but in the game you have to double tap anything (be it soldiers, enemies or the movement tiles) to select it. For example, the game requires one click to select an enemy and another click to confirm that you want to attack it. But that translates to two double taps or four taps on the touchscreen in total. This is counter intuitive. Also, you cannot drag the screen like you would spect on a touchscreen, since the game doesn’t scroll properly. So, my dream of playing Steam games and Deathwatch in particular with a touchscreen was again left unrealized.

Apart from that the graphics was very good as I didn’t notice any compression issues or muddled textures. Sound was crisp as well with no lack of depth.

In my time of play testing, I’m happy to say that Deathwatch provided me with one of the better experiences of playing via Steam In Home Streaming.

Surface Pro 3 45 Feet, 5GHz, Wi Fi AC, “Balanced” Setting:

Although no fault of Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch but the Surface Pro 3 wouldn’t connect to the host PC. I had to manually get up and browse to the Steam In Home Streaming section in the drop down Settings menu to get it to connect. I’ve faced this problem a number of times and sometimes I have to disable Windows firewall on the host machine to get it to see each other. Needless to say this is bothering and Valve needs to fix it ASAP if it wants Steam In Home Streaming to be a seamless experience.

Anyway, back to Deathwatch. The game failed to launch with an error message saying it “Couldn’t connect to the remote computer” and it persisted after a couple of tries. Again, I had to get up and quit the game on the host PC, disable Windows firewall and restart Steam for it to finally connect.

The first thing I noticed while the camera was panning in an overhead view was that it was stuttering, although I’m fairly certain I’ve noticed it in other games in similar circumstances.

Once the gameplay started it was nearly indistinguishable from both playing at 10 feet and playing natively on the host PC as there was nary a stutter nor any distinguishable graphical issues.

Razer Blade 10 Feet, 5GHz, Wi Fi AC, “Balanced” Setting:

I haven’t had a good visual experience with the Razer Blade’s “4K” screen and streaming games via Steam. That’s because the higher resolution screen of the Razer Blade prominently highlights any compression issues. But not so with Deathwatch. Although you could notice some compression issues if you looked close enough, but that would be nitpicking. From a distance of about a feet, the visual fidelity was almost indistinguishable from the Surface Pro 3’s. This is in part of Deathwatch being based on a mobile game and perhaps that’s a blessing in disguise. It’s good because the graphical quality didn’t take a hit via Steam streaming but it’s sad that the game didn’t take full advantage of the immensely powerful PC hardware.

I encountered one weird thing while I left the game running for 5 minutes as I went away. Upon returning the game froze entirely. I had to restart the stream to be able to play again. But it didn’t launch on the first try. Nor did it on the second. I had to get up and walk to the host PC. But I found that both Steam and Deathwatch had crashed. Now I don’t know whether this was an unforeseen bug with the game or Steam streaming issues. After restarting Steam on the host PC, I resumed streaming to the Razer Blade just fine.

When I got back into it, I found that the gameplay was largely smooth but there was a one or two second hiccup during the voice over at the start of the first mission.

Apart from that the rest of the gameplay went on with very few issues.

Razer Blade 45 Feet, 5GHz, Wi Fi AC, “Balanced” Setting:

Once again I had to disable Windows firewall on the host PC for Steam streaming to see each other. But the game started and it quit to the desktop once I got into a mission. I then reconnected to the Stream exactly where I left off. It is to be said that the Surface Pro 3 didn’t get any disconnects at this range.

The Razer’s “4K” screen gave the slightest hint that the textures were less detailed and you could see some compression issues if you looked close enough. As I was typing out this review and had the game running, it froze and then disconnected. It reconnected on the second try with a black screen. So I had to restart the game. It froze again when I ended my turn.

By this time most players would’ve become frustrated and quit so I wrote it off as unplayable at this distance with the Razer Blade due to connectivity issues.

NUC 1 Gbps Wired, “Balanced” Setting:

The first thing that was immediately apparent with the NUC being connected to a 55 inch 4K TV is Deathwatch’s lack of controller support. I had no place to put the wireless mouse and keyboard except on my lap which meant that playing the game was awkward. There was the ever so slightly compression issues and a couple of black screen flickers. Usually the Bravia’s 4K upscaling does a pretty good job, so I believe it masked the graphical issues. But apart from that the gameplay was smooth.

Verdict:

Limited control options means that you aren’t going to enjoy streaming Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch to a big HDTV or playing on a touch only device anytime soon. There wasn’t any significant graphical issues or stuttering so that’s a plus. The lack of controller support severely limits Steam In Home Streaming appeal, unless you have Valve’s new fangled Steam controller.