Space Hulk - Deathwing Enhanced Edition

Space Hulk - Deathwing Enhanced Edition places players inside the heavy Terminator armor of the Deathwing, the elite 1st Company of the Dark Angels Space Marine Chapter, clearing a derelict hulk of Genestealers one claustrophobic corridor at a time. Released in May 2018 as a standalone relaunch of the 2016 original, it added a new Chaplain class, expanded arsenal, and randomized Special Missions mode aimed at giving the game more staying power. It built a large but divided following — 74% Mostly Positive across 5,951 English reviews — anchored in genuine appreciation for its Warhammer 40K atmosphere, running into an unusually large body of criticism about the systems built around it.

An atmosphere fans specifically credit

The praise for the game's setting and feel is detailed and comes from an audience that knows the source material well. One reviewer with 91 hours writes: "games workshop was doing right by this game and the lore behind the games and books, good graphics and combat, no two missions ever feel the same." Another calls it directly "the best warhammer game to get the true feeling of the grim darkness as a terminator." A third, more colorfully, compares it favorably to a genre classic: "this is deadspace, but if isac was HELLA BUFF, had a minigun." That's genuine, specific credit for capturing a particular tone — heavy, oppressive, lore-faithful — that dedicated 40K fans clearly value.

AI companions reviewers say make the game worse

The most convergent complaint in the sample targets the bot-controlled squadmates players rely on outside of multiplayer. One reviewer sums it up in a single line: "If it wasn't so difficult and useless bot team mates then it'd be really good." Another, more detailed: "playing solo with AI kinda sucks. We are talking about long range enemies with rocket launchers and xeno that rush you with AI only turning to fire when they get hit." A third, with 16 votes behind a longer account, describes repeated failure directly caused by AI behavior: "I told my guys to defend me in a narrow hallway while I hacked a turret nearby" and describes the ensuing wipe as a direct result of the squad's passivity. Multiple independent, detailed accounts of the same specific failure — AI companions that don't proactively engage threats — is strong enough convergence to treat as an accurate, persistent characteristic of the shipped game.

A tiny multiplayer population that leaves solo players stuck

That AI complaint carries extra weight given how few players actually use the co-op multiplayer the Enhanced Edition specifically promotes. Global achievement data shows multiplayer-specific milestones — one for each class played in co-op — sitting at just 0.4% to 0.5% of the playerbase, a strikingly low figure for a game whose marketing calls out its "richer multiplayer mode" as a headline feature. For the overwhelming majority of players today, that means the AI companions reviewers criticize aren't an alternative to a better-populated multiplayer scene — they're effectively the only option.

A GPU utilization complaint reviewers say is alarming

A separate, more unusual technical complaint recurs independently across the sample. One reviewer asks directly: "What the hell is a 2018 game doing using 100% of my GPU in the damn main menu? Thankfully, I noticed it before my GPU had a chance to burn out." Another, independently: "I am a little baffled why this game had to use 100% of my GPU when Darktide which newer, more taxing and had better physics does not." Two independent reviewers reporting the identical, specific, and genuinely concerning symptom — full GPU load at idle — is worth taking seriously as an unoptimized, unresolved technical issue rather than an isolated hardware quirk.

A crash bug that can wipe a co-op session

Beyond the GPU issue, a distinct and severe crash bug recurs in the sample. One reviewer describes it precisely: "one time I exited to menu and it locked my screen on one frame that I couldn't alt f4 or exit out of, so I had to restart my computer." Another, describing the same failure with a specific trigger: "accidently nudging my headphone jack makes the entire game freeze and crash so badly that I can't close it even with the task manager... when you're the host and your team is doing well and this happens erasing all of you progress and kicking all the players." Checked against the developer's own partner-events history, no patches addressing stability issues appear after the Infested Mines DLC in August 2018 — the studio's subsequent public activity centers entirely on a different, newer title, leaving these specific bugs with no apparent path to a fix.

Verdict

Space Hulk - Deathwing Enhanced Edition earns real credit for its Warhammer 40K atmosphere and lore fidelity from an audience that clearly cares about getting that setting right. That achievement is seriously undercut by an unusually large, convergent body of complaints about unhelpful AI companions — made worse by a nearly nonexistent multiplayer population that leaves most players with no alternative — plus specific, unresolved technical problems including concerning GPU utilization and severe crash bugs. Worth a discounted purchase for dedicated 40K fans playing with real friends; go in with tempered expectations for solo play.

Sources: Steam store page and appdetails API (release date, pricing, platform data); Steam's aggregate review data (query_summary totals, English-language sample); individually read user reviews, both positive and negative, sorted by helpfulness and recency; Steam's global achievement statistics API; Streum On Studio's own partner-events history from 2018 through 2021.