Download Warhammer - Shadow of the Horned Rat

Shadow of the Horned Rat is a real time strategy game set within the Warhammer fantasy world. You are placed in charge of a mercenary company, with a simple aim of lining your pockets with as much gold as you can carry! To achieve this, you will find many dangerous missions available to you. This will lead you on to a campaign that will take you across the Old World, with the fate of all good peoples in your hands.

The game is faithful to many aspects of the Warhammer universe, but is played out in real-time, unlike it's tabletop counterpart. This provides a very different challenge, as you will have to consider your actions quickly and carefully (or with copious use of the pause button!). You are put right into the action from the first mission onward, with the early missions quite challenging for a beginner.

There is a large amount of voice acting, which is in general quite competent, if nothing special by todays standards. The music is of relatively low quality, but is very fitting for the game, with sound effects and battle cries adding to the thrill of the action.

Reading the manual is very much recommended, as it not only provides you with help on the in-game controls but also background on both the world you find yourself in and the mercenaries that you command. The story presented in the manual does help to set the scene before you enter the fray.

First off, one thing you will notice is the graphics. The introduction and campaign screens are very well drawn 2D artwork, with occasional 3D-rendered backgrounds. However, this is a stark contrast to the 2D/3D mix that you are presented with in the tactical game proper. This is a game that had the unfortunate timing to be developed before full 3D was as prominent as it is today, and this does show it's age quite a lot.

The battle screen is by default almost two-thirds command interface, unit information and the map. This leaves a really quite small visible area in the top left of the screen. At the beginnning of the game, when you are dealing with at most three to four units in an area, this doesn't present a problem. Later on in the campaign, the ability to see more would have been much more helpful. This can be extended by a "widescreen" button in the top right of the screen, but this just removes the map to give you the top half of the screen as visible area. The map is of great importance when considering how to attack, so this widescreen option is unfortunately of little use.

You begin your campaign with two regiments, one of cavalry which is lead by the players avatar, who as default is Morgan Bernhardt (only the name is customisable), and the other footsoldiers. The initial tactics revolve mainly around the mobility of your cavalry, until you can purchase other units. Once you have finished a battle you will receive a debriefing which will let you know how many units per regiment were either killed or injured, as well as letting you know how much experience you have earned. You earn gold based on your success in such battles over the course of a mission (with a bigger reward for those missions which require larger or more frequent battles).

Your gold allows you to recruit extra men for your regiments, or to hire entirely new regiments to complement those already in your employment. Your two starting regiments are restricted to melee attacks, so picking up some ranged units can be of great advantage. Artillery are amongst the units available to you in the later game, which bring added benefits if you can use them appropriately!

The mission structure is relatively linear, with branches available to gain extra experience, units and magical items. These are all important to give you an advantage in the later game, when having stronger, experienced units can turn the tide in an otherwise evenly matched battle.

The game is difficult and can be quite unforgiving, with only the first couple of battles being what I would term easy. It can take some time to adapt to the tactics and methods for winning in certain scenarios, with some missions (even quite early on) requiring special tactics to dispach key enemy units.

To conclude, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat is a solid RTS experience, which provides great entertainment but whose appearance looks ever out of place in the modern era of gaming. With a graphical facelift and some tweaks to the user interface, I could imagine a remake doing very well today, as it is really only in these two departments it is lacking. Perhaps a choice of difficulty levels would alsp be beneficial to the less experienced player.

I would recommend this game to the more hardcore RTS players, and also potentially for those interested in Warhammer. For those less experienced in such games, I would say that this may be a bit of a jump in the deep end, unless you have the perseverence to learn the games quirks.

IMPORTANT!!! READ THIS!!!!!

#1. Download the game.

#2. Download 'Batch' (available as an extra at the top of the page)

#3. Unpack the game and 'Batch' extra, and move the whshr.bat file into the game directory.

#4. Run the whshr.bat file (DO NOT RUN WARSTART.EXE OR SETUP.EXE)

#5. First path - Enter in where you want the game to be installed. Example: c:\warhammer

#6. Second path - Enter in EXACT LOCATION of the installation files that you just unzipped. Example:  c:\downloadedgames\warhammerSOTHR

#7. Installation should be complete. Go to wherever you just installed it, and set the WHSHR.EXE file to Run in 256 Color Mode.

#8. Run the game. If it ever complains about needing music or sound files right after the map screen just click OK to skip past them and you should be fine.

Reviewed by: Panthro / Screenshots by: Panthro / Uploaded by: hunvagy

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