When Deathwatch was first announced, I was a little hesitant. I don't like Rogue Trader, and I was anticipating more of the same. And it looks like I was right. I'm still waiting for the system to actually be released, but right now it looks terrible.
The Deathwatch simply don't take on a wide enough variety of missions for it to be a decent RPG. The authors decided to fix this by ignoring what the Deathwatch are actually supposed to do, and having them run around the sector like a hyper-powered nannies shoring up the Imperium's stupidity, instead of just murdering the green things like all of their previous background would indicate.
And things like "Squad Mode" reek of "boardgame in disguise." FFG is good at making boardgames; I'd even say really good, but they should keep them out of their RPGs.
Well, FFG is trying extra hard to fail out on this one. There's a new weapon trait in Deathwatch called "Felling." Felling things ignore levels of Unnatural Toughness, making them only effective against Marines and big bugs and crap that actually has that trait... Regular people don't care. And large monsters (like the daemon prince they threw in for no reason) get it too, so they are just as good at killing marines as they are at killing regular people.
To me, this is covering a huge whole in the system. Marines needed to appear tough, but then things couldn't hurt them. So they came up with this half-assed solution to still be able to threaten marines, without just making every monster do d10+40 damage.
Go look at it if you don't believe me.
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=179&efcid=3&efidt=360721
Thanks, FFG
