I never playedWarhammer 40,000: Space Marine, so I didn’t know what to expect from the sequel. I have a lot of experience with 40k from other games like Fire Warrior,Darktide, and Dawn of War, so I know plenty about Space Marines, chainswords, and the glory of the Imperium. But I never got around to Space Marine because, frankly, there’s way too many Warhammer games these days. I don’t know what kind of game I expected, but it definitely wasn’tthis.
A lot of people won’t jump into a sequel to a game with no experience of the original and no context for the type of game they’re even about to play, but I like to live dangerously. Plus, our resident 40k super fan Ben Sledge said it “embodies the ultimate power fantasy of being a Space Marine”, which is the only endorsement I needed to hear. So I fired up Space Marine 2 last night and played through the tutorial, which you have to complete solo before you gain access to three-player co-op, and suffice to say, what I played was pretty impressive.
The setup is pretty straightforward and easy enough to follow even without any prior knowledge. You’re a Deathwatch marine on a mission to drop a biological weapon on a planet of nasty xenomorph-like aliens called Tyranids, when your ship gets overwhelmed by the horde and you’re ejected, losing all communication with your squad. As you make your way to your ship’s crash site you learn the basics of combat, which is a lot less basic than I expected.
What Kind Of Game Is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2?
Your marine (soon revealed to be Titus, protagonist of the first Space Marine, shocker) has a wide-swinging light attack, perfect for chopping down swarms of Tyranid fodder. Interestingly, the heavy attack is a combo finisher, which changes in execution and intensity depending on how far into your light attack combo you are.
Light-heavy, light-light-heavy, and light-light-light-heavy are all different combos that are more or less effective in different situations. Combat immediately gets even more complicated with the introduction of parries, dodges, and ranged attacks. Within the first five minutes I had already learned how to mark enemies with a heavy attack and finish them off with the cinematic blast of a targeted pistol shot. It was a lot for a tutorial, but I was still just getting started.
At this point my God of War instincts are starting to kick in and I’m taking control of the battlefield with good spacing and well-timed parries. Titus has a lot of the physicality and brutality of Kratos too. As you’re slashing and stomping your way through Tyranids, a backline hero will occasionally launch himself at you for a surprise attack.
If your timing is good and you parry just before it reaches your face, you’ll grab the monster right out of the air and spike it straight into the ground, causing it to explode and knock back all of its friends. If Titus and Kratos switched games, I think they’d both feel right at home. You even have a finishing move you can use on weakened enemies if you want an extra gory fatality, yet another signature Kratos move.
I was barely getting the hang of combat when I stumbled upon 40k’s iconic bolt rifle, and suddenly I wasn’t playing God of War anymore, I was playing Gears of War. As Tyranids swarmed from a distance I laid down a hail of bullets, obliterating them before they could reach me. The bugs switched up their tactics too and started launching acid at me from range, so I had to make use of cover and timing my return fire carefully. I was just getting used to weaving some ranged attacks into my melee combos the way Kratos does with his Leviathan ax, now all of a sudden I’m channeling Marcus Fenix and dashing between ammo crates as I lob grenades into crowds of aliens, who suddenly remind me a lot of the Hollow creatures from Gears.
You Need A Lot Of Fire Power To Deal With These Bugs
As the tutorial mission continues (it’s long by intro mission standards) you’ll start to weave both styles of combat together in a way I haven’t really experienced in any other game. Third-person shooters usually have some simple melee, and action-adventure games usually have a little bit of shooting (or throwing in God of War’s case), but Space Marine 2 has both. You could play the game like its God of War, or play it like its Gears of War, and it’s perfectly capable of adapting to either playstyle.
In the big finale (again, of the first mission) you’ve recovered the bioweapon from the crash site, brought it to the spot it needs to be launched from, and now you need to wait until it’s primed and ready to poison the planet. As you stand on a battlement inside a fortress waiting for the big moment, in the distance a terrifying flood of Tyranids starts rushing towards you. You have the high ground, but this is an army tens of thousands deep, and as you hopelessly fire into the crowd, it feels like you’re not making any headway at all.
It feels like a familiar stand-your-ground encounter from Left 4 Dead until the bugs start to pile on top of eachother, making a Tyranid-ladder to climb up the wall to get to you. Firing your rifle into these bug towers will disrupt them and cause them to fall and delay the inevitable. This whole scene is pulled right out of World War Z, and it’s exactly as horrifying and overwhelming as the zombie hordes are in that game. The only thing missing are the traps, but otherwise it’s pure horde-shooter madness.
In his review, Sledge wrote that the first hour of the Space Marine 2 is slow and frustrating, but it picks up a lot after that. I’m in for a hell of a time then, because the first hour was a blast for me. I’ve played plenty of games that do all the things Space Marine 2 is doing - and perhaps even more competently - but I’ve never played a game that does all of these things at the same time. I can’t wait to see what other games Space Marine 2 pulls ideas from later on. Are the levels designed like interconnected mazes like Dark Souls? Are there surreal nightmare sequences like Alan Wake 2? Horizon’s weapon crafting system? Spider-Man’s web-swinging?
Probably none of those things, definitely not the last one, but even if the rest of Space Marine 2 isn’t the ultimate third-person action-mashup of my dreams, I’m still impressed by the first impression.
