Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
Review
Devotion to the Emperor is your duty, despite its frustrations
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
There Is Only War
Every piece of marketing on the mouthful that is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 showcases some of its best parts. Massive hordes of Tyranids running at your squad with ill intentions only to be gunned down or made into a bloody pulp in melee combat. With Saber Interactive taking over the development of the series and using the same engine employed in World War Z, it makes perfect sense. In person, the sheer number of Tyranids that have their eyes on you is impressive. They overwhelm the play space and create flowing rivers of scurrying bodies in the backgrounds. During some set piece moments, you'll also see them create living mounds of their bodies to scale massive walls. It is beautiful to look at, especially as you salivate at the idea of greeting them with your handy Chainsword.
Even the static elements of these environments are gorgeous. Whether it's blood-drenched halls that show you the true power of these hordes or beautifully dangerous planets, Space Marine 2 does a fantastic job of showing off this grimdark world in high fidelity. It is hard not to laugh with joy as you cut through these swarms of enemies, perform brutal counter attacks, and rip enemies apart with gory finishers. The totally serviceable photo mode allows you to revel in these moments to your heart's content.
And, of course, you're living in the 40K universe, here. Your Battle Barge, which serves as a central meeting place between missions, is filled with other Space Marines engaging in conversations or discussing aspects of religious devotion that provide more depth to the game's universe. However, the game cleverly avoids slowing down the pace to explicitly explain everything that is happening. Even if you've never heard of Warhammer, you'll grasp the concepts pretty quickly. It's there that Games Workshop continues a streak of developers and publishers that simply get what it means to make a Warhammer game.
Your Craft Is, Indeed, Death
From the outset, you're shown these hordes, these larger enemies that exist alongside them, and the tools you have to combat them. You start with a Chainsword that cuts through the little guys and punishes the big ones via a series of combos. A blue flash will show the opportunity for a perfect parry, an action that will either gloriously end the life of a tiny Tyranid jumping your way or allow you a punishing follow-up shot from your sidearm on the bigger foes. Even in the chaos of these battles against dozens of bug-like enemies, these parries are relatively easy to pull off, and satisfying every time. Less easy to pull off are the standard parries that can repel when any melee attack connects without a visual cue accompanying them. The sheer number of bodies hurling themselves towards you makes those smaller moments difficult, but they're also relatively inconsequential anyway. The flow of combat starts to show its potential when the set piece moments happen, when dozens of enemies turn into scores, and you're allowed to be a badass tearing through them all while laughing maniacally the whole time. It's easy to see the seams of this technology, the cleverly hidden differentiations between enemies that can hurt you, enemies that you can simply shoot, and the ones that are on screen just to fluff up the numbers, but it remains thrilling nonetheless.
One thing that Space Marine 2 gets wrong is the continued implementation of these combat mechanics. When you start the campaign, the difficulty defaults to Normal, though the next step up is "the way the game is meant to be played," so I started with the latter. With another step above that still, I expected a challenging-but-fun experience. I instead found a ton of frustration. Space Marine 2, like its predecessor, feels like a game crafted for melee combat. Despite their visual similarities to games like Gears of War, these aren't cover shooters, they're melee fighters with some firearms both big and small. So when the game throws more and more enemies at you that fire from afar, sometimes from areas you physically cannot reach, it feels like the finely crafted melee combat flow is breaking down in some serious ways.
Military Missteps
Despite your status as one of the preeminent warriors in this universe, a few simple minions with some firearms can make your battles a living hell. They'll drain your health in just a few moments, and your only reliable source of respite is in those melee finishers that regenerate some of your armour. Health pickups, though, are oddly scarce. I most often found them in out-of-the-way areas that most other games would hide a collectible in. Other times you can find them in breakable green crates that I only discovered weren't set-dressing on accident, or occasionally lying in the open for you to pick up. You can only carry two of them with you, though, so most fights would inevitably devolve into a search for health as the hordes did what hordes do: swarm you relentlessly.
The combat arenas lack design for this type of engagement, as there's such a small amount of cover to find even momentary respites from the fire. It might sound silly, and if your ranged tools were just a little bit better it probably would be, but of the dozen-or-so primary firearms you have easy access to, very few of them seem to pack the punch needed. You don't have the luxury of spending time shooting down foes from afar when swarms of melee creatures are descending upon you at the same time. If you take advantage of your opportunities and get your shots off, you will run out of ammo before too long anyway, and while just about every arena has an infinitely usable ammo crate, filling your coffers takes too much time in the face of these pressures. The ammo boxes you can pick up instantly, on the other hand, are more rare, and do not spawn via combat. There's a reason games that deal with these levels of enemy hordes feature enemies that are overwhelmingly melee-based, and the ones that allow enemies to return fire are usually cover-based. A challenge is fine if it feels fair, and Space Marine 2 revels in its unfairness on higher difficulties. This problem is further exacerbated later in the campaign. Pre-release footage and information barely even hints at the existence of enemies other than these Tyranids, but by the ultimate mission, these melee-centered enemies have been missing for half of the playtime. Combat arenas remain open and restricted in a way that provides a proper context for the term “fish in a barrel” without giving you any additional and significant gear to deal with a melee/ranged ratio that inverts to probably 10/90 by that last level.
Uphold The Traditions of Your Chapter
Over this planet-hopping adventure, the story of Titus and his tangential Space Marine cohort was enough of a driving force but did not capitalize on significant opportunities. Despite some story moments that could have allowed it to spiral into something much more interesting, the heresy allegations against Titus are nothing more than lip service. Several cut-scenes, especially on the Battle Barge, seemed like little more than filler, at most. And one particular moment about halfway through set an interesting stage for a story-altering moment, but they immediately pull back on it, and we're left with nothing but a bog-standard reveal of the game's big bad.
I didn't expect any universe-shattering story moments, no subversion of Warhammer's entire ethos, and, least of all, any harmony between the warring factions. They could have, however, worked within that framework to give our hero an extra level of challenge. That they didn't, and instead kept the straight-line path with five campaign missions, might speak to budget constraints holding Space Marine 2 back from what could have been. And while the Operations mode (referred to as the equivalent of a co-op Horde mode, but it's not at all that. They're very much like supplemental standard campaign missions) shows promise and exists in the same story, featuring the actions of your "other squad" during particular missions, the entire experience feels short. Ultimately, in its current state, the briefness of the campaign feels like a good thing, with the combat wearing out its welcome and a lack of positive evolution of its elements. Developer Saber Interactive has been up front about their plan for the next year, and it looks like this plan will address the breadth-of-content concerns. New PvE missions, new enemies, and new weapons litter the 12-month roadmap, so the future may indeed be bright, but mortgaging the current game on the prospects of the future usually makes for a reason to wait.
I wasn't able to match up for any of the game's multiplayer modes, and I can see those matches going either way. During the campaign, fighting opposing Space Marines is less engaging that I would have thought. Maybe things get more interesting when neither side can take cover, or parry melee attacks, and are dealing with all the same issues, but I can’t speak to it.
Fight To The Last Breath
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is as beautiful as the property has ever been. It's a distinct experience among the pantheon of Games Workshop's video game titles, and may end up being the definitive way to embody a singular Space Marine. The sequel is certainly an expansion upon the predecessor, though not as thoroughly as we might have hoped. It keeps its roots close to the chest, staying faithful to the original game without learning significant lessons for improvement. While the player's tools are primarily melee focused, the game too-often throws enemies that specialize in ranged combat at the player. The rub is that if the combat mechanics didn't quickly devolve into frustration, the extremely short campaign (that is probably best played on Easy: a sad realization) would be an additional negative. I believe strongly that there is still hope on the periphery of Space Marine 2. With proper dedication to the existing roadmap, and beyond, that outlines a focus on PvE content, including an upcoming, proper horde mode, its identity can shift from "gorgeous looking, short single-player experience" to "great game to play with friends," but we're not there yet. And in a gaming landscape that will probably see dozens of games launching to appeal to the latter feeling while Space Marine 2 works its way up to that, on top of the existing ones, it remains a tough game to recommend.
As always, follow Hooked Gamers on Instagram for news updates, reviews, competitions and more.
6.8
fun score
Pros
A stunning and faithful way to enter the shoes of a Space Marine and engage in solid melee combat against large hordes of enemies.
Cons
As the combat loop introduces more ranged enemies, things get frustrating, fast, on higher difficulties. The enemy in the marketing is absent for the back half.
