Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

There’s not a lot of instances where my opinion on a game changes after having written a review for it, especially if it's recent coverage. I like to stay consistent with my opinions, and if they are to change every few weeks then problems would arise as a reviewer. It’s not that opinions are not allowed to change over time, but there should be some form of credibility. Firmness within one’s statement and not changing it to match the views of a popular census. There’s only two ways for which my own opinions change. The first option is for enough time to pass, I look back on what I’d said, and determine whether or not my viewing stands or has gotten better/worse with time. The second option, often the rarer scenarios, is to play the sequel and see how it compares. For today’s case it is the latter, but my views are much stranger compared to most people. Around this time last year I reviewed Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Released back in 2011 on 7th generation consoles and developed by Relic Entertainment. The game was an attempt for both Games Workshop and the developers to make Warhammer 40,000 appease a crowd beyond the niche audience they already had. It was time for 40K to move on from tactics.

This wasn’t the franchise’s first attempt to become an action shooter though. The first attempt was with Fire Warrior, and unfortunately it wasn’t very good. This game could’ve honestly just rotted in the dirt especially since shortly after this game released the publisher THQ shut down, and plans for two future entries were cancelled. The game received alright reviews at launch and failed to meet sales like its 2011 competitors. Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, the list goes on. However, as time passed on Space Marine became a cult classic. A quite unique third person shooter that did enough to separate itself from the crowd, and a fan favorite among Warhammer 40,000 fans. Retrospectively it financially failed, but fulfilled its original goal of being a game that could appease an audience outside of hardcore franchise fanboys. Eventually the heads at Games Workshop noticed the rise in appraisal, and decided that maybe investing in a sequel would be a good idea seeing how people were invested in the characters and universe of this specific franchise installment. So they invested, and that’s how we ended up with the hype announcement for Space Marine 2 in 2021 and a game that’s been stuck in development hell for almost a decade crawling from the pits and entering the ironworks.

Connecting back to how I opened up this review, Space Marine is a pretty good shooter I played around this time last year and I can recommend it to those who love the franchise. Yet, that view has changed since then. Just a month ago I played the first three Gears of War games. Titles that served as heavy inspirations for the formula of Space Marine. I didn’t write reviews for any of these games, but was wowed away by what these games managed to achieve for their time. They also made me compare Space Marine to them, and my praise for the game somewhat went down. Don’t get me wrong it’s still a good game, but I had never had this feeling for a game. I thought it was prime time to finally hop into Space Marine 2. Managed to pick it up on sale because from what I heard seventy dollars is a bit much for what they’re giving. It’s been nearly one and a half decades since the original release, so this must mean Space Marine 2 is a massive improvement upon the original. People have hyped this game up for me stating it’s one of the greatest games of 2024. A return to the Xbox 360 for its arcadic multiplayer mode and overtop campaign you can play for hundreds of hours. A blast to the past, which sounds nice on paper. I finally played the game and in the end I came to the conclusion that Space Marine is just good. 

A statement that’ll surely garner some criticism from those who love this game. I don’t think the game is bad, far from it. Overall I say it’s a well made product with a fun gameplay loop, a fantastic looking setting that captures the feel of Warhammer 40,000 well, and can recommend to those who loved the first. It is a better game than the original Space Marine. It is good and if someone were to say this is one of their favorite games in recent memory to me I would completely understand. However, from a personal standpoint I can’t help but feel disappointed. Not because it went backwards or failed to deliver, but because what people praise as a new standard for action shooters is kind of just alright. It didn’t manage to amaze me, and what will shock you most of all is me believing it shouldn’t have tried to recapture the feel of games from the Xbox 360 era. It is a good game, but not as good as people said. We'll be talking about Space Marine 2 and why my views are as follows.

Story

Two hundred years have passed since the events of the original game. Apparently people in this universe live for several decades to fight in the everlasting space war. Captain Titus was arrested for actions he took on his last adventure. His attempts to stop the forces of Chaos in order to save an entire world, but becoming in touch of it. He’s accused of heresy and demoted to serving in the Deathwatch. An act of Penance that’ll last more than two lifetimes. Flash forward to current events and we see Titus fighting his way through Tyranid hordes on Kadaku. The Tyranids are a rapid species of aliens who work together as a hive mind to serve the local area queen, and won’t stop at nothing until everything in their path is dead. Titus cuts through the horde in order to reach a distress signal, but is knocked out. He is then awakened in the med-bay by his chapter’s Chaplain, and he addresses Titus’ actions from over the years. His servitude, sacrifices, and the penance he’s been delivering all this time. The Chaplain says Titus has redeemed himself and is to now be promoted to serve a greater purpose. Titus undergoes procedures and is reinstated to the former position he once had. An Ultramarine fighting for the good will of the God Emperor.

Titus is deemed a lieutenant and he is to lead two other Ultramines on duty, Charion and Gadriel. They are to embark on dangerous missions through heavily Tyranid invested zones to attempt to bring down the horde once and for all. Learning of weaponry being developed to combat these alien forces, activating them, and fulfilling their duty. As they press onward they will learn of the more troubling matters. The evil that lies beneath the surface and connections to what Titus had faced before. The past will slowly be unraveled, and Titus will face an undeniable fate. If he will possibly cave into temptation and sin. 

Gameplay

Space Marine 2 attempts to recapture the old school magic of the original, and anybody who was looking for this particularly will get what they wanted. It is more of the first, but gory and with a much better feeling. You navigate through linearly set levels fighting all sorts of enemies, utilize whatever tools you pick up, and reach your objective. This could be pressing a button, pulling a lever, or defeating a specific enemy but nonetheless what you’ll be doing most of the time is kill all the enemies that stand before you. Shoot, slice, crush, smother, and blow them to tiny pieces. Unlike the original you can only carry two guns at a time. Usually a handgun and a two handed weapon. There’s a large variety of guns to use each with different firepower, firing rates, and at times different ammunition. You also have melee weapons for close ranged combat. Majority of the time they’ll cut down what stands before you in one hit, have charged attacks to knock whole groups of enemies back, and the ability to parry. The original Space Marine also had close range combat, but as time went on you realized it wasn’t a viable option as most enemies fight at long range. Now there’s a good reason to use melee when there’s all sorts of foes running toward you.

You can slash and parry their attacks. Standard attacks can be dodged or parried, but blue attacks have to specifically be parried/deflected and red attacks must be dodged. Do it correctly and you might just get the opening you need. Whether that be performing a glory kill to crush a smaller enemy while pushing everything else away, or gaining a critical shot on a stronger opponent. You can weaken an enemy into a stunned state and this allows you to perform what is essentially the glory kill from the recent Doom games. Restore your shield which protects you from bullets and any potential health you may have lost if your shields were knocked down quickly. You can also restore health with syringes you pick up from progressing. Finally there’s your ultimate, Fury. A powerful state where Titus is enraged, restore health without the need of syringes, and can gain more slashing and blasting away. It’s very much like the rage mode from God of War and can be really helpful during chaotic moments. I usually like to save it up for boss fights or when there are too many tough enemies on screen. Then you have the occasional level with jetpacks and tad light platforming, but that doesn’t require much explaining. It is more Space Marine, and to vast amounts of people that’s exactly what they wanted. So why was it just alright for me?

Thoughts

Let me clear with you, again, before moving forward. I think Space Marine 2 is pretty good. There are times when it’s great, especially during the last hour of its campaign. It did what it had planned to do and what greater feat is that? A game fulfilling its promises rather than becoming an incoherent and poorly structured mess. The campaign took me only seven hours to complete and that’s a perfect runtime for a game such as this. All that Space Marine 2 has to offer is the combat loop, and if it were to go on any longer I feel like I would’ve gotten annoyed in the same way I got annoyed by Boltgun. Another Warhammer 40,000 shooter I played in the past. One of my biggest appraisals for this game is the visuals. This is one of the more striking games I have seen in recent memory. Whether that be the gallant architecture, the environment, nice blend of science fiction and dark fantasy, and what’s going on screen. The trailers depicted large hordes of Tyranids running towards the player, and that is exactly what happens during gameplay. The ads show what is in the game, and you get to actively participate in the enthralling battles. This is the type of stuff not possible to achieve with seventh generation consoles, and Space Marine 2 has managed to do it. The combat loop is still really fun and the effort put in to make melee viable is great. Aside from lengthy load times I’d say performance was great. The game is a 70 GB download as we speak and I played it on a PS5. Games with larger storage sizes tend to not run well these days with the occasional rare acceptance. This is one of them.

Those are my general appraisals for Space Marine 2. It’s good overall and well worth your time. Despite all it did well I felt kinda disappointed by what I had played. Not because the core game was bad, but because what a lot of people are saying is outstanding was just alright with me. It’s good, but not as good as people are saying it is. Take combat for instance. It’s good, I like it a lot. The mechanics and core principles are good, but my complaints come from how a vast majority of fights play out and the difficulty of them. I played the game on normal mode. The difficulty I expect a good chunk of players to play on. It was fairly engaging, but without sounding like an elitist or angering the elitist crowd I feel I was supposed to play Space Marine 2 on the higher settings. Enemy hordes like the smaller Tyranids don’t really do much to overwhelm the player and if they do you’re always given an opportunity to push them back. Like countering an enemy jumping towards you to push surrounding ones away, or performing an attack to do so like the charged Chainsword attack. There wasn’t a moment where I died. Even when I was taking heavy fire it’s usually my shields that deplete first, and they can easily be refilled by performing a glory kill. Even when you’re low on health you have medkits which should always be on hand, and if you do die allies can revive Titus. You understand where I’m going with this right? You have this gritty shooter, but the easiness and failure to scale the difficulty up leads to stagnation.

The game does throw the occasional tougher enemies at you and end stages with boss fights. It has better enemy variety than the first Space Marine, but just like the hordes these foes function all the same and are taken down with one of two strategies. Either shoot at them relentlessly or parry then counter. Despite boss fights being better than the original I’m not exactly sure if this game has enough of them. There’s three to four kinds from what I remember and the final boss is literally the mission four boss but with some extra spectacle attack. That is the best way I can describe the combat of Space Marine 2. It is all spectacle and hype moments. Which is fine as a majority of people play shooters for this, but I was expecting more. Variation aside from firing away mindlessly at enemies who don’t do much to challenge the player. Again, it’s probably all because I played on a lower difficulty setting but from what I’ve read online people who played on the harder modes didn’t die that much as well. Another problem I have is that there doesn’t seem to be much variation among the different weapons. Space Marine 2 has a lot of guns you can use, but the difference between them is very minimal. Here’s an assault rifle, here’s another assault rifle, and here’s one with a scope. It’s nice the game is giving me stronger tools as I go, but starting weapons are as strong and efficient as the endgame arsenal.

I’ve seen a lot of people praise how Space Marine 2 recaptures the feeling of an old Xbox 360 as well as PS3 game. My complaints here come in two forms. One is comparing Space Marine 2 to actual games of the era, and two is should the game have done this. Earlier I mentioned I played the first three Gears of War games last month, and without sounding too biased these games are way better than I hoped they would be. Glad I was proven wrong by just how good they are, and a shame I didn’t take time to review them. The original was a fun time through a dreary world, but the story was somewhat lacking. Then you hit Gears of War 2 and Gears of War 3, and that’s when the story and world finally clicks. The first set the groundwork, and the second and third ran with the ideas. Gears of War 2 explores themes of love and hope, and Gears of War 3 is all about adversity and sacrifice. My favorite scene from this series is from Gears of War 3. It’s not the scene where Dom dies, although that was expertly done. It’s the scene where Cole, a former athlete, returns to a stadium area to search for food alongside a team of scavengers. It’s during this mission he finds an old cardboard cut out of his advertising brand cereal and he says from what I can remember “Do you ever feel like you’re dead and nobody told you.” Then followed by him remembering his life. Landing a touchdown, but in reality killing Locus.

This scene transforms Gears of War from a mindless gritty shooter into one about the true effects of war. Of one man wishing to go back to the life he once had, but knowing he never will even when all is said and done. That they will continue fighting till the day they die. A cog to keep the machine running. Another one in a million to throw into the furnace. Three beautiful games with an epic finale coming out in an era of shooters that all felt the same after a while. And this is the point where we connect back to Space Marine 2. You can’t exactly achieve this with what this game is trying to be. I’ve seen dozens of people claim Warhammer 40,000 has excellent lore and it explores a universe where facism rules and you have no word . I don’t want to make this political, but there is a book about space marines dropping down onto a planet and massacring a whole race of people. It could’ve been about the horrors of war, but the game we got instead was shallow. Ok maybe not just that. It’s about Titus’ connection to Chaos and him trying to do good despite his past history. However, I don’t think it’s done or explored all that well. See how an actual Xbox 360 game, Gears of War, managed to say a lot with such a little scene. Somehow after several years of excellent storytelling games you get this. You get a game with a shallow narrative and themes, and while most people will play for the gameplay alone it sucks a universe as vast as Warhammer 40,000 manages to say very little. So should this game have tried to recapture the magic of the Xbox 360 and PS3 era? Should it have tried to?

No, because now you have two main groups arguing. One is people who grew up with this era complaining about what it’s not doing. While the other complains about how Space Marine 2 is stuck in the past. You have two sides tugging back and forth in mind, and while I could be wrong a majority of Space Marine 2 fans aren’t this you have to admit these two groups probably exist out there. Space Marine 2 is a good game that could’ve been more. It could’ve been a game that people talk about for years to come, but after the hype I just feel like it’s filler. Something you check out and move on from quickly. Something to plug the gap in between waiting for other more interesting games. Space Marine 2 is just good enough. It’s not as good as people hyped it up to me, and I can’t imagine people dumping 70 dollars into this day one to be given an alright experience. It’s not the most revolutionary thing ever. In the end I give Space Marine 2 an 8/10 for being enjoyable. Enough at least. 

8/10, Enjoyable