Sometime last year I made it clear I wasn’t a huge fan of Warhammer 40,000. It’s a franchise I don’t particularly vibe with, but that isn’t to say I hate it. The universe of Warhammer 40,000 is so interesting and fun to dissect. The many factions, their religious beliefs, and understanding the morals of these groups. Seeing how the human species became these fascist religious savages who do anything to conquer the stars and claim what is rightfully theirs. There’s orcs, what are the equivalent of mages, the undead, and cosmic magic in space. It’s this weird blend of fantasy and science fiction that meshes well together, and I see why so many people are drawn towards Warhammer 40,000. Personally I’d never play the tabletop game because I heard folks go in debt depending on what they buy to form their troops. However, ever since beating Boltgun last year I was down to trying another Warhammer 40,000 game in the future. There were plans to check out Rogue Trader seeing how it’s being acclaimed one of the best 40K games as of recently, but I thought it best to check out a few other CRPGs before jumping into that one. I do plan to soon, so be on the lookout.
Instead I decided to look into the 40K game that just about anyone can enjoy if you’re at least up for blood pumping action and guts flying around like confetti. Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, the third person shooting melee action hybrid that’s gained a cult following since it released back in 2011. Perfect timing I chose to review this one seeing how it’s finally getting a sequel. I can see why Space Marine failed when it originally launched. 2011 was a cramped year for gaming, and we saw the release of several shooters. Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3, Resistance 3, if it really counts add Deus Ex: Human Revolution to the pile, the original Modern Warfare 3, and more. That’s a lot of third entries, and what do you mean Yatzhee Croshaw made that joke back then. Who cares, anyways you can see why Space Marine failed to make sales. It’s another gritty third person shooter in an already overcrowded genre of games. Looking back at it now it’s probably one of the most unique shooters for its time. There wasn’t much of an emphasis on playing safely and more on mowing down foes with ferocity. You could swap between weapons easily and get creative on how you killed. There was an emphasis on melee combat and the constant switching between the two kept the combat loop from getting stale. Space Marine is cool and I would’ve bought it sooner if it weren’t for the fact getting a physical copy of this game is hard now. That doesn’t even matter, because the game isn’t backwards compatible for the Xbox One.
I’m a console gamer, you can tell that by now. I never invested in a gaming computer so the best I can play are low budget indie titles. Well recently I purchased a new work computer for school and it’s more advanced than the last one. I ran a program to see if I could run a more advanced game like Space Marine and thankfully I could. It went on sale a few weeks ago and I’ve been playing it since then. This game is good. This game is really good. Revisiting old 360/PS3 titles helps remind you of simpler times and how their influence would inspire a lot of games of today. I think Space Marine is one of the most underrated Triple A shooters I’ve played and as of right now it’s one of my favorite games in the Warhammer 40K series. It has gotten me hooked into this universe. However, I’m not going to say it’s perfectly timeless. There are certainly aspects that didn’t age well like the narrative, environmental design, and design of certain encounters. For the first swing though it was truly confident and it’s now gotten me excited for the upcoming sequel. Today we're gonna be talking about why I quite liked Space Marine and why it deserves your attention. For the Imperium of Man!
Story
Mankind has been conquering the stars for years, and during such times you need someone who can supply you weaponry for the war effort. That’s why Forge Worlds exist. What are practically planets covered in nothing but factories and ironworks. Guns, bombs, blades, armor plating, the shielding of ships, and many more. You name what you need and they’ll most likely make it for you. Recently the Forge World of Graia had been taken over by an ork invasion, because there’s orks in space and they want to piss off humans as much as possible. Humanity is struggling to reclaim the Forge World and they’re afraid their powerful weaponry will fall into terrible enemy hands. With no other option they do what they should’ve done since the beginning. Send in the Space Marines. There are many versions of Space Marines, but the ones they decide to send to Graia are the Ultramarines who are the most elite marines they have. They’re sent in a group of three and leading the group is Captain Titus. A stern man who sticks to a code of honor and will do anything to bring honor to the Imperium. He leads Sergeant Sidonus and Leandros, and once they crash down they begin slaughtering every ork.
They meet up with Lieutenant Miranda who guides them through the battlefield, and eventually they realize they’re all utterally f*cked. There’s too many orks and the ork captain is persistent on killing the Ultramarines as soon as possible. The odds are overwhelming, but not all hope is lost as they meet an Inquisitor by the name of Drogan. He tells the Ultramarines that before the planet fell to ork hands he and a group of researchers were busy developing a weapon. One that could wipe out orks and any enemies to the Imperium within seconds if Graia were to fall. This weapon was not finished though and he asks the Ultramarines to help him repair it so that they can kill every nasty green man that stands before them now. Knowing they have no other choice, Captain Titus agrees to help rebuild the weapon. Not knowing the true secret intentions of Drogan or what this unfinished weapon can really do.
Now venture forth with domination in your hearts!
Gameplay
In Space Marine you shoot and stab your way through every ork and foe that comes your way. Unlike a majority of shooters I’ve played, enemies like to come to you in hoards, and I mean that literally because they will rush you. They will charge at you unafraid of what you have equipped and they will cut you down if you don’t retaliate back to their unrelenting power. Good thing you have a wide amount of weapons to fight these bastards and you unlock new tools by discovering them throughout your journey. At the start of the game you have what is basically a pistol and an assault rifle. Eventually you get a sticky grenade launcher, sniper rifle, heavy machine gun, both plasma pistol and cannon, a railgun, and more. You can carry four guns at a time, but the pistol cannot be swapped out unless you pick up the plasma version of it. Guns aren’t the only option for cutting down your foes though. There is melee combat and it is meaty. Your attacks pack a ton of weight, can stun enemies at times, and may be good at hitting multiple weaker enemies on mass. There’s a dodge button for if enemies get close in to attack, and you have an energy shield to block damage. When the energy shield goes down your health bar gets revealed and if that bar goes down to zero you die. Being forced back to a nearby checkpoint and having to start a whole combat section over. The way you recover health in this game is unique, because it’s basically the glory kill mechanic before the modern Doom games made it a trend. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the new developers at Id Software took influence from this.
Depending on the type of enemy you are facing you can either stun them or damage ‘em enough to knock them into a stunned phase. You can then rip them into shreds to refill a huge chunk of your health bar, but this is often risky. You aren’t offered invincibility frames like your dodge roll or glory kills in Doom, and you can be killed while performing the execution. That’s why you want to perform this maneuver when you really need to. Enemies come in a variety of flavors, and new ones are introduced to up the ante. There’s the basic common fodder who come in huge groups, but then you have the ones armed with assault rifles to harass you on the side. Rocketers who fire explosives from a long distance. These tiny dog enemies who suicide bomb onto you, but if you fire at them quickly you can cause them to explode amongst other orks. Chunky orcs with heavy damage, melee weapons, and much more. There’s a third faction introduced halfway through the game, but I don’t want to spoil the surprises they have in store for you. Let’s just say it’s pure chaotic chaos. Outside of that there’s not much else for me to discuss. The game focuses on one thing and that is to provide a good core combat loop. It’s fun, it’s brutal, and the power fantasy a lot of people come to expect from a 40K game. Venture forward. Into the infinite void.
Thoughts
I was expecting this review to be longer, but Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is not a complex game nor is it a very long one. The game took roughly seven hours to beat and I expect for a few players to take longer depending on the difficulty they are playing on. The game is usually sold for sixty dollars on Steam, or forty dollars if you decide to buy it off GOG. Even then it’s best to wait for a sale, because I cannot imagine paying the price of basically a new game for a title that was released all the way back in 2011. That’s just Games Workshop doing whatever they can to milk you of every coin you have in your pocket. The game may be short, but there’s nothing too bad about a game having a short runtime. It means it does what it wants to do without going on too long, and for Space Marine that would be its core combat loop. I love the combat in this game and never once did it ever get stale. It reminds me of the new Doom games in that it forces you to utilize every tool you have in your arsenal. I found myself constantly switching weapons and packing what seemed right going forward. Use a railgun to pin enemies from a long distance. Use a machine gun against normal cannon fodder or medium distance. Use the grenade launcher for blowing up hordes, and hot steam shotgun for close range hordes. Every gun in this game has a distinct character and none of them felt terrible to use. I like how health recovery works in this game rather than having the player run to the side of an arena to pick up a health kit.
This is what I kind of wish Boltgun was more of. This rush to kill everything in sight, but keep the flow of combat going byu letting the resources you need being easily at your disposal if you can create opportunities to acquire them. However, whereas health can be acquired from doing glory kills I’m surprised ammunition still has to be looted from containers. Usually on the sides of arenas where you have to run to and press a button. However, these containers are often blue and blinking so at least there’s some visual distinction in a game where tons of sh*t is happening on screen all the time. Space Marine is kind of a technical marvel, because even though there were more visually impressive games at the time like Uncharted 3 and Dark Souls it’s stunning to see a whole horde of orcs run towards you. No glitches, no framerate drops, no one guy who is fusing into the corner or other guy. Just a chaotic horde and it’s pure hilarious madness. It ran oh so smoothly and even the big environments didn’t grind the game’s performance to a halt. There were some bugs though. I noticed at times when you cross certain parts of a level the audio stops playing. There was the corner of this one building I’d walk into, music stops, and I would back up for it to keep playing. It was like the visual gag of a cartoon and I kind of chuckled.
There’s also some bugged camera shots during cutscenes. Some scenes are obviously supposed to show characters talking, but instead the camera is either stuck in another character’s shoulder or the wall. I’m surprised they didn’t fix this for the decade this game has been out. Back to the gameplay of course. Every encounter was well designed and even when the tough go going I still found the game manageable. There are some encounters that feel badly designed. One section has you riding to the top of a mech. No cover whatsoever and you have two flying long distance enemies shooting from afar. Then a third flying enemy appears halfway through, and unless you brought the railgun in the room prior you’re pretty much screwed. Another encounter had four rocket orks hiding in the corners of the arena while a bunch of cannon fodder orks charged at me alongside two heavy melee damage orks. I was being bombarded at every side with not much chance of taking down the rocket orks. So half the battle was me luring the horde to one corner where the rocket orks couldn’t shoot me so I could kill them all, which ended up being the viable strategy. There’s one enemy later on that has somewhat missed potential. It’s an enemy that can teleport away if you shoot at it, but it teleports only sometimes and it can still stun. Smart players would know to stop firing, reposition their shot, and keep firing. That and you can still kill them easily with melee weapons. I do love the inclusion of melee combat in a shooting focused title.
It’s clunky and attacks don’t always perform as fast as you think. However, this is one of those games that I feel is clunky by design. You’re a literal walking tank carrying four different guns, and possibly an axe bigger than the lower half of your body. Of course it would make sense to stomp around like a giant. Of course it would make sense for every melee swing to feel like it’s being readied rather than swing like a madman. There’s even these sections where you get a good old jetpack and you get to feel even more like a tank. It’s good. Every element of combat works well, but the only complaint I have is that boss fights really suck. It’s often the concept of shooting the giant thing endlessly, and occasionally it’ll summon enemies to mess around with you. They’re not terrible, but they could’ve used more work. If the core combat is good then why don’t I think this game is perfectly timeless? Well other aspects of the game haven’t aged well and the area I want to focus on more is the story. The story is a whole load of nothing. Not to say it’s a bad story. I like the characters, the way the game explores honor, and the VAs deserve a raise for the performances they are giving. Absolute top tier levels of voice action fellas. Those elements work well and I will admit the story does enough to keep you motivated. To push you forward to see what happens next. It’s more like compared to a lot of other games you could be hearing something better. That and with a universe as complex as Warhammer 40,000 they took the simple route and told a story that felt honestly really safe even for shooter standards.
My only other complaint is that while the environments are impressive I wish they were at least populated with more machinery or objects. They’re pretty barren and empty a majority of time, but this is Warhammer 40,000. You shouldn’t expect the world to be something that isn’t a dark drab wasteland. My criticism for this game has been here and there, but overall I did have a fun time with this game. It’s been more than a decade since Space Marine came out and all we can hope is that the sequel can roughen out the edges the original had and deliver the more fantastical power fantasy the devs were hoping for all the way back in 2011. Anticipation is high, so maybe they will. I’m giving Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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