Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review: “Raises the bar for all Warhammer adaptations”
A heavy bolt pistol only has eight bullets. That’s not a lot in the grand scale of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. You’ll regularly be fighting ten times as many alien hordes and Chaos daemons, but most enemies only need a single missile shot to reduce them to sticky red chunks. Frankly, they’re the lucky ones – the most gruesome fate befalls anyone within range of super-soldier protagonist Titus, who seems to take great delight in ripping off heads, arms and jaws, killing their previous owner.
Space Marine 2 revels in this excess – every second is spent on gruesome violence and vast, beautiful battlefields. Developer Saber Interactive has created an incredibly over-the-top hack-and-slash shooter, and while Warhammer fans would expect nothing less, newcomers to this grim universe couldn’t ask for a better (or bloodier) introduction.
All or nothing
Short info
Release date: 9 September 2024
Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X
developer: Saber Interactive
editor: Focus Entertainment
Although it’s been 13 years since the launch of the first Space Marine, over 100 years have passed since the return of hero Demetrian Titus. Accused of heresy at the end of the first game – which you don’t need to have played to access this – he spent the last century exiled from his own Space Marine Chapter, fighting in the elite xeno-hunting unit Deathwatch. When a hivemind of insectoid, scythe-wielding Tyranids descends on a planetary system hosting a secret Imperial research project, Titus is tasked with rejoining his Chapter to save the day.
However, burly comrades Gadriel and Chairon are suspicious of Titus’s long absence, while Titus himself remains frustratingly distant. This translates into a lot of sneering – Space Marines are many things, but not emotional – but we don’t really get to explore these tensions in depth, which makes the story feel a little perfunctory. Dialogue boils down to 10 hours of the word “brother,” while the straightforward but serviceable story rarely goes beyond taking players from one desperate gunfight to the next.
Fortunately, these struggles are what we Really here for – and by the Emperor, they’re phenomenal. Saber Interactive is the developer behind 2019’s World War Z game, and its experience with horde-based combat shows. Watching hundreds of Tyranids charge over a hill towards you, or form twisting pyramids to climb over each other and reach your high ground, is dangerously mesmerising. But you only have a small window of time to take out as many as you can from afar – whether by thinning out chaff with fully automatic bolter fire, throwing grenades, or mowing down larger enemies with charged plasma rounds and careful laser rifle shots – before the real Chaos ensues. Once you’re in the thick of it, combat devolves into brutal close-quarters combat, where you’ll often struggle to gain enough space to fire again. There’s no cover system, so the only way to survive is to be aggressive – dealing damage restores health, while killing weakened targets with gory execution animations regenerates your armor.
It’s exhilarating – every fight feels like you’re constantly fighting not to drown, but Titus still feels like the strongest soldier in almost every battle. A single slash of his chainsword can shred entire rows of baddies, and parrying is extremely satisfying, as it lets you kill your attacker in a single bloody animation in most cases. One of my favorite executions is grabbing a bestial demon by the throat and squeezing, which creates an effect I can only compare to squashing a banana, squashing it so hard that its insides fly out of the peel. Tougher enemies like Tyranid Warriors (think a Xenomorph with a sword) and Chaos Space Marines need a bit more back and forth before they’ll drop their guard, but if you parry enough of their blows, you’ll have the opportunity to execute them with a point-blank pistol shot to the head or a grisly bisecting.
It’s incredibly fluid, although the formula starts to falter towards the end of the adventure. You’ll encounter more of these special enemies, at the expense of fewer giant hordes, and the fights will get a little longer as more baddies get weapons – which is a shame, as shooting in itself isn’t that interesting. But when Space Marine 2 gets the balance between gunplay and close combat right, there’s nothing quite like it – it’s like watching an exceptionally well-choreographed fight scene, except you are the one where you rip the heads off Chaos Space Marines with your bare hands and power up their puny cultist buddies with a single bullet. It flows so naturally that you really do feel like the centuries-old death machine Titus is supposed to be – you’re a formidable soldier facing overwhelming odds, a power fantasy I haven’t felt this strongly since the Xbox 360 days of Halo and Gears of War.
A big part of what brings that feeling to life is Space Marine 2’s scale. Whether you’re in the overgrown jungles of Kadaku, the larger-than-life gothic city on Avarax, or the chaotically twisted hellscape of Demerium, Saber’s bigger-is-better approach makes you feel like you’re really fighting in a planet-spanning war. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stopped to admire laser batteries firing into clouds of flying gargoyle Tyranids, or Space Marines brawling with their evil cousins on Demerium’s vast purple battlefield. There are some brilliantly claustrophobic scenes – one Alien-inspired section starts with Tyranids chasing you through dingy service tunnels, and culminates in a wild shootout in pitch darkness – but Space Marine 2 thrives on making you feel very, very small.
Country holiday
“The best third-person shooter I’ve played in years”
These planets are also the setting for Space Marine 2’s Operations, six missions that take place parallel to the events of the campaign. Operations can be played with three players, but unlike the campaign, co-op is mandatory to get the most out of this game mode. While the two AI squad members are serviceable on easy and normal difficulty, they add nothing beyond that. As if to emphasise the importance of playing with friends, Operations cannot be paused even when playing with the AI. This is particularly frustrating as the missions tend to be quite long – I was once kicked out of my own game for inactivity, which meant I lost around 20 minutes of progress. But playing with other people makes Operations fun. The six missions currently available are more akin to Left 4 Dead than what’s on offer in the main campaign, as ammo and healing items are rarer, while enemies attack in more choreographed waves. Your equipment is also limited, as it’s divided into classes here. This adds an interesting layer of strategy – you could opt for the Assault class, charging into the fray with a Thunder Hammer and a jetpack, while someone else uses the Sniper class to take out priority targets from a distance.
While Operations are significantly harder than Space Marine 2’s campaign, they also offer more incentive to keep coming back, as you can spend currency and XP rewards on armor customizations, weapon upgrades, and class perks. Armor customization feels a little gimmicky for replay value—instead of buying your favorite chapter’s armor set, for example, you have to buy each piece individually—but on the other hand, this part-by-part approach means there’s enough depth to create the cobbled-together Space Marine of your dreams.
The only part of Space Marine 2 I wasn’t able to play due to pre-launch matchmaking restrictions is Eternal War, a set of three 6v6 PvP modes with Warhammer twists on team deathmatch, domination and King of the Hill. But after the 17 hours I spent on everything else, I find it hard to imagine anything that could top Space Marine 2’s PvE offerings. This adventure is a monument to excess, but it’s hard to imagine it working any other way. When someone tells you a game isn’t need motorized swords and 8-foot-tall super soldiers that can throw heretics around like rag dolls. Think about what else they could lie about – Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is pure, absurd fun and the best third-person shooter I’ve played in years.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 was tested on PC using a code provided by the publisher.
