Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Review

I think I can count on one hand the number of Warhammer adaptations that felt like they actually got it right. Many games and media offerings would interpret or compromise the subject matter for a ‘best fit’ outcome – and it was fine, because obviously the Dark Millennium is a hard one to nail. But developers have clearly been digging deeper into the desperate reality of that cursed and hopeless narrative of late because the output is just so much more accurate and exceptional. In much the same way a comic book movie director might have a particular issue waived under their nose as a means to get the topic right, I can’t help but feel future Warhammer projects will find a copy of Space Marine 2 stapled to the brief with a sticky note saying “Like this please”.

It is the unique flavour of Warhammer 40,000 that has always attracted me to it. Not quite science fiction (if only for how ‘science’ is basically a forgotten concept in this setting)  it leans more toward dark fantasy, with constant epic conflicts of almost mythical beings overshadowing the pathetic existence of your average human. So it’s no shock that you aren’t playing as an average human – you are a SPACE MARINE baby, capital “S” and capital “M”, the biggest of big league super humans. Indoctrinated and genetically altered to be more than the perfect soldier, you are the living embodiment of duty, honour, and awkward xenophobia in a universe where everything wants you, and the entire human race, dead. This was pretty well explored in the original Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine over a decade ago, back in the simpler time of 2011 – so the question comes down to how well does this prodigal son of a sequel stack up.

Plasma: More effective than Mortein for unsightly bugs

Pretty bloody well, all things told. The intro sequence plays out as a cheeky tutorial that bridges the gap between the first and second game, giving a great in-universe explanation for where Titus ended up while also neatly severing all ties to those events and returning him to his home team for Space Marine 2. As a member of the Deathwatch, Titus is tasked with deploying a unique atmospheric bomb to destroy the chittering Tyranid hordes – separated from his squad, he manages to fight his way to the objective and complete it before it all starts to go pear shaped and he accepts his fate as the bomb detonates and his position gets overrun. Only PSYYYCHE because only in death does duty end, and you better believe the big man was rescued before the cruel dark fully claimed him. It’s a rapid and discombobulating passage for Titus, as his near death results in a wondrous upgrade from Space Marine Version 1.0 to Space Marine Version 2.0 and a shunting from his elite special tactics squad to regular rank and file, albeit as a lieutenant. With only days since his absurdly invasive surgery, he quickly discovers that the virus bomb he worked so hard to deploy has had a marginal impact, downgrading the situation from being a critically enormous clusterfuck to just a regular clusterfuck – but a clusterfuck nonetheless. So now you need to get back to the affected planets, and help out via other means.

Of course, this flustercuck is revealed to have some more concerning elements to it – ones that are deeply familiar to our boy – and with time it becomes clear that Titus, a creature of unquestioning obedience, finds himself surrounded by 40,000 idiots that do not wish to listen. What sets him apart from his colleagues is that Titus demonstrates a marginal iota of common sense, insomuch that he is willing to bend the occasional rule for the sake of avoiding total annihilation. And so the story flows with all manner of grim dark Warhammery goodness, with rising conflict and cackling baddies – but at the very heart of it is a strangely human tale about what happens when a being blessed with singular purpose has that purpose compromised. It is a weird feeling when you the player start relating to the genetically perfect super soldier, but it adds that level of investment to shift Titus away from being a living cartoon and instead offer the view that humanity is never lost, even in the shitty setting of the 41st millennium.

But don’t let that fool you, this isn’t a deep philosophical title about the (super)human condition. The story is so shallow that it clearly comes with “No Diving” signage so as to avoid child injuries – but that is largely by design. Anyone with even a passing understanding of Warhammer 40,000 lore would understand that a huge portion of the IP’s identity is that endless conflict has stripped away most of the nuance of one’s existence, so seeing Titus get frustrated at the absurdity of bureaucratic military procedure is about as deep as it gets before you go back to caving in enemy skulls. So this means that Saber Interactive has to tell this rudimentary story in a way that best suits a setting that is constantly wracked with gunfire, explosions, or the wet splatter of torn bodies hitting the floor – and I gotta say, they have done a tremendous job. Rare moments of quiet will prompt some chatter from your two squadmates, short chit chat that asks bigger questions about what you are currently doing or what has been discovered so far – with larger cinematic moments offering stellar bombast one minute, then a lingering look of consternation towards Titus the next. Even the quiet moments of downtime between missions are chock-full of organic story-telling as NPC discussions and events happen in your mission hub, constantly painting that picture of escalation throughout the story.  It is unintrusive, yet super effective seeing a guardsman drop to one knee and bow their head in your presence – and it never gets old.

That is a big ass demonic magpie

This all takes place across roughly 11 hours of gameplay, with 6 generously curated mission experiences. The game shies away from using menus to direct your adventure, instead plonking Titus on a colossal spacecraft known as a ‘Battle Barge’ – a base for the Ultramarines for the fleeting moments when they aren’t dealing death. In this space you will receive mission briefings, converse with colleagues and superiors and even observe some of the aforementioned subtle worldbuilding moments as you head to the Thunderhawk to drop planetside. One of the coolest details of this home away from home is how you will see small nods to your progress so far – or sneaky teases of what might be coming. One mission saw me dispatch a freakish leviathan known as a Carnifex, and when I returned to the barge deck I saw the desiccated beast being studied by the techpriests. When you are done poking around this space, or have amended your pre-mission wargear, you are then right to board the gunship and head to the battlefront and get busy.

I initially thought the promise of three planetary settings was going to mean three biomes to explore, but it turns out that each of these celestial bodies has a range of landscapes in which to enact warfare – be it naturally formed or manmade. The spectacle within these spaces is constant; I’ll openly admit that stopping to gawk at what I was seeing felt necessary because the meticulously crafted vistas are just downright spiffy. Every corner of the game, be it a slavering enemy or something as mundane as a desk, is magnificently detailed and fits cohesively into your Space Marine journey. There is something joyful about your giant metal-clad feet scattering 44 gallon drums like skittles, as you wade into a horde of chittering bug boys to headbutt their screeching leader – the rock solid aesthetics make it gleefully easy to inhabit the world. The set pieces on offer are spectacular, with even the most mundane of items completely nailing that ‘grimdark’ futuristic feel.

It helps that the game runs incredibly well, given that I never once saw a drop in frames even when the game was at its most ridiculous – and it really isn’t just a case of Saber interactive being happy to make the game look as nice as possible and then just moving on. There are also a lot of really creative things done to make sure that you are constantly saying wow. One of my favourite encounters wasn’t even a massive larger-than-life moment, it was simply a section where the lights went out and I was bathed in the glow of my power sword. Suddenly the room filled with enemies and what followed was a combat encounter with just the light of my blade showing me what I was doing. This was clearly done to create one of those watercooler moments where you say to your mates “Hey you know what I did on the weekend? It was this, and it was AWESOME.” – and this attitude is applied to the entire game. Nothing is boring, nothing becomes basic, the game doesn’t lull, it just keeps delivering spectacle. Really the only minor gripe I could manage was the odd fraction of a millisecond where I would see asset pop-in at the start of some cinematics. But it was blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of stuff.

Moments like this would just leave me slack-jawed

Now warfare is nothing without some bespoke tools of destruction, and Space Marine 2 manages to pick a wicked range from the greatest hits of tabletop silliness – with a generous amount of things that go bang, zzzap or occasionally FWOOSH. You might baulk at how there seems to be seven different types of machine gun, but when you drill down into goofy minutiae like capacity and effective range you will start to see that they all have a particular niche that might be relevant to your situation mission to mission. The more exotic flavours of boomstick are where the real fun begins; such as Plasma weapons with their super heated projectiles and habit of getting a bit hot in your hands, or the Melta guns that blast a penetrating wave of blistering fire like a flame belching shotgun. I was quite surprised with the amount of mechanical depth to the firearms, with many guns having clear differences in their handling between hip-fire or aiming down sights. Even the simple act of charging a plasma gun to amp up your damage would beg you to consider squinting before you fire, if only so you don’t miss by a hair because of your impatience. It meant that I would really kick the tyres of each new toy I found, if only to ensure I understood it properly before I made a long term decision to stick with it or seek something more my speed.

For the keen observer, you can also find some special guns by exploring around your environment. While the game is somewhat linear in execution, there are still plenty of nooks and crannies off the beaten path to poke around in – and the reward for your troubles may well be a Heavy Bolter or a MultiMelta. These colossal cannons serve as a temporary power up, given that they don’t take a weapon slot; instead they will stay in your hands until they run dry and are then discarded. A bummer to lose them, but it is well balanced by the singular virtue that while in your hands they absolutely hammer whatever poor schmuck is on the receiving end, be they bug or traitor. Similarly these same dark corners may also offer a Guardian Relic, a single use ‘Extra Life’ that will save you from lethal damage before expending itself. From dipping my toe into the harder difficulties, I can promise that these will be well appreciated when an errant beastie flattens you.

Only a small horde of gnashing nasties

But it isn’t all guns and explosions, as I mentioned earlier there is a healthy dose of fantasy on offer within the grim darkness of the far future – meaning you will also be equipped for some visceral close combat. And this is likely a good thing, because many of the threats you encounter are quite partial to being all up in your grill. Tearing through hordes with a humming chainsword or thrusting a glowing power sword deep into the gullet of some fanged fuggo is a staple of the setting, and it comes as no surprise that the implementation is pitch perfect. Even the more bespoke weapons, like the Thunder Hammer, manage to feel unique and enjoyable as you charge the bastard up to land an earth-shattering slam, effectively atomising even the toughest opponents. Fiendishly, the developers have been quite strategic in making sure your more involved combat events have lots of great openings to get in the thick of it, rewarding those who venture close to the more dangerous enemies as they come to find that sweeping melee attacks will do substantial damage. Sure, your shooty shooty bang bang might feel safe – but where is the drama? Where is the GLORY? Learn to lean into your parry system and see what kind of epic moments you can conjure.

And you can share these epic moments with your friends, given that the game rests on a foundation of cooperation. The entire campaign can be played with up to two mates if you so wish, though they will need to accept that they are the supporting players. If you’d instead wish to share the spotlight, an inspired bit of design is the Operations Mode, offering a range of missions that represent cool side stories that happened offscreen. I was properly blown away when I realised how these worked – a narrative beat revealed that Titus and crew would need to complete an objective, with an impending inaccessible threat causing concern. A secondary squad was afforded to Titus, who were then briefed and sent on their merry way to take care of the aforementioned threat. The game then mentioned to me that I had an opportunity to jump into Operations Mode and play through that side mission as the B-team, experiencing their point of view. While I continued my experience as Titus, I received the odd bit of comms chatter to clue me into how the other team was going – and as the stakes grew and Titus’ team found themselves in a dire situation, suddenly BAM – all was quiet as B-team had prevailed at the last possible moment.

Superheated balls of energy are a great solution for heavily armoured nerds

Curiosity had me, and I needed to see how the other side lived – so I recruited a suitable companion (big ups to Press Start’s Harry Kalogirou) and we went to work. Being the Operation Mode, it also meant we were freed from acting as the main players in the regular story, and instead got to pick from a range of six classes with custom abilities and loadouts to get the job done. It’s a fun dynamic in that the player limit is still three, so mixing and matching between the six available classes offers a ton of different combinations and play styles. Sure enough, the other side of the coin saw the mission play out from a fresh perspective with the odd comms chatter from Titus himself, as we set out to take care of a particularly nasty customer – a Hive Tyrant. While Space Marines are capable, the act of taking down such a threat is not an easy one – as evidenced by our efforts to drop a statue the size of a building on the beast well before we even considered engaging it. I half expected the mission to feel a little more generic given its placement in the game, with the pseudo-nameless crew of random Marines dropping in – but it was every bit as polished as the main missions. We dispatched the monster in an epic faceoff and returned to the Battle Barge to spend our mission credits on fun outfits for our guys.

Replayability for these missions is front and centre, even going beyond the basic mix and match of the game’s classes. The rewards for completion go into a deep well of class and weapon progression, and even more involved cosmetics, such as fancier guns. Ramping up the difficulty of the missions will even offer more precious funny money, so after you pour over the ton of unlockable colours and patterns you may start to wonder just how brave you can be in the pursuit of fashion. This will likely go a lot better as you level up your classes and start dipping into their skill trees, which have a great range of special effects to give your class some edge. My zip-kicking Vanguard unlocked a perk to increase his Perfect Parry window by a whopping 50% after only two missions, and this was only item number two of eight total rows. It didn’t take much convincing to get us into the next Operations mission. And the next one. And the next.

The bigger they are…

Final Thoughts

To completely divorce myself from my long love of Warhammer, I would still estimate Space Marine 2 as an exceptional gaming experience. The narrative can only get as deep as the genre allows but even within those limits it plays with interesting ideas, the very nature of the beast being one of disconnection, with forty generous millennia distorting our concept of sensibility and preservation. This is a universe of conflict, pain, and endless peril, and Saber has made it incredibly fun to inhabit, with plenty of reasons to revisit and – most importantly – convince your mates to join in.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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