Game name: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
Release date: September 9, 2024
Price: US$59.99
Available on: Steam
Genre: Action/TPS
Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Opencritic: Here
We are once again reviewing a much desired sequel for a game that came out more than a decade ago. Time flies when you are having fun, doesn’t it? Though in this particular case, I don’t think time flew for those of us who really loved the original Space Marine by Relic, since after THQ’s premature demise we all but assumed the burgeoning franchise was dead in the Immaterium. Surprisingly, Saber Interactive and Focus Entertainment decided to pick up the Ultramarines’ fallen banner and charge into the action with a fully fledged sequel that picks up where the original left off (give or take two centuries, but what’s a century in 40k terms?) Titus is back, and with him go all our hopes for a worthy follow-up to the critically misunderstood gem that was the first game.
I’m not the kind of person who’d spoil a game’s story in a review, so while I’ll be talking about enemies that have been showcased in gameplay trailers, I don’t intend to delve into the nitty gritty of things, or give too much data on some of the foes Titus and his brothers will have to face during the course of the game’s roughly six to eight hours long campaign.
Did I say brothers? If you played the first title you are probably expecting these fellow sons of Guilliman to be AI controlled partners exclusively, but here’s an area where Space Marine 2 noticeably deviates from its predecessor (in a good way, in my opinion). The main campaign can be played with up to two other friends in online co-op. This isn’t really forced so you can definitely play solo if you want to, though I won’t deny that in some later sections of the game I noticed a big difference when playing with friends versus when I went through the same areas with the computer as backup. I wasn’t playing on the highest difficulty level (I chose the one immediately before it, Veteran) but even then I had to replay some areas because things got pretty tough. Obviously that can be attributed to a skill issue on my part (after all, I am growing older and with age I might be losing the few skills I had in my youth) but I feel playing in co-op softens difficulty spikes noticeably.
When it comes to Space Marine 2‘s gameplay systems, Saber wisely chose to take what Relic had made and build upon it instead of completely throwing it away and replacing it with something different. Astartes we control have armor and health protecting them from death, and both of these resources are important, with Armor being replenishable via executions (think nu-Doom’s Glory Kills) on weakened targets and Health having both its own special mechanic (shortly after being hit by an enemy with your armor broken, you can regain the amount of health that’s currently marked in white, but if you miss your opportunity to do so or get hit again without regaining that health, it’ll be lost) and also consumable stimpaks lying around the place (of which we can carry up to two). This encourages fast and reactive gameplay, just like the original game, and penalizes hiding behind cover like a Gears player.
During the campaign mode, weapons are non-upgradable tools we find as we progress, and between missions we can choose to equip ourselves with whatever we prefer from anything we’ve found up to that point, something that felt like a breath of fresh air coming from all the recent titles where even a normal sized linear action game seemingly needs to have all sorts of upgrade trees and crafting systems. At some key points in the story we’ll be issued with a Jump Pack, adding a very welcome vertical element to the gameplay, and augmenting our melee combat with dive attacks that never cease to be satisfying. I won’t deny that I’d have wished for the Jump Pack to be available on more places than it is, but overall it serves its purpose as a way to add variation to a combat system that, while always fun and satisfying, can get somewhat stale near the end of the game.
Speaking of weapons, Saber knows what 40k fans wants and the arsenal available to us is fairly extensive, ranging from basic auto bolters to more exotic variants, or Melta guns, single shot Lasrifles, flamers, Plasma weaponry, etc on the ranged side and Chainswords, Combat Knives, Power Swords, Power Fists and Thunder Hammers when it comes to melee. All of the melee weapons feature their own specific combos and charged attacks, and some of the guns have alternate fire modes that can be very useful when it comes to taking down specific threats. There’s also Frag, Krak and Shock grenades and a fairly powerful Melta bomb rounding up our arsenal with throwable weaponry.
The campaign itself has peaks and valleys as expected from a linear offering, but it’s overall one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the whole of the past year, and it’s littered with set pieces that not only make sense for the setting, but will also bring a tear of joy or two to anyone who’s somewhat familiar with the lore. Saber also leveraged the technology developed for their World War Z game to create truly impressive hordes of Tyranids that must be whittled down with gunfire and grenades before they get to our positions and a frantic melee engagement starts. Any of these hordes has the potential to be host to a few Majoris enemies (think Tyranid Warriors, which are close to the size of an Astartes, and can be an actual threat if left unattended) so it’s always a good idea to get rid of the chaff quickly so you can get to the meat of the fight without being pestered by the swarm of smaller foes.
Later levels up the scale of the set pieces to an even higher level, and there were so many moments where I couldn’t help but feel like that Di Caprio meme where he’s pointing at the TV, as I recognized characters or specific references to 40k lore that showcase the developers’ love for the setting. This is a game that was obviously made by fans of Warhammer 40k for fans of 40k.
Aside from the campaign, we can also engage in two other game modes: PvE Operations and the PvP Eternal War. I’ll first talk about the Operations mode as it’s the one I’ve spent the most time in after I beat the campaign, and then I’ll leave some quick thoughts about the PvP, though you should take into account that I’m fairly green when it comes to it, so your mileage may vary.
The cooperative Operations mode takes place during the game’s main campaign, and offers the point of view of a different Space Marine squad tasked with assisting Titus’ own with critical objectives that will help advance the plot. I don’t recommend playing the Operations missions out of order with the campaign, since it’s easy to get spoiled on later developments if you choose to go that way.
Once we enter this mode we’ll be presented with the option to select one of six classes (Tactical, which is a jack of all trades kind of guy, Assault, who is our Jump Pack specialist but can’t carry a primary weapon, Bulwark, who provides extra defense to his brothers thanks to a heavy duty shield, Vanguard, who’s basically an alternative to Assault for anyone who likes to get into action faster, as he uses a Grapnel launcher to quickly hook on to enemies and deliver melee blows, Sniper, a long range specialist that can go invisible for short periods of time, and finally Heavy, who can tank ranged damage with an Iron Halo and wields massive ranged weaponry. All of these classes have their own progression and unlocks, and sadly the mode doesn’t allow us to jump in as two Assaults and a Sniper for instance. This means that if you are queuing up for random matchmaking parties and wanted to play a specific class there’s a fairly high chance it might already be selected by a party member and you’ll have to play another or re-queue.
Currently there’s no private lobbies, so you have to go in with a full party or take in randoms (though I seemed to be able to cancel matchmaking the one time I played with a friend, and the game filled the spot with an AI controlled battle brother). The cooperative missions are usually shorter than campaign ones from my experience, but the challenge can once again ramp up fairly quickly if you are going in at higher difficulty settings, and there seems to be a fair amount of replayability thanks to hordes not always being the same composition or not even attacking at the same point in time from one match to another.
Another thing I fell in love with was the possibility to customize our appearance in this mode, by either unlocking Chapter-specific gear or by mix and matching whatever we got in order to create our own custom heraldry. I am not an Ultramarines hater by any means, but I feel we’ve received far more games with them in the lead than any other Chapter, so when I had the chance to do some Blood Angels roleplay, you can bet I took it. This is all tied to progression in the PvE mode (you get a currency you can use to unlock certain colors, patterns, symbols, etc.) but it didn’t seem too time consuming or convoluted thankfully.
As for the Eternal War PvP mode, it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a competitive mode in a title from a decade ago. Now, whether you consider that to be a good or a bad thing is up for you to decide, but I was pleasantly surprised by this discovery. There’s three modes (TDM, Domination and King of the Hill), matches are fairly quick, and while the time to kill seems a bit on the fast side considering who we are playing as, I get why it is like that. Map variety is currently lacking, with just three maps on rotation, and while there’s also unlocks to give the mode some extra longevity, I doubt it’ll last that long.
When it comes to the game’s tech side, I have mixed things to report, but it’s important to take into account that I’m not running the highest-end hardware available to purchase, and that the developers have already issued a patch that helped alleviate my issues. On my Ryzen 5 5600x, 32GB RAM, RTX 3070 system, I hovered from sixty to seventy frames per second on most areas of the game at High settings with DLSS set to Balanced, with only some late scenarios bringing that down to the high 50’s. Loading screens were fairly long, even on a PCIE4 NVME drive, especially when playing co-op. I didn’t experience any crashes or major instabilities (I did get disconnected from co-op matches a few times, but I figure their servers were getting hammered with all the prospective Astartes loading in to kick Tyranid butt).
Overall, Space Marine 2 is not only a complete package in an age of games as a service selling promises, but also an extremely fun third person action game made by people who clearly love the setting and wanted to share that love with the fans. Hopefully we won’t have to wait more than a decade for a follow-up, because I am more than eager to follow Titus into battle once more.
9/10 – Great.