Warhammer 40:000 Space Marine

[The Dude]

In this review I've chopped the game up into specific features and covered each of those with their own review. Hopefully it works. You can skip to whatever part you wish to read and leave out the rest.

Table of Contents:
1. Space Marine as a third person shooter
2. Space Marine as a hack & slash
3. Space Marine as a narrative
4. Space Marine as a multiplayer game

The general verdict about this game is that I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys lightweight shooters, hack & slash games, Warhammer 40:000 as a setting aswell as the CoD approach to multiplayer with space marines. I wouldn't recommend Space Marine to people doubting between either this title or other upcoming giants like Gears of War 3.

[The Dude]

As a third person shooter
Warhammer 40:000 Space Marine is a brand new experiment by Relic. They have tried their hands at creating a third person shooter complete with all the things a title like this needs. The problem is: they've never done it before! We know Relic for being the company that gives us node-based strategy and tactical titles, so this is a project quite outside of their comfort zone.

This section of the total Space Marine review will cover the game as a third person shooter. How does it measure up to competing titles, and as such, how much bang will you get for your buck?

Let's start by covering what's not in the game, so that we can immediately get a clear idea of how it contrasts to its competition: there is no cover system (therefore no chest high wall syndrome) nor is there regenerating health. Instead, you get health back for performing executions on enemies or by activating your Fury ability which, you guessed it, you gain access to by slaying enemies. This leaves us with a very mobile game in which we are forced to constantly seek out our enemies if we want to stay alive. An interesting recipe to be sure, and an exciting one when you realise that you welcome the sight of that heavily armoured Nob storming towards you because you could get some health back from him.

The trick to this system is that due to the game's role as a hybrid between a third person shooter and a hack & slash title, executions are pretty much inaccessible from the go if you want to play this as a ranged combatant. That's not to say that this game can't be played entirely as a shooter: it certainly can, and if you want to play it like this you may even get a significant challenge from it. Because at the end you can always use your Fury ability while wielding a ranged weapon, giving you healing abilities regardless.

The interesting part is that if you decide to play the game like this, the game essentially becomes a lot less like Gears of War, or even God of War if you've been real choppy, and a lot more like Max Payne. Combined with ranged weaponry, Fury mode becomes a slow motion ability in which you can accurately take out a lot of enemies in a very short time. This leads to some downright spectacular moments where you see gigantic warbosses charging you while your boltshells ricochet off their armour and explosions go off around them.

As far as weaponry goes, the game never grows stale either. There's lots of stuff to get shooty with: bolt pistols, plasma pistols, bolters, heavy bolters, plasma rifles, plasma cannons, lascannons, melta guns, stalker boltguns, grenade launchers and stormbolters. For the 40k fan, none of these weapons come as anything new. For someone new to the setting: all of the above essentially means a lot of very visceral death. Some of the abovementioned are snipers that can double as shotguns, others are assault rifles that can double as snipers, and so forth. The good thing about ranged weapons in Space Marine is that there's really no specific job for any weapon and you can get real creative with how you use them, albeit that every weapon will have a job it's best at.

Compared to other third person shooters then, Space Marine really doesn't offer all that much less even as the hybrid title that it is. It provides an interesting slow motion mechanic that regenerates your health and requires kills to be activated, it has a serious boatload of weapons to get creative with and most of all: there's plenty to shoot. Halfway into the game you'll have so many kills under your belt that you can hardly believe it.

That said, the game still feels lightweight compared to its competition, though this may simply be due to the lack of the mechanics we've grown so very used to. In the end it's clear that the developers wanted to promote a playstyle that fits the universe: an aggressive one. If this game had revolved around the Imperial Guard, then perhaps a cover system would've been more in place, and a more forgiving health system could've been a wise decision. As it stands, the game does do exactly what it's supposed to and that's make you feel like a Space Marine.

As a TPS:
8.0

[The Dude]

As a hack & slash
At the end of the day, Space Marine is a hack & slasher. Yes, it has a third person shooter side to it that certainly holds its own in comparison to competing titles, but where the game distinguishes itself is in the feel of raw melee combat.

The gameplay here essentially comes down to this: you will want to time your stuns with your swings. The more swings precede a stun move, the heavier a stun will be. The heavier a stun is, the stronger an opponent it can stun. Where a regular Ork may be stunned with a kick, an Ork Nob will have to take quite a bit of damage followed by a thundering blow before it finds itself stunned. The reason you want to stun at all is because this will allow you to perform an execution move, a visceral ballet of death in which the enemy is torn apart in a variety of ways. Execution moves are what restore your health.

This really is the core of the gameplay, which is then spiced up further by a variety of moves ranging from a charge move, executed by conducting a melee strike from a sprint, to jumppack combat where you can smash into groups of enemies from above. Whatever you do, all of it leaves you feeling like you're really causing some hurt. Almost everything you do ingame is accompanied by heavy thuds of boots, shockwaves following kicks and stomps, enemies flying backwards when hit, explosions upon landing, etcetera. And this, arguably, is one of the most important parts of a hack & slash game: that it feels genuine.

Another real attractive feature of how melee combat is designed is that it's not locked on opponents. Some hack and slashers will have your characters always focus his attacks on specific enemies, which sometimes results in unintioned toggling from one enemy to another, breaking combos that you spent some time building up. In Space Marine, a swing always hits whoever's in its path. And with a game literally overwhelming you with enemy forces, that may well be for the best.

It also mixes very well with the sort of weapons that the Warhammer 40k setting offers. Captain Titus at first jumps into the fray with his sidearm and a combat knife, but that knife is quickly upgraded to a chainsword, and the game later adds the Power Axe and the Thunderhammer to that arsenal, both of which being weapons that are intended to deal area of effect damage. Especially the heavier stuns you can perform with thunderhammers result in large radial blue explosions and send enemies flying everywhere and crashing into objects.

The challenge of the melee combat lies in the game's heavier opponents. For many enemies like Ork Nobs, 'Ard Boyz and even Chaos Space Marines it may seem attractive to pull out a ranged weapon and keep some distance, but the true warrior distinguishes himself by mastering his dodges, rolls, attacks and stuns in such a way that he can overcome his enemy. This also provides an interesting change of pace: from franting chopping and slashing into huge crowds of enemy combatants, to suddenly shifting to that one specific enemy champion that will require skill and quick thinking to defeat.

Like with the shooter combat, the game's melee does not disappoint. Bought strictly for its hack & slash features, this is a game that will easily hold its own against the competition.

As a Hack & Slash
8.0

[The Dude]

As a narrative
Warhammer 40.000: Space Marine, has one major advantage. It's a Warhammer 40:000 game. This is a setting with such incredibly rich fluff that it's really hard to mess up with finding something interesting to base a story around. Unfortunately, when making a game about Space Marines, there are some incredibly alluring beaten paths to walk and to some degree, this is what the game does do.

The story focuses on Captain Titus of the Ultramarines who, along with his battle-brothers Sergeant Sidonus and Corporal Leandros, has been sent to the Imperial Forge World of Graia to aid it as it comes under assault from a massive Ork Waagh. Their job is to conduct preliminary operations in preparation for the invasion of the main liberation fleet that has been sent over to secure the planet. For the most part, this involves making sure that the present 203rd Cadian Regiment of the Imperial Guard is not wiped out, and that the planet's most important assets, particular a Warlord Titan, do not fall into enemy hands.

This rather straightforward mission turns complicated however when amidst the chaos of war, an Inquisitor is found who appears to have a mission of his own. When Titus decides that it is in the best interest of their mandate to aid the Inquisitor, the story really kicks into gear.

At the end of the day though, the story isn't terribly original. That's not necessarily a bad thing: previous Relic titles in the 40k universe have all suffered from the same problem yet all were great games. And Space Marine compensates for its fairly generic story by, for the first time, offering us a convincing look into what it is like to be a Space Marine, what war feels like in the “grim darkness of the far future”, and what sort of things generally tend to be at stake in these planetary conflicts. At the end of the day, the saving grace of the story's generic nature is the fact that in a universe as physically sizeable as in 40k, a lot of battles and events will realistically be specific token occurences of more general types of events.

And so this story too comes down to this: an Ork invasion turns out to involve Chaos. A Chaos Lord wants to ascend to Daemonhood. A Titan plays an important strategical role. And so forth. None of these are even really spoilers: this is what you can expect from most 40k based stories, to the point where there have been novels and short stories out there that I felt were rather convoluted due to their inability to properly convey a less generic type of plot.

At the end, this is a story you will simply enjoy if you love the 40k setting. If you aren't familiar with 40k, then you won't be bothered by how often you've seen this story before. But if you are simply looking for something thought-provoking or innovating in the space opera genre, then it may be better to look around for something stronger.

As a narrative
7.5

[The Dude]

As a multiplayer game
Space Marine's multiplayer is an interesting topic all on its own. On one hand, it borrows heavily from Call of Duty's classbased system where you build your own class complete with perks, weapons and other equipment. How Space Marine does it pretty much a carbon copy from CoD's way of handling things, down to the killstreaks and their respective rewards.

On the other hand, gameplay in Space Marine is a lot more team oriented. The setup is a standard Imperium vs Chaos match with angry marines on both sides knocking each others brains in. Both sides however are divided into three classes: the standard soldier, the heavy weapons guy and the assault marine, which is a space marine with a jetpack. And while all of them are fairly self sufficient, playing together is all the more rewarding. The heavy weapons marine for example, called Devastator or Havoc depending on the side you play, is completely absent of any form of melee save a kick he can perform. The assault marine on the other hand is a very close-combat based class devoid of serious ranged firepower.

And so you will want to support the offensive endeavours of assault marines with the firepower provided by devastators, and then you can add a few tactical marines in the mix, which provide the hybrid role by being a standard trooper but distinguish themselves by using the right perks to become teleport beacons for respawning teammates, or to respawn faster themselves and thereby supplying the enemy with steady, continuous resistance.

What I personally have my doubts about is whether or not the game will really be played this way. Let it be clear: the potential for serious teambased gameplay that will make a victory feel all the more rewarding is there. And due to the fact that you play with Space Marines and not bunnyhopping Navy Seals and SAS operatives like in Call of Duty gives matches a more serious feel in general. But the main appeal to even try this game's multiplayer in the first place, or to convince friends to play it with you, is by referring to precisely that gameplay that everyone already knows: “it's a bit like... well, a lot like Call of Duty! You'd like it!”.

So in a sense I fear for the game's multiplayer in that it could suffer from the same syndrome CoD does: hypercompetitive teenagers who will not hesitate to ruin your online experience with their high pitched squeals that are supposed to pass for communication, where the few words you can make out are likely to be “noob”, “learn to play” and “omg”.

Which brings me to the next point: the inability to effectively mute others. I do not want to listen to what people have to say 99% of the time. I am just that type of player. When there's serious teamwork going on, count me in all the way to the end, but I have no intention of listening to the average guy complaining about how this dude keeps killing him and how it pisses him off so much.

Now, you can mute. You open up the scoreboard and click the microphone icon behind a player's name to mute them. But of course as it with multiplayer game, players come and go, and so often halfway through a match half the people you muted are no longer around and have been replaced by other fools refusing to stop talking.

This ties in directly with the game's matchmaking system. On PS3 and Xbox you will obviously have to suffer the lack of a server list and dedicated servers, but why the PC version has to be stuck with a matchmaking system that takes forever to find a game is beyond me. Not only does it keep me from finding that one server that guarantees a good game, it also keeps me from really caring about the end result of a match. Now, this may just be a personal limitation but when you don't play with people you know or care about, the only ingame result that matters anything at all is how well you perform individually. Because matches are a totally interchangeable affair that you slug through with people you care nothing about.

And this is precisely what kills any attempt at teamwork. Suddenly the game is filled with self-reliant heroes who care about nothing but having a good K/D ratio. Sure, if that's the type of gameplay that floats your boat go for it, but it seems to me as though the developers clearly intended something else and then shot themselves in the foot by turning it into such a lightweight online experience by emulating your average console shooter in how the game executes itself technically.

As such, the grade I'm going to give is a result of how much fun I had with the idea of the game's multiplayer (a lot) versus the way it's been executed (sloppily).

As a multiplayer game
7.9

[Sir Pignans]

Sounds like an excellent game.

[Icewolf]

Awesome review Dude, going to pick this game up later today assuming any of the stores here have it... >.>

+rep!

[Jakethe_Snake15]

Awesome sauce...
Will either get this now...or a few weeks down the line so I have a chance at getting a boxed disc version, and not downloading off of steam...which given my Internet (rural Alberta internet FTW!) would take...
Roughly a day or 2 of nonstop downloading...

Edit:
Wow..for the first time...in ever really, my local Wal-Mart got a brand new AAA PC title within a week of it's release...
I haven't gone on multi at all, but if anyone ever wants to play pm me.

[Leonidas The Lion]

Add me on steam for some Multiplayer fun, Steam name is in my profile.

[Dalarna3]

I have been wondering if I should get this game...

[Spiderbong]

game is really short 10 hours or so the demo was everything you gonna do in the game anyway

[Jakethe_Snake15]

Played multiplayer this evening for a few hours...

Pure, fun, mass murdering chaos. Just pure fun. After a couple hours of grinning like an idiot, I had to get off the computer or else I wouldn't be getting any sleep this evening.

[The Holy Pilgrim]

For those who are still not sure about the game:

Here's some pics I took of the second and third missions in Space Marine:

WARNING! Large Pictures!
Also, some pics have blood. But really, what Warhammer game wouldn't have blood?

'Success is measured in blood.'

PEW PEW! (sorry for the blurriness :( )

A novice in the Space Marine Chapter. He will learn.

HAI GUYZ!

This is like 'Army of Darkness,' only better :o

Die, Greenskin!

Gretchins!

WAAAGH!

Git ready to die, 'umie!

That is a biiiig gun

Let's go spelunking! :D

[Spiderbong]

Mmmm Ultramarines

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[The Dude]

I'll add some of my own screenshots to that mix. Mind you, all contain lots of gore, haha.

Dental Inspection: Oh wait, did I just tear your jaw off?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Introducing an ork to my chainsword

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Though his boss requested a closer examination:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Moments before giving an Ork his shield back:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

War, war never changes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The weapons do though

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I don't think he'll really miss it:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Axehurling, the new olympic discipline:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Weirdboy wanted his staff back, so I gave it to him:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My generosity is greatly tested. I've introduced them to so much weaponry: theirs, mine... and now they think they own the planet's Titans too:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[The Holy Pilgrim]

Wait until you fight Warboss Grimskull.

His fight was a fun one

[Yoda Twin]

This game does provide some amazing screenshots, it all happens so quick when you're actually playing it that you can miss out on some of the beauty of it sadly. Though in saying that, I wouldn't change the gameplay at all if I could, except for adding Necrons of course.

[Kopimi]

Pretty much a God Of War clone

[Hopit]

Pretty much a God Of War clone

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

by that logic every fps is a doom clone

[Påsan]

Spent 9 and a half hour playing through first time on hard setting. Very fun, very rewarding. Also: Power Hammer + Jump Pack = Pawning Everything. Bring em on.