Space Marine 2 Review: The Most Aggressive 7/10 Is A Game I Can Wholeheartedly Get Behind

It’s been 13 years since the very first Space Marine game found its way onto consoles, and you might argue that in the time that’s passed, Warhammer 40,000 has become an even bigger tabletop game and franchise around the world. It certainly feels like a brand that’s evolved beyond the walls of Games Workshop stores and more into the public eye, or maybe that’s just the Henry Cavill effect taking place. Whatever your opinion on Warhammer 40,000, from a pure video game standpoint, there’s no question that the moment you’re thrown into Space Marine 2, it feels utterly fantastic regardless of your history with the series.

You assume the role of a Space Marine dropped into a war-torn jungle planet that is being overrun by an invading Tyranid force (read: swarms of deadly alien creatures). Whereas people will know Marvel’s Ironman as a sleek, graceful, even agile man in a suit of armour, space marines feel like the equivalent of a man turned into a panzer tank with two legs.

Everything they and you do, comes with an incredible weight. When you walk, you plod purposefully with the heaviness of an elephant. When you run, the screen actually shakes as you, an armoured juggernaut, build up pace. Guns that you wield, are not guns strictly speaking, but canons that look small only because you are so big.

From the off, you feel indestructible, and for large parts of the game, you maintain that feeling of invincibility. No man or creature can stop you, unless, of course, you’re outnumbered by overwhelming odds, which is precisely where Sabre Interactive and their tech from World War Z comes to the fore. Often you are facing an innumerable swarm of Tyranids, and impressively the engine manages to keep up with it all, as hundreds of these xeno’s in the distance race towards you and pile on screen.

This is the central premise of the game, and it certainly manages to create quite an impression, not least of all before they start chucking more sizeable foes into the mix. A swarm of smaller Tyranid Hormagaunts (read: foot-soldiers) is one thing, but when there’s suddenly a variety of bigger, more deadly creatures, such as a tank-sized Carnifax that makes even your Space Marine seem petite, things start to get really interesting.

Where Space Marine 2 potentially comes undone, is that neither the combat nor plot ever substantially evolves beyond its opening gambit. Depending on how that lands with you may ultimately depend on how much mileage you get out of it, but there’s no question that everything the game sets out to achieve, has been delivered with a level of polish and gratification that makes it hard to put down once you get rolling.

Titus, We Hardly Knew Thee...

I’ve already once mentioned weight when it comes to the feeling that the Space Marine gameplay elicits, but somewhat bizarrely, 'weight' was incidentally the first word that came to mind when trying to process the full storyline of Space Marine 2. Whilst the overall narrative is far from perfect, I do feel somewhat sorry for Sabre Interactive who have done the best job they can given the enormity of the task they were faced with.

On one hand, the writers are attempting to tell a story within the already vast and convoluted Warhammer 40,000 universe, contending with being true to the terminology of the world and throwing in phrases that will feel rewarding for existing fans. The downside is that obviously for new fans this will come across as the most loaded nonsense and gobbly-gook that players will either never fully appreciate or care to understand once the credits have rolled. To be clear, this was never off-putting, but it did give the feeling that maybe I should have boned up on my 40k history and relevant terminology before starting the game.

The other ‘weighty’ issue that Space Marine 2 attempts to wrestle with is that this is a true sequel to the 2011 game, and that's arguably where narratively the game struggles the most. You're constantly reminded of events or characters from that first game, but for 'reasons' they are secret and cannot be spoken about to other characters.

There's equally a lot of posturing over this secrecy from Titus throughout the game, normally from characters who are either suspicious or unwilling to trust the titular hero. Either way, it always feels like you're awkwardly watching two people fighting over a past conversation that you're not strictly privy to. The less said about the game’s two random cameos, which made me feel nothing because it was never fully explained who these people were, just shows the issues that Space Marine 2 is attempting to contend with.

Once again, it's never enough to put you off the game entirely, but it does create a sense that you're never truly up to speed on why these conversations, characters, and past events matter; and that's from someone who played the first game 13 years ago. Annoyingly, it sort of begs the question of why the game didn't include some sort of vignette or cutscene before it started to at least bring players up to speed. There’s no frame of reference as to who the character of Titus is, what he did that was so heinous, and why he finds himself in his current situation decades after the events of that first game. Instead, players are just expected to work it out or ignore it entirely, which is incredibly hard to do when most side characters appear to be unceremoniously pissed at Titus' presence in the first place.

Putting aside the weight of issues the storyline has to deal with, the actual narrative of Space Marine 2 isn't especially memorable either, and can be boiled down to simply 'Good guy lands on a planet of aliens to save some nobody, loses a McGuffin in the process, then must retrieve said object of power before the bad guys can use it to destroy the forces of good'. It's largely forgettable and at times, leans heavily into topics and important objects from that first game (surprisingly), which again makes the decision to not clue people into the events of the first game even more perplexing.

Operations Mode - Interestingly, the game also offers a series of additional missions that can be completed both during and after the main campaign. In ‘Operations mode’, you lead a separate combat squad in a series of missions that take place parallel to the main campaign. For instance, in one operation you lead a squad to take down a Tyranid Hive Tyrant at the same time Titus and his squad are attempting to secure a facility and send a message out from within the same city. These additional missions are a pleasant way to extend the campaign, not least because these side missions are referenced so heavily by Titus and his squad through their own campaign. But they do little to move the story on in any meaningful way.

Ultimately the storyline that underpins Space Marine 2 is serviceable, without ever being memorable. For fans of Warhammer 40,000 it's a decent enough vehicle to allow players to achieve their dream of playing as a hulking great Space Marine mowing down hordes of enemies, but it's nothing special and certainly not comparable to most novels or character arcs from wider Warhammer 40,000 literature (shout out to Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series from my childhood).

Rip, Tear, Repeat

Of course, we imagine that most people picking up the game aren't doing so to find out what happened to Titus after the events of the first game. Let's not be stupid; everyone's here for the power fantasy that comes with stepping into the bulky suit of a superhuman killing machine armed with a massive ruddy gun and chainsword, and that's where the game excels.

Combat is at the heart of the game and in many ways dictates everything you do. There are no puzzles to speak of, no random collectathons of bizarre objects or trinkets. Space Marine 2 moves at a speedy pace of one deathly battle to the next with little consequence for anything in between. See that thing in the distance? Ok, run over and kill it. Door in the way? Open it and kill whatever is on the other side. Nothing in front of you? Well, you better continue to the mission destination, and mow down anything that gets in your aggressively linear path on the way there.

The only real difference at any given point is whether you choose between your ranged shooting arsenal of weapons, or up-close and personal meaty melee combat. Once again though, whilst combat feels completely satisfactory, and at times glorious after you've pulled off a sick parry or execution, it doesn't materially change from the first to the last hour. 

Yes, the game does feature a wide variety of weapons that will slowly open up to you across the campaign, from bolters to sniper rifles to plasma guns, and more, but there's no big change. You could make do with the humble bolter from start to finish and be content. Likewise, whilst you get offered the option of Chainswords, Power Swords, and eventually a Thunder Hammer, it all broadly feels like the same melee gameplay when you're wading through swarms of enemies.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing cooler than watching your marine swing his massive Thunder Hammer and splat a lowely Tyranid Hormagaunt into a mushy pulp, or watching a bolt gun tear through a human cultist and turn them into a bloody puff of smoke. But like a lot of the game, combat feels rather one note.

The only times that combat ever changes pace is for the occasional bit of jetpack-enthused action, which gives your marine the ability to fly above the battlefield and dive down for some excellent ground pounds. There's also a brief campaign mission that veers into Gears of War territory where you use a flamer inside of a building to keep back swarms of rippers (Read: Tiny maggot like Tyranid creatures). But these moments aside, and a few boss fights with a health bar, combat never really evolves beyond what you experience in the first hour of the game.

Incredible Vistas and War-torn Turmoil

What does significantly change throughout Space Marine 2, however, is the environments you visit, but not necessarily for the better.

In short, the environments of Space Marine 2 are everything I would have expected of a Warhammer 40,000 game. There's nothing especially beautiful to look at, as most of the three main settings take place on war-torn battlefields with little visual appeal and a rather dark, dreary color palette, with the occasional pop of red and orange from an explosion or two. It's either a muddy swamp land, a decimated city of grey, or a ravaged planet with a purple skyline. When not in the thick of it, you're aboard a battle barge, which comes with all the usual homely accompaniments of the Adeptus Astartes and Space Marine Chapters. Namely, a boatload of steel, with the occasional room decked out to look like a cyberpunk has taken hold of a church.

Again, nothing awe-inspiring and little to make you think, ‘Wow, that's something I've not seen before!’ But then again, this is Warhammer 40k. The grim dark. Everything is meant to look rubbish or downright despicable. It’s supposed to be a war-torn mess, typically with most floors covered in limbs and blood and guts.

If anything, I found more joy in walking past an Imperial Commissar lining up a firing squad on some fellow imperial guard who had presumably not performed their duty. But broadly speaking, you could say that the environments, despite not being especially eye-catching, were true to form and what I wholeheartedly expected to see. It was war, at its most gruesome, and nothing more.

If anything, the most eye-catching moments were normally reserved for peering out over a vast city in ruins at the start of a mission and watching as a Tyranid swarm amasses in the distance. These moments though, felt few and far between and were ultimately forgotten about towards the third and final act when Tyranids become an afterthought in the wider campaign story.

The only saving grace of this move was that whilst there were less awe-inspiring Tyranid moments in that third act, this is also where some of the best cut scenes occurred. So even though the latter parts of the game do become a bit more intimate, it did at least have some decent cut scenes to do more of the heavy lifting and back up the decision to move away from one of the game's main selling points.

Space Marine 2 Multiplayer - There’s also a multiplayer portion of the game, with a few different game modes to choose from, but at the time of review, we were unable to load into any matches so we can't unfortunately speak to how good or bad this portion of the game is until servers are live.

That said, given that campaign combat is largely slow and ponderous, made for decimating swarms of aliens and not 1v1 tactical PvP battles, it's hard to gauge exactly how combat will shake out in team modes. This isn’t Quake, after all. 

Of course, Warhammer 40,000 fans might not care when presented with the chance to adorn their favourite Chapter markings (whether Space Marine or Chaos Space Marine) and given the opportunity to duke it out with fellow fans of the franchise.

Without question though, Space Marine 2 is a good game, if not a great game. Despite its flaws, you can tell Sabre Interactive has crafted a game with true love and care for the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Fans of the tabletop game will no doubt appreciate what’s on offer and fans without the same grounding will likely be wowed by the scale of this war-torn world and the visceral combat which underpins it. There’s plenty to enjoy in Space Marine 2, and I hope we don't have to wait another 13 years before we next see Lieutenant Titus.