It’s been a while since I’ve played a third-person game about sentient tree trunks in armour running around and turning enemies into explosions of blood. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 feels like a big throwback in some ways and is more modern in others, but I definitely could feel the late 00s shooter campaign DNA coursing through its veins. There aren’t many surprises here, but the spectacle is intense and the action is fierce, making for an experience that’s as solid as the main character’s neck.
Space Marine 2 follows lots of typical military narrative beats. There’s a big threat brewing that the main character notices and brings to his superiors, only to be told to keep his head down and follow orders. The thing happens, all of existence is in danger, etc etc. The production values here are second-to-none and the writing is as good as it has any right to be. But the real star is what’s going on in the distance in most levels. Vast ruined areas absolutely crawling with enemies, while colourful explosions and laser fire pops overhead. Few games do this better.
Of course, the actual level design is far less impressive. You mostly scramble from closed-in area fighting, featuring waves of enemies or working on “defend this point”-style objectives. There’s almost always an obstacle or door blocking the way that you need to hold a button to interact with before watching an animation play out. This makes the game feel incredibly constrained, which is odd when contrasted with the armies of insects visible in the distance. The main campaign is divided into just six missions, most of which aren’t all that long. The final one is probably more than double the length of the others, though.
In the campaign you play as Titus, the returning character from the first game. You have access to a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a melee weapon, plus a special ability that heals you as you do damage. There’s a decent assortment of guns, including bolt rifles and thermal weapons. The chargeable version of the latter might be my favourite, although I’m also fond of the sniper rifle. The shooting feels great and the guns are fun to use, but there’s also a huge focus on melee attacks. There are only three melee weapons in the game – a knife, chainsword, and power sword. The power sword has single target and group modes, which easily makes it my favourite melee weapon.
Depending on the weapon, melee attacks can be charged for stronger variations that also break through an enemy’s guard, plus you have a dodge that grants invincibility frames for getting out of harm’s way. Surprisingly, there’s a parry now. When an enemy’s attack has a blue indicator on it, parrying it will immediately kill weaker enemies or leave stronger ones open for special automatic gun attacks. When an enemy’s health is low, you can use a finisher too.
Using either a finisher or auto gun attacks will refill your armour gauges, which is necessary to make use of as enemies can do a ton of damage. Even on normal difficulty it’s easy to lose half your health in seconds to a couple of hits. You can regain some of it similar to Bloodborne, so it pays to be highly aggressive. Enemies are divided into Tyranids and Heretics, who fight fairly differently, although combat can get a bit monotonous as you take on wave after wave of foes.
The campaign can be played in three-player co-op, as can the side campaign which features missions related to the main story that are pulled off by marines other than Titus. There are also six of these, only you pick from one of the game’s classes, who all have their own unique abilities but can’t use all weapons like Titus can. Due to this, my beloved thermal gun/power sword combo is impossible, as only the Bulwark class that makes use of a shield can wield the power sword, albeit with no primary gun. Operations level up your classes, plus you can unlock better versions of weapons and new perks.
As for the multiplayer mode, it includes the same classes and equipment as the operations mode, albeit in team-based PvP. It’s incredibly familiar stuff, for the most part. Try to score points against the enemy team to win the match. Due to the classes (and how there can only be a max of two players using each class per team,) that makes Space Marine II feel more than a little like a hero shooter. With all of this in mind, the game is quite fully featured, even if the main campaign doesn’t last all that long. I will point out, it says that the Veteran difficulty is the intended experience, but I absolutely don’t recommend playing that one solo.
That’s not me saying it’s too hard, only that the bots that will fill out your squad simply don’t do enough when it comes time for more demanding objectives. An occasional one that pops up is that these winged creatures will land on a defence target and you need to shoot them off before the target gets destroyed. These aren’t a problem at all with other players, but the AI will simply stand around and watch you do this by yourself. Bots are good at reviving you, at least, but their effectiveness is lower than it should be. I often have to play Operations with bots too, as, even this early on I’m having trouble finding other players to match with outside of PvP.
On the performance front I had a less than a good time, however. I’ve got the game installed on an SSD, but it takes minutes every time I have to load. Getting to the menu took six minutes when I timed it. Loading into the game then took about three minutes, as did loading in and out of a mission. When doing a few missions in one sitting that means I have to wait for half an hour or so during my session. I was also often accompanied by stutters and hitches on a 3090 and 5700x. This issue seems incredibly rare, though, as I only heard from a couple other players with similar issues.
As a sequel to the original, Space Marine 2 does a very good job of capturing and expanding on the gameplay. Cutting into hordes of enemies with a powersword is simply badass and the game does epic spectacle very well. At its core, though, this is a very familiar game that won’t blow anyone’s mind. I would have had an even better time if it hadn’t been for my loading issues, but Saber Interactive has done a great job on this sequel. For the emperor or whatever!
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2: Violent and epic in equal measure, Space Marine 2 offers up solid co-op action with a decent amount of content. – Andrew Farrell
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