At the risk of irritating a certain group of fans to the point that I need to lock down the comments box for my own sanity: I have an issue with how a lot of games handle the Warhammer 40K license. Not that I want to get into this debate (there are plenty of articles all over the Internet to catch you up if you are interested), but I am one of those who reads Warhammer 40K as a satire of fascism. What happens if you take the satire out of something? Well, it becomes a straight-faced take on the thing it was meant to be satirisng. See where I’m going here? I didn’t get much satire out of Space Marine 2.
Here the developers have taken several of the more abject “bad-bads” of the 40k universe and then thrown a buddy-buddy story of Space Marines banding together to hold back the tide for the glory of the God-Emperor. It’s real candle-in-the-darkness stuff, plays heavily into the toxic xenophobia that 40K as a property is satirising, and because it’s a squad shooter so much of the narrative is focused on playing to those dynamics of camaraderie. The original Space Marine was an effort to bring Gears of War into 40K, and Space Marine 2 is an effort to modernise it. It is a rollercoaster ride over the dozen or so hours the campaign lasts, but it is also treading on such extremely thin ice.
Putting that aside, though, the game’s a total blast to play, being big on action, offering plenty of challenge, and turning the visceral brutality of the setting all the way up to 11 and beyond. Enemies tend to come in large hordes, and a mix of close-in melee types and ranged enemies, as well as one or two particularly tough thugs that can distract you from the threat of the swarm just enough to make both difficult to juggle. You’ve got a mix of ranged and melee abilities yourself as well as parries and dodges. And then there’s the ability to do executions as a way of recovering your shields.
Unlike the Gears of War series there’s not much cover and crawling in Space Marine 2. You won’t have much time to think at all, as this is much more of a twitch-style action game, but it is explosive, dynamic, and exceptionally gory and violent. The developers have also hit the perfect balance between putting you in control of a hulking one-man tank, and then also being nimble enough to get around the battlefield as they need to. Get a couple of friends together to play this in co-op, and the extreme action is uproarious and constant. There’s rarely more than a breather between combat scenes while on a mission, and not much more to do than head down a pathway to the next combat scene when you wrap one up.
If there’s one weakness in the way Space Marine 2 plays it’s that the co-op isn’t particularly cooperative. Other than situating you and your teammates in the same bloody battlefield, you’re hardly going to have the time to coordinate, and tactics aren’t much more than “kill stuff while I try and kill stuff.” There is some effort to make squad building interesting, as there are six or so roles, and all the usual loot and upgrades you’d expect, but even with that, that same sheer violence that makes the game so compelling doesn’t translate well to what we generally expect from co-op gameplay.
There’s one other way that the busy violence lets Space Marine 2 down a little: You rarely get a chance to enjoy the art direction. This game is gorgeous, whether depicting the wilds or the soaring punk-gothic architecture that is such a hallmark of the 40K brand. The developers have an excellent eye for using the environment to build intensity, too, like one scene early on when you see a bunch of Tyranid ships crashing to the ground behind a forest line, knowing full well that you’re about to have a Game of Thrones-like moment where you, a sole defender of a wall, are going to see a great horde of enemies breaking through that forest line to attack your position.
It’s just a pity that the developers get so focused on the small arena spaces for the brutal combat that they end up losing sight of what they could have delivered. This could have been a kind of Mass Effect-like opportunity to immerse yourself in the wonders of a space war across multiple planets. Instead, it’s often more like a particularly bloody gladiatorial arena where you rarely get a chance to look beyond the horizon of the stadia’s stands.
Space Marine 2 is a game that will appeal to just about anyone who likes action games. This thing is fast, very furious, and intense. It doesn’t give you long to breathe between throwing more hordes at you, and thanks to that single-minded ferocity, in both single-player and multiplayer it’s a hoot. I don’t think it does a particularly great job of capturing the spirit and intent of the tabletop game and lore, but then again, whenever I was playing I was also having too much fun to care.
