A few weeks ago now I had a friend over for a little two man LAN party. We sat down in my living room with out computers and our two 42" OLED monitors with one goal in mind. Play as much Warhammer 40.000: Space Marine as we could. The main goal being to finish the campaign.
What is Space Marine 2?
Space Marine 2 is the direct sequel to Space Marine that was released in 2011. This game has been highly anticipated and it was very well received when it released. It's set in the vast Warhammer: 40.000 universe where we follow the Space Marine Titus as he's battling both Xenos and Chaos forces.
The game is made by Saber Interactive, the same developer behind World War Z and these games share a lot of elements. It takes inspiration from the horde shooter genre, much like Left 4 Dead, and has you going through levels where you fight hordes of enemies alongside heavier more special enemies. It fits the universe of Warhammer: 40.000 very well.
My thoughts
Space Marine 2 took me by storm from the first second. The graphics are absolutely insane, especially when playing on a 4K OLED monitor. I was surprised at how well it ran on my RTX 3070Ti. A stable 60FPS on high settings throughout all of the game. I guess all thanks to DLSS.
The gameplay is just fantastic. Everything about Warhammer: 40.000 has always been brutal and they've managed to implement that perfectly in the game. Enemies look absolutely brutal, melee combat feels heavy and brutal and the takedowns you can do are just absolutely brutal as well. It reminds me a lot of the heavy gameoplay from the old Gears of War games.
During my time with the game I finished the campaign and tried the Operations mode for a little bit. The campaign was decent. It eases you into all of the gameplay elements and slowly introduces you to more and more enemy types so that you learn how to fight them properly. It's got some breathtaking views and the story itself is simply ok. It's quite obvious the campaign is mostly there to facilitate for the Operations mode in my opinion.
The Operations mode is very much like the general gameplay loop of World War Z or Left 4 Dead. Objective based horde shooter mode where you progress through a mostly linear level. What's cool is that the Operations are separate from the campaign missions in that they take place in between them. You get to see how the missions of NPCs during the campaign unfolded which is really cool.
I've put roughly 20 hours into Space Marine so far and there's going to be more. It's not so much fun to play it alone so I need to wait around for my friends to have some time off from their kids. That's my only issue with the game.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.