The last couple of years have been pretty great for Warhammer 40,000 fans. We received an amazing tactical RPG in the form of Rogue Trader, Darktide provides a co-op FPS experience, Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters allows you to hunt Nurgle traitors as the Grey Knights, and now Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 recently released in its full glory. While the original Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine offered some campy, ork slaughtering fun, the sequel provides a more brutal take on being a space marine, and it is fantastic.
For Ultramar!
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 hits the ground running and never stops. The game opens with a Tyranid invasion of the Recidious system with the Deathwatch attempting to deploy a deadly virus in hopes of slowing down the Hive Fleet. As expected, things don’t go as planned, the squad crash lands and most of them are wiped out. However, against all odds our hero fights through the swarm and launches the virus into the atmosphere shortly before becoming overwhelmed.
To no one’s surprise, it turns out our masked hero is none other than the newly demoted Lieutenant Titus. Having spent a century in the Deathwatch under the suspicious of heresy, Titus earned his place back among the Ultramarines and underwent the Rubicon surgery to become a Primaris Marine. Unfortunately, congratulations are short lived as the virus had a weaker than expected effect, and it’s time to get back into the action (fresh wounds and all).
Space Marine 2 follows Lieutenant Titus through multiple campaign missions across the 3 main planets of Kadaku, Avarax, and Demerium. Each of these planets has several objectives and takes around 4 hours to complete depending on difficulty. I decided to play through the campaign on Veteran (Hard) difficulty, as it was the recommended gameplay experience.
The majority of the time spent on Kadaku involves tracking down a Mechanicus Magos and some important data that he refuses to leave without. As this world wasn’t heavily guarded, your squad is mostly on its own against the Tyranid threat. After evacuation of Kadaku, your squad moves on to Avarax to help the Imperial Guard put down the Tyranid threat for good and relay an important message to the Chapter Master Marneus Calgar. Finally, on Demerium, Titus must once again confront the forces of Chaos (Thousand Sons this time) and stop a super weapon that threatens the galaxy.
And They Shall Know No Fear…
One of the major aspects of Space Marine 2 that I really appreciated was how much detail they put into the world-building. Instead of just having a single bolt rifle, they’ve included all the flavors, such as the Auto Bolt Rifle, Stalker Bolt Rifle, and Heavy Bolt Rifle, to name a few. This is in addition to a plethora of other ranged weapons, including my favorites, the Plasma Incinerator and Melta Rifle. For every Xeno that needs killing, there’s a weapon to get the job done.
While the Orks felt more like playthings in the original Space Marine, Saber Interactive did an excellent job of making the Tyranids extra fearsome this time around. Even though you’ll be killing thousands of Tyranids throughout the campaign, it only takes a couple of missed dodges or parries for them to bring you to your knees.
I feel like this does a pretty good job of reflecting the table-top version of the game. A Space Marine can easily wipe out a small squad of Hormagaunts and go toe-to-toe with a unit of Tyranid Warriors, but a couple bad save rolls and he’s done for. This is extra true for any of the scarier Tyranids, such as the Carnifex or Lictor.
Even though I appreciate that ever encounter has danger, there are some issues with inconsistent difficulty spikes. In the beginning, the Warriors are quite a bit more threatening than the Hormagaunts, and just when you get comfortable taking down one at a time, the game just opens the floodgates.
I quickly discovered how important parrying was as I embarrassingly failed the final section of the intro more times than I would like to admit. The first real boss was also an insane jump in difficulty and probably took close to a dozen tries to bring it down. However, after that, nothing else really got too crazy except for in sections where my bot teammates just wouldn’t react, or revive, properly.
This mostly stems from the fact that there is no leveling system in Space Marine 2, and once players get used to the mechanics and timing the only thing to do is throw more or harder enemies at them. At that point, difficulty will vary widely among players depending on what aspects of the game they’re good at. Furthermore, once the Plasma Incinerator, Melta, and Thunder Hammer are unlocked fights feel significantly easier as these weapons are strong against single targets and hordes.
Multiplayer Mayhem
I personally found the campaign to be the strongest aspect of Space Marine 2 by a large margin. I completed the campaign solo with the AI Bots, which were mostly competent except in a handful of instances, but I could imagine it being even more fun with a couple of friends. The only downside being the individual missions are relatively long, but there are frequent checkpoints that you can continue from if the game is closed.
There is, however, a separate PvE campaign mode where the missions are a bit more manageable (around 45 minutes). Each of these missions follows a separate squad that Titus ordered to complete a secondary but crucial task for his mission. It was nice to go back and fill in the gaps firsthand after completing the campaign. Furthermore, I appreciate how the developers made these squads actually competent in the story; in many games you will dispatch a team to complete an objective and either have to rescue them later or clean up their mess.
I wasn’t as fond of the PvP modes, though, despite enjoying competitive shooters. First off, there are only 3 games modes, which essentially consist of team deathmatch, ABC objective control, and then capturing a moving objective. Additionally, each of these modes is 6v6, which seems like a missed opportunity for some awesome large-scale battles. Battlefront style missions where you could unlock a Dreadnought or Repulsor would have been awesome. Instead we got a cramped, corridor shooter.
Even though the level of replayability isn’t great right now, Space Marine 2 has a very promising roadmap for the next year. Additional PvE missions with a new enemy and increased difficulty are coming later this year, and next year we get another PvE mission, PvE Horde Mode, and a new PvP game mode. The best part is that all of this is free, and the only advantage of paid DLC is new cosmetics.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 checks all the boxes for a satisfying, grim dark 40k shooter. Despite the lackluster state of PvP, I can’t help but recommend this to any fans of Warhammer 40,000, or third-person shooters in general, as the PvE campaign is phenomenal.
Full disclosure: A copy was provided by PR for the purposes of this review. Reviewed on PS5.
