I have always felt intimidated by the sheer magnitude of the Warhammer 40,000 series. The amount of lore, fandom, and merch attached to this juggernaut of a franchise is staggering. Up until now I haven’t even touched a Warhammer game. But when I saw the gameplay trailers for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, I knew right away it’d be a game for me. In fact, the moment I had the game in my hands, I felt a level of giddiness that I haven’t felt in a long time.
In Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, you play as Demetrian Titus, a hulking super soldier who is Captain of the Ultramarines. You are tasked with the ultimate goal of saving the galaxy from the invasion of a rogue alien species knows as Tyranids. Tyranids are apex predators and view every other lifeform as prey. As the captain of the Ultramarines, it is your responsibility to kill as many Tyranids as you can to stop them from making every planet extinct. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the long and short of it.
This is one of those games that smacks you upside the head the instant you look away. Seldom do you ever have a moment of time to breathe during the roughly 10 hour campaign. Tyranids swarm you in absurd amounts. I’m talking thousands of Tyranids being seen on-screen. It’s pretty typical to see a literal couple thousand creatures barreling in your direction. Thankfully, you have a myriad of weapons available at your disposal. You can clear out waves of smaller enemies with the machine gun, or maybe you’d rather get up close and personal with your chainsword or combat knife. You even get access to big-ass miniguns that can obliterate enemies before they even get a good look at you. It’s fun to experiment to find what guns feel best in your hands.
The combat is absolutely amazing. It’s truly exhilarating to take part in the larger battles that happen in the main story. The longer I played, the more I felt like a big fucking deal. Slicing through hundreds of enemies like a hot knife through butter is always going to be an incredible feeling. I never felt that the combat got old, even though that’s what the vast majority of the gameplay is. My one gripe is that as fun as the combat is, there are a few speedbumps that take away from the enjoyability of the campaign for me.
For starters, you do not passively gain health during downtime or between fights. You would think these nine-foot-tall super soldiers in who kill aliens as their day-job might have figured out a way to self sustain during battle. Perhaps their metabolisms would have adjusted to the amount of injuries they were suffering. That is not the case! You must find med-kits in order to get your health back. Every now and then I’d find myself getting quickly wiped out by a big mob of fast, but weak, enemies. If I had a way of healing while being swarmed I could maybe fight my way out. But, because you need to have a med-kit in order to heal, I often found myself dying in situations I didn’t even find particularly difficult. It took away from the power-trip I often feel in this game.
Another issue is while I found the melee combat to be fun, it wasn’t very rewarding. I felt like I was always better off with a gun of some sort. None of the melee weapons in the game do a ton of damage. Some enemies are total bullet-sponges, and dealing with those enemies with a chainsword or combat knife felt like a fool’s errand. My major issue besides the lack of passive healing is just how much the game wants you to fight with your melee weapons. There’s an entire parry and counter system that feels a little strange in this game. You can block enemies attacks and reduce the damage you take. But if you time it just right you can get a counter that will either kill the enemy or deal massive damage. Don’t you worry about missing the counter, because Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has you covered. You get these big red and blue indicators letting you know when you’re about to be attacked. While I feel these systems don’t really fit in a game like this – due to how weak the melee options are – the parrying system is necessary because of the sheer amount of enemies that are on-screen at a time. Without the ability to counter and parry, it would be hard to not feel completely overwhelmed.
Once you’re finished with the campaign you get access to the game’s PVP and PVE modes! In these modes you can play online with other people looking to kill a shit-ton of Tyranids. You can unlock a bunch of really excellent cosmetics as well as weapons and other things! Across these multiplayer modes you can pick one of six classes.
Tactical: General soldier. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Assault: Melee focused class with access to a jump pack for more freedom of movement.
Vanguard: Close range soldier who can grapple enemies.
Bulwark: Defensive, tanky soldier. Carries a shield.
Sniper: Exactly how it sounds. Long range and can go invisible.
Heavy: An absolute unit. Uses heavy weapons.
There are some excellent class guides out there that show you how to maximize your potential with each class. It might be worth checking one of those guides out to see which class calls to you.
Certain classes feel so much stronger than the others – *COUGH* Heavy and Bulwark *COUGH* – but that’s okay! A lot of the issues that I have in the campaign don’t really apply to the multiplayer modes due to how goofy and absurd they are. It wouldn’t make sense if the best classes in this game weren’t the ones with the most health and damage. This isn’t a game that necessarily needs fine tuning and constant balance changes. The odds of this becoming the next big e-sport are zero.
I really felt like the multiplayer experience of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 hearkens back to the Xbox 360 era of games. There’s a level of jankiness that feels like getting a hug from a loved one. I can’t really explain it, but I actually quite like that this game doesn’t feel like it’s being made to be competitive. It’s like barring your friends from playing Oddjob in Goldeneye 64. Having a class or character being ridiculously OP can actually add layers of fun to the game that otherwise might not be there.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a complete blast. It doesn’t do anything too groundbreaking, and it’s not reinventing the wheel – but it doesn’t have to! It’s rare to find a game now-a-days that are this much fun to play. The story is not going to win any awards for writing or presentation – but it doesn’t have to! Sometimes you just need to play a game where you run around as a giant wearing neon blue armour killing thousand of alien insects. It really truly feels like a game I would have been obsessed with fifteen years ago. Another amazing thing that makes this feel like a game from the past is that it has no microtransactions. Everything is obtainable by just playing the game. It’s extremely refreshing to know that games like this are still being made in 2024.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is pure unadulterated fun.
