Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 XSX Review
Summary: Gears meets the sons of Guilliman, in this epic sequel that would make the Emperor proud.
4.3
March for Macragge
Space Marine 2 is the kind of sequel I like. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, instead, it refines and expands on what made the original so damn good to begin with, and to be clear Space Marine is one of my favourite shooters.
Set 200 years after the events of the original Space Marine, the sequel sees Titus return to defend an Imperial world amid a Tyranid invasion.
After an unfortunate run-in with a Carnifex, Titus is saved with some swift Rubicon surgery aboard the orbiting Ultramarine battle barge before returning to active duty as a shiny new Primarus Marine.
Back planeside and with a new squad at his command Titus is tasked with tearing a path through the unrelenting tide of xenos while battling to save a Techpriest with vital information about a top-secret imperial project.
The Tyranids feel like an unrelenting tide too. Using the impressive tech they developed while making World War Z, developer Sabre has done an incredible job of showing the scale of the seething horror posed by 40k’s most Lovecraftian threat. Gargoyles take out transport ships and blacken the sky in huge murdering murmurations, hundreds of Hormagants will clamber over each over to brute force their way over defenses. Lictors lurk in the shadows, termagants provide covering fire and the formidable xenomorph-like Warriors pose a dire threat even to the Emperor’s finest.
That’s before we get to the Raveners tunneling underneath you and the Zoanthropes that’ll blast you with psychic energy while floating just out of range.
During play this translates into a cacophony of violence and viscera as your squad of three marines tears its way through the enemy ranks as bolter rounds explode against chitinous armour and your chainsword clashes against talons as solid as ceramite.
A perfectly timed party sees enemies torn to pieces or stunned ready for a grizzly execution. There are dozens of these brutal deathblows for each enemy type and they never fail to satisfy.
Likewise, combat is a more refined version of the snappy Gears-style run and gun from the original mixed with a slightly more nuanced melee combat that encourages you to push forward at any given opportunity.
A big change from the original though is the mission structure, which rather than being the worst day a marine has ever had. Instead, the campaign is presented as a series of incursions to several planets in the same small system overseen from the Ultramarine’s forward base aboard their battle barge.
This gives you a little breather during the campaign and allows for some superb world-building as you get to see what life as a Space Marine is like when they’re not murdering everything in sight, There are also some fantastic Easter eggs.
You can also pop into the armoury between missions to change your gear to suit your playstyle. Not feeling your particular pattern of bolter? That’s ok there are half a dozen to try. Want to change your chainsword for the slightly swifter power sword? Go ahead. Fancy a nice new plasma pistol? It’s yours.
In the field, you’ll also find an array of heavy weapons to tear through the horde including the dependable heavy bolter, the flame-belching pyreblasters, and the devastating multi-melta that can put down a Carnifex in half a dozen hits.
The campaign in many ways is a game of two halves as the Tyranids slowly make way for a more insidious threat in its second half, as the followers of the lord of change, the heretic Astartes of the Thousand Sons, use the cover of the Xenos invasion to get their hands on a diabolical warp powered weapon.
It’s a clever choice, as the change in enemy faction expands (though several key Tyranid units are missing in action) and forces players to change up their tactics because dealing with a squad of chaos marines and a horde of Beastmen requires different tactics to the much squishier, and less skilled Tyranids.
Once you’ve conquered Space Marine 2’s campaign, it’s time to turn your attention to its class-based spoilerific Operations mode.
Players take on the role of half a dozen classes, from a basic tactical marine, or jet pack-toting assault trooper, to an eagle-eyed sniper or heavy weapons packing ummm. Heavy. Up to three players can stomp their way through a series of six missions that fill in the gaps in the main campaign by showing what the other squads off-camera doing most of the heavy lifting were up to while Titus took all the glory.
Though it can be played solo with bots (and decent ones at that.) It really is meant to be played with others, and not just because it’ll boot you back to the battle barge if you stand still for too long when you’re the only player, but will make you start from the beginning if you cark it even if the rest of your AI-controlled squad is still alive. This doesn’t happen when you have another player with you, you just wait a minute and respawn.
This is particularly irritating when battling some of the mode’s more deadly foes and aggressive bosses.
However, this is tempered by picking up extra lives and medkits and recharging your power armour by executing enemies.
Completing each mission rewards you with XP for your class and weapons, and currency for each successful run. This is then used at the armoury to purchase master-crafted weapons, perks, and cosmetics based on your favourite Space Marine chapter (Blood Angels ftw!)
It’s a fun little mode and one I’ll certainly return to when there are more players online to team up with.
But if you’re looking for my impressions on Eternal War, Space Marine 2’s PVP mode that pits heretics vs loyalists in 6v6 battles that look like the Horus Heresy by way of Gears of War. I don’t have any. I couldn’t find a single game pre-release.
If you hadn’t already guessed, Space Marine 2’s presentation is absolutely superb. From the dense jungles and swamps to spiralling gothic cathedrals and sprawling manufactorums, Saber has done an incredible job of recreating the grim dark world of the 41st millennium. There is a level of love and care in every character, every troop, and every execution even, that shows that these guys understand the source material very well.
It’s unrelentingly violent, yet there’s a glib sense of humour at its core. There is so much, gore, so much visera, that it’s funny. It’s impossible to get through a single encounter without being covered in claret by the end of it. Heads explode, limbs are torn off and force-fed to their owners, it’s absolutely glorious.
On consoles, there are two display modes; a 30fps quality mode and a 60fps targeted performance mode. I opted for 30 because it seemed more stable. Though when the action got hectic (I’m talking 100s of hormagaunts, explosions, gore, and buildings crumbling to dust ) the frame rate would momentarily slow to a crawl on Series X.
The audio is also top-tier, with a suitably sweeping and epic score and spot-on performances from the main cast.
Although it’s a shame that Mark Strong didn’t return to voice Titus, Clive Standen does a superb job in his stead as an older, wiser, and slightly more cynical Titus who carries the main body of the action well.
Final Thoughts
Space Marine 2 is a game for 40k fans by 40k fans. It’s clear Saber not only understood the assignment and the grim, dark world of the 41st millennium it has a great love for it.
It may be more of a continuation than a reinvention of the formula laid down by the original Space Marine, but if it isn’t broken, then why fix it?
The first game nailed the feeling of what it would be like to be a Space Marine, and, much like the Primaris marines themselves, Space Marine 2 refines and reinvigorates a classic by building on solid design principles while understanding what made them so compelling to begin with.
The result is an accomplished sequel that can run screaming into the breach with its chainsword held high.
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