[Introduction]
Here's an oddity: a third person shooter hack'n'slash Warhammer 40k game.
The oddity isn't so much the genre combination, but rather how good it is. Lord knows there have been some mediocre and downright terrible Warhammer 40k games in the past. I'm very happy that this isn't one of them. As the name implies, you get to play as a space marine, the stompy Captain Titus of the Ultramarines, along with all that this entails.
And it's pretty God-Emperor damn cathartic.
[First Impressions]
Space Marine starts as it means to go on. The menu screen is just Titus fighting orks.
Then the first thing you see your character do is jump out of a dropship with a fucking jetpack, because just letting gravity pull you towards the surface is not fast enough. You land on a ship in low orbit and immediately begin stabbing orks with a knife so big it may as well be a sword, and shooting them with a gun chambered for rocket-propelled grenades. Then you crash the ship.
Nice.
[Development]
Exactly when development began is unknown, although trailers were released as early as 2009. What is known is that a demo was made available in August of 2011, a mere month prior to release in September that same year. Whenever it started, development doesn't seem to have been terribly troubled. This may largely be due to the fact that Relic hired folks with experience developing for consoles.
Some of the new hires previously worked on titles like Gears of War and God of War, and while I initially figured they probably brought some elements from those titles along, upon retrospect I'm not so sure. The former is very cover-heavy while the latter has a big focus on combos and spectacle. Space Marine, meanwhile doesn't bother with cover at all and isn't so much a combo spectacle as it is a sequence of bloody firefights that happen to feature melee weapons.
Going back to the trailers, the pre-release footage offers a glimpse at what was going on. Models for both orks and space marines were quite different, and there may have been an intent to add a co-op campaign. Certain enemies, such as ork deff dreads, also appear in the trailers, but not in the released game. Curiously, many of the models in question seem similar or even identical to ones used in Dawn of War 2, released in 2009, the same year as the earliest trailer I'm aware of.
[Game Mechanics]
When I said that you get to play a space marine along with all that this entails, I meant it. Space Marine is absolutely brutal in its portrayal of combat in the 41st millennium. As an 8 foot genetically enhanced superhuman kitted out with power armor, a chainsword and a bolter, you're effectively the most dangerous thing on a battlefield that isn't a tank. Even that would be debatable.
Consequently, you're not gonna be using cover much, if at all. Anything out of arm's reach is gonna get peppered with .75 calibre rockets and anything that makes it past the hail of munitions will get a healthy helping of whatever melee weapon you're carrying around.
That's not to say that the terrain doesn't come into play, mind you. Despite being literally engineered for maximum killing prowess, you're still one guy squaring down with a planetary invasion force. Choke points are your friend, and so is the high ground. In the event you need to recover your shield, ducking behind anything bigger than yourself will suffice. You should also avoid backing yourself into a corner. Always leave space to reposition.
Also, those aforementioned .75 calibre rockets? Bolters won't be the only thing in your arsenal, although you are always going to have one handy, along with your sidearm. This starts out as a bolt pistol, but eventually gets upgraded to a plasma pistol. On top of these, you have 2 weapon slots that you have free reign over.
The other weapons at your disposal are as follows:
Plasma guns (which can be charged for a powerful shot exploding on impact);
Vengeance launchers (essentially sticky grenade launchers whose munitions can be detonated in flight);
Storm bolters (which are basically two bolters strapped together for maximum dakka);
Melta guns (think fusion-powered shotgun that instantly melts anything in a short cone in front of you);
Stalker bolters (a sniper bolter);
Lascannons (scoped laser cannon intended to defeat tank armor);
Plasma cannons (upscaled plasma gun, found as a mounted gun once);
Heavy bolters (upscaled bolters loaded with 1.00 calibre rockets instead, found as mounted guns);
Autocannons (basically a man-portable Bofors gun, found as a mounted gun once).
And those are just the ranged weapons. When the fighting turns melee, you've got:
Combat knives (knives so large they're basically swords);
Chainswords (chainsaws that are also swords);
Power axes (axes that disrupt the molecular binding of anything they hit);
Thunder hammers (hammers that disrupt the molecular binding of anything they hit, but explosively);
There are frequent opportunities to switch between weapons once they have been introduced, allowing for substantial leniency in establishing a rapport with each weapon and deciding whether or not it fits your playstyle. Plasma cannons, heavy bolters and autocannons are, unfortunately, very limited in availability and are discarded once ammunition runs out.
Space Marine strikes a solid balance between the usefulness of ranged weapons and relevancy of melee weapons, and neither ever become obsolete. Most fights can be approached as either a firefight or a melee battle, but ideally both weapon groups should be taken into account and brought to bear.
Certain weapons are also better used against some enemies rather than others - for example, it'd be a waste to fire a lascannon at a lowly ork boy when there's a nob nearby. Similarly, melta guns are best reserved for groups of enemies instead of lone ones. Nothing prevents you from doing it anyway, there's no denying it's very satisfying, and your sidearm will never run out of ammo so you'll always have a ranged option. But even so, it pays to be economical in your use of munitions.
All melee weapons have a simple combo, which is pretty much just mashing the attack button. The most advanced melee fighting gets is interrupting a combo to use a stun attack instead, which can either provide a stronger stun (for tougher enemies) or an area-of-effect stun (for crowd control).
Finally, if you run low on health, never fear: those stuns come in handy, because stunned enemies can be executed for a health boost. Just remember: you can still take damage while executing enemies, and you don't get healed until the execution is completed. If you're down to an inch of your health bar, you might want to recharge your shield before you attempt an execution.
And that's pretty much it.
The game isn't terribly long, so your arsenal never really gets old.
Oh, and my one gripe: the final boss is a quick time event. It kinda sucks, because every other boss in the game is at least engaging and requires application of what the game has taught you so far. I won't say that it's bad, it's just... kinda lame compared to everything else. It's set up to be a dramatic final fight, and it sure as hell is dramatic in terms of circumstance, but when it's a backdrop to a QTE sequence, it falls a little flat.
[Graphics]
Space Marine looks okay.
I know there's folks out there who might tell me that it looks old, that it doesn't hold up anymore or that its age is showing or something to that effect. I'm not saying those folks are wrong, I'm just saying that it's really not that bad. You'll occasionally run into somewhat low res textures, particularly during close-ups, but nothing struck me as particularly terrible.
This is still a cool looking game, and more importantly it absolutely captures the aesthetic and scale of the setting. Warhammer 40k's Imperium of Man is steeped in superstition to the point that pulling a lever is accompanied with chanting, bell tolling and incense. We're talking about people who have weaponised cathedrals and have perfected genetic engineering, but are terrified of what a Windows 98 computer might do if its raw computing power is left unchecked.
And this is not limited to lever pulling. Consequently, every area you visit may as well double as a shrine, and in fact probably does. Nothing is labelled either, which makes it pretty weird when you approach a radio station and it's just a bunch of levers with a console attached. No one knows how this shit works except the guys who turned ancient instruction manuals into hymns.
That feeling is perfectly captured by Space Marine's aesthetic, and I love it.
However, it should be noted that much of the game is quite limited in its color palate.
I hope you like brown.
[Story]
As an introduction to the Warhammer 40k setting in general, Space Marine isn't great. Very little gets established early on, and we're not really told why anything is happening, only that it is. In terms of establishing motivations, very little is done in the early game.
Later on, some things do get explained, such as the innate drive orks have to loot things and the nature of ork leadership, but nothing advanced. Space Marine isn't an advanced game, so if you're expecting something to the effect of Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, you might want to temper your expectations a bit. There's no deep character development, or really any to speak of, despite the opportunity for such being present.
Titus and his squad get the barest of characterisations, which is a shame, because there's a lot to work with. You have Sidonus, the experienced veteran. You have Leandros, the new guy. And you have Titus, a seasoned captain. There's material for something interesting here, particularly considering Titus' pragmatism and Leandros' reliance on the Codex Astartes.
Instead, we get pretty much nothing, and even though I quite like Titus, I'm left wishing there had been more focus on the squad interacting. Something like Republic Commando, maybe. Give us some chatter here and there, beyond just talking a bit about the mission. I understand that these are space marines and they're largely focused on very little other than the mission, but surely Sidonus and Titus have formed some kind of bond in the past 200 years or so. Hell, Titus even addresses Sidonus as "old friend," and this happens more than once.
We do get some more personality from Grimskull, the ork in charge of the invading greenskins. In no time at all, he's established as a credible threat, because he actually appears to make plans. Granted, his plans are largely made with the end goal of "I want the titans" or really anything else that strikes his fancy, but where most orks would dismantle the local orbital defense gun or install it on a gargant or some crazy nonsense like that, Grimskull just uses it the way it was intended, turning it into a distraction while he goes for the titans.
And besides, he's just fucking cool looking. Where a sensible person might wear armor, Grimskull doesn't. Instead, he's strapped a god damn V8 engine to his back, which powers his arms. It's completely absurd, and I love it.
Something else that's rather well-characterised is the Imperium itself. In part by the environment, but also by the occasional public announcement. It's mostly stuff like "workers of class 9 and below do not qualify for medical attention" and reminding people that planetary invasion is no excuse to skip work. The orks might be repurposing the assembly line, but your absence will be noted.
[SPOILERS]
Obviously the ork invasion is thwarted. Kind of. As much as you can thwart orks, anyway. You can never be 100% rid of them due to how they release spores when they die, and even burning them might not get all the spores, but I digress.
The problem is that the initial solution to the ork problem is firing the Psychic Scourge, some kind of warp-powered device that was intended to kill aliens. Unfortunately, the Psychic Scourge is powered by the warp, which of course means it's not gonna do anything good.
So daemons get summoned, providing a new enemy to fight. That's all well and good, but crucially, it becomes ever more apparent that Titus has some kind of inherent resistance to the warp and its energies. Why is that? How can he do it? We have no idea. It's never explained, it probably never will be. There were supposed to be 2 additional games, exploring Titus going rogue and Titus becoming Chapter Master of a new Chapter respectively.
That aside, it is neat how you get some red flags along the way, such as Drogan becoming progressively more erratic. His own facility doesn't recognise him, he has only incomplete knowledge of how to navigate it, things like that. It's later revealed that "Drogan" was just a corpse being possessed by a daemon, and the aforementioned red flags hint at something being wrong right from your first meeting.
Also, in closing, it should be mentioned that Leandros is a moron and a hypocrite. He never shuts up about the Codex Astartes, but in the end decides to call the motherfucking INQUISITION because he has concerns regarding Titus' ability to resist the warp. You might be wondering why this matters.
It matters because the Codex would require him to report the situation to a Chaplain or Librarian. Titus wasn't wrong when he said that Leandros had failed.
Honestly, fuck Leandros.
[Pros]
- Tremendously satisfying combat
- Story is decent for what it is and stays true to the setting
- One of the best Warhammer 40k games out there
- BOSS MOTHERFUCKING GRIMSKULL
[Cons]
- Cliffhanger with no sequel
- Characters could have been expanded much more
- Multiplayer is P2P and almost entirely dead
- Final boss fight is a god damn QTE, come on
[Conclusion]
In summary, Space Marine is a cathartic game about shooting and curbstomping a bunch of green soccer hooligans who won't get off your lawn. Its graphics may not have aged as well as I would have liked, and it might not be the most challenging game, but it's a lot of fun. I will forever lament the fact that we didn't get the sequels the game so rightly deserves, but at least we got something.
Shut the fuck up, Leandros. Moral compass optional.
/DUX
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