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While in the 41st millennium there is only war, here in the third millennium we can enjoy Space Marine 2’s action and carnage from the comfort of our hive cities. Space Marine 2 is the latest co-op action shooter, gunning for you and your friend’s time for the foreseeable future. It’s trying to muscle in on the portion of the market occupied by Gears of War, Halo, and Resistance-type games, albeit with an Ultramarine coat of base paint. While the game’s scope is clear, does the game live up to expectations? After 20 hours of playtime, it’s safe to say that Space Marine 2 is a solid title for co-op shooter enthusiasts.
Before we go any further, don’t worry about spoilers as we won’t comment on them here. You play as Titus from Space Marine 1, as revealed in marketing trailers. You’ll immediately get caught up on what’s been going on with Titus since the events of the first game, how he becomes a Primaris marine for the recent 40k lore, and all that jazz.
After that, you’re onto the actual campaign. The campaign missions are rather long. There are technically only six of them, but each one can take anywhere from one to two hours. Throughout the missions, you’ll get cutscenes and cinematics that transition you to what otherwise could be different levels. Even at the end of missions and the start of ones, you’ll get lore and dialogue to help immerse you in the story, your squad, and other parts of what makes a Space Marine chapter.
A 12 hour start-to-finish linear action shooter campaign is very long, all things considered.
Each of the missions and sub-missions has different maps, level designs, enemy encounters, and objectives. Sometimes, you’ll be holding an area, and at others, clearing out an area. Sometimes you simply have to progress through an area. Other times your Astartes allies may have a task to fill. There’s enough variety as you progress the campaign for each of the missions to be replayable.
In terms of replayability, you have Dataslates and difficulty modifiers. Dataslates are collectables that give you some voice-over lore. It offers some intrigue and lore tidbits straight from the Black Library for Warhammer fans, Space Marine 1 fans, or just general collectors and achievement hunters. There are around four per level, but, if you miss one then you need to re-run the entire level, which makes the achievement hunting somewhat painful.
Part of the storyline will have you speak to your chapter’s chaplain, often where you’ll get some insight into the lore of the game. Image via VideoGamer.
Space Marine 2;’s campaign is broken up into cinematics, both on battlefield and on the battle barge where you missions assignments start on. Image via VideoGamer.
As you progress the story lines, you’ll get different encounters, some of which offer horde type defense objectives. Image via VideoGamer.
Melee combat plays a big role in the game, allowing you to restore armour and counter big threats on the battlefield. Image via VideoGamer.
Players can find dataslates on campaign levels and operations that give players something to look for for achievements and lore entries. Image via VideoGamer.
Once you’re done with the campaign, which is around 12 hours in length, you’ll want to focus on Operations, the class-themed co-op mode. These missions are themed around the squads you encounter during your campaign missions and what they get up to. They are related to side missions and offer a new perspective from the frontline. It adds some extra game time and is part of the game’s multiplayer progression and reward structure, too.
I won’t go into too much detail about multiplayer, largely because we were unable to test it out due to player-base issues with the review server. However, we’ve tested the Operations mode. As mentioned, Operations are extra campaign missions. However, the troops you play are the classes available in Multiplayer. Completing these missions awards experience for the class you play as and the weapons you use, unlocking new talent trees and perks, which you can use to create builds. These builds are important for taking on harder difficulties in Operations mode.
It feels very much inspired by games like Darktide, Vermintide, and to some extent, Killing Floor 2. You’ll get quite a bit of replayability via these features with all the builds, classes, and weapons you can try out. The only issue is that there are only six Operations, and so, it’s repetitive. There’s going to be more Operations launching as the seasons progress, but it’s only one new mission every few months. It doesn’t have the same variety as the games it is trying to emulate, such as Killing Floor’s many maps, or Darktide for that matter. It is something that Saber will need to work on if they want the same staying power as other games.
You get to pick classes in multiplayer, offering players specialised loadouts, perks and reward for the classes they like. Image via VideoGamer.
When in Operations, you’ll get similar campaign themed objectives to play through alongside special class themed builds and abilities to use to complete them. Image via VideoGamer.
The multiplayer mode will likely fill in some gaps, since the class, weapons, and rewards are shared across multiplayer and Operations. It helps with the repetitiveness and spices things up. Plus, you’ll get to see how your class and weapon perform in multiplayer, too. So, be aware, that while it’s a great feature and an improvement on modern co-op shooters, Space Marine 2 isn’t perfect.
In terms of the combat, Space Marine 2 performs very well. There were fears that it could be rather samey, with melee weapon moveset spamming and bolters taking up most ranged gameplay. But, there’s enough weapon variety in both melee, range, and explosives to change playstyles up enough.
In the campaign, you often find weapon pickups to adapt your strategy on the fly. There’s also an armoury system to sort a loadout for each mission, using certain weapons available for that mission. These weapons often have a style, such as close range, precision, and burst. Others have grenade launchers on them, while others may be more rapid. Other times, you can find a sniper to deal better headshot damage, or equip a close-range melta for melting swarms.
Part of the challenge of facing Space Marine 2’s higher difficulties is all about planning your loadout and build effectively. Meanwhile, the harder campaign difficulties are all about planning your weapon and resources to face the coming challenges the best you can.
Melee combat is surprisingly decent, too. Looking at gameplay trailers, you’d presume it’s a spam fest. And while that is sort of true, each melee weapon has a moveset for different combo styles. The combat knife is all about fast-paced duelling, while the chain sword is a mixture of cleaving and duelling. The Power Sword can be toggled into different modes, with one for duelling, and other cleaving enemies. Meanwhile, the Thunder Hammer is all about AOE hits, or heavy-charged attacks. The Power Fist is another mixed weapon that trades all range for big punches. There are certainly different playstyles to experience with melee weapons. You’ll need to manage what combos and staples of moves to use for dealing with elites, swarms, or reacting to boss moves.
Melle can be quite in depoth with its weapon combos to try against bosses, elites or even enemy players in PvP. Image via VideoGamer.
Players can find items around the map that offers ammo, grenades, and even health pick ups. Image via VideoGamer.
Players fan also find weapons on teh floor to adapt their strategy for the coming challenges if they want to. Image via VideoGamer.
These weapons also relate to classes in multiplayer. Assault has access to more pistol variety, the Thunder Hammer but trades a primary weapon for it. The Bulwark class does the same, with its primary weapon replaced with a shield. Meanwhile, the Sniper focuses on special long-range weaponry or precision bolters. There’s enough class variety in multiplayer to get a feel for your preferred playstyle.
These playstyles along with their strengths and weaknesses are important. For example, I love the heavy playstyle, and while this made me great for fighting both hordes and elites in combat, I had weaknesses. Those weaknesses would likely put me more at risk in harder difficulties in close-range combat when it comes to health and armour management. It also made me particularly ineffective against Neurothorpe enemies, a flying mage-type enemy for those not familiar.
This is where the enemy variety comes into play. On each mission, you’ll often find the basic Tyranid Warriors and Homoguants swarms coming at you. But you’ll get the occasional enemy variety to spice things up, based on the tabletop’s enemies. These different challenges force you to adopt fresh tactics. We won’t go into too much detail on enemy type and enemy variations because of spoilers, but rest assured there’s enough variety to challenge how you play. It’s a fantastic way to balance and design the game to encourage players to take on the harder difficulties.
Space Marine 2 really nails the aesthetic of a well-equipped, adaptable, and powerful super marine in service of the God Emperor. A lot of what makes the 40k universe is its grim dark aesthetic. From the sheer look and feel of the game, Space Marine 2 is easily one of the best fan service games out there. It’s a quality title, but I have doubts about its staying power. Hopefully, the risk of repetitiveness in the online co-op mode is outweighed by the replayability afforded by the strong reward structure. But that’s for the community at large to decide if that lands as intended.
Reviewed on PC. Code provided by the publisher.
About the Author
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
- Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
- Genre(s): Action
