In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. This one line all the narrative reasoning you need for Space Marine 2. It’s exposition, it’s emotional grounding, and it’s explanation for the hours you’re about to spend soaked in the gore of many thousands of enemy xenos.
Straightforward it might seem, but there’s also an emotional connection here that overrides the guns, the chainswords and the gruff militaristic interplay between the characters. This is a game utterly enamoured with the world of Warhammer 40,000, Games Workshop’s most popular franchise, and which, in turn, will speak to those that are similarly enamoured with it.
You could raise questions about the lack of female characters, the one-note emotional range, or indeed a story that thinks that character development is frivolous window dressing. You could, but you shouldn’t. Space Marine 2 is the most spectacular, the most faithful and the most enjoyable video game adaptation of this beloved setting – a setting that, when it was created in 1987, was just as deliberately flawed and hyper-sensationalised as the ultra-violent social satire of RoboCop.
Space Marine 2 is the continuing story of our hero Titus. It’s been over 100 years since the conclusion of the last game saw him branded a heretic and despatched to the Deathwatch, a suicide squad sent to deal with the worst threats in the galaxy.
Called to the planet Kadaku in the midst of a Tyranid invasion, your team are deployed to unleash a bio-virus designed to attack the xenos. Titus is the only survivor, though only through the timely intervention of the Ultramarine chapter. Reinstated, and newly reborn as a stronger, faster and more resilient Primaris marine, Titus leads a new team into the heart of the alien infestation, giving you the excuse to cut down Tyranid after Tyranid after Tyranid. It’s an objective that never gets old.
Titus is a brusque, but likeable, central hero, and some of the most interesting elements of the narrative are to do with how he’s perceived by his fellow Ultramarines. Certain parts of his past have been erased from the company’s records, and that makes for a few noteworthy moments amongst the gung-ho missions. This isn’t particularly a game with bags of character development, which is a shame when there’s so much fantastic writing set within the 40K universe, but it does the job it needs to.
Saber want you to constantly move forward. You’re a nigh-on indestructible warrior, and they’ve built your ability to survive into the combat system. You have four blocks of armour, each of which will regenerate after a small amount of time.
If all your armour has gone then you’ll begin to lose health, with the most obvious way to reclaim it begin to dole out some damage of your own, refilling any health and a portion of the shields you’ve just lost. Beyond that there’s the standard medkits, or your teammates can revive you, but the whole point of Space Marine 2 is to wade forward, straight into the gaping maw of the Tyranid threat, and by Jove, you’re going to do it.
It’s quite amazing just how well balanced the combat and its built-in healing system is. Any number of times I’ve been on the brink of death, a sliver of health keeping Titus upright, and still I’ve been able to triumph, building health and armour back through timely executions and parries. You are one of the galaxy’s toughest troops, and Space Marine 2 makes you feel like it.
It’s also surprising how fast and frenetic that combat feels, when you’re a soldier that’s been stuck in the thickest, most tank-like armour mankind has created. You stomp around the different landscapes at a pace that’s just about fast enough not to drive you insane, but the moment that one of those vile Tyranids appears everything seems to accelerate. They’re much faster than you are, and as they rush at you with their lethal blades your focus shifts as you try to survive the deadly dance.
Space Marine 2 looks absolutely stunning, and it’s even more impactful if you’ve grown up with the franchise, formative years spent hanging around in Games Workshop and lusting over the biggest and most expensive models. Those huge models look incredible, an early appearance of a Thunderhawk craft then setting the tone for impressive neo-gothic industrial buildings, alien locales and the terrifying swarms of aliens that you have to deal with.
Saber are rightly very proud of their swarm tech, and just as we saw in World War Z, it’s a hugely effective way of making encounters feel insurmountable, with the resulting exhilaration when you do scrape though a truly euphoric reward. The sense of scale at times is breathtaking, and when it’s combined with the level of detail found throughout the game, Space Marine 2 is an alien-infested feast for the senses.
The team have also thought about longevity and come at it from multiple angles with both PvE and PvP options. You can play through the Campaign in online co-op with up to two other players, and as with most games, the experience is even better with real people to go into battle with. It allows you to co-ordinate with each other, focus in on specific enemies, and just bicker between yourselves about who was really better when the results page shows that you did the most melee damage.
While Gears of War certainly cribbed from Games Workshop’s world, Saber are here returning the favour, and playing in co-op feels as natural with Titus and his cohorts as it did with Marcus and Dom. If you don’t have enough Space Marine-orientated friends the AI is serviceable enough, and while they’ll be found stood around at times when there’s definitely aliens to shoot, you can at least always rely on them to heal you when you’re down. That might make them better than your friends.
With the campaign behind you, there’s then the Operations mode, pitting you and your squad against a batch of aliens in a set mission structure, and with multiple classes to choose between. This is a further treat for 40K fans, with Assault troopers nestling up to Snipers, Paladin, Heavy, and the standard Tactical marines as well.
Playing Operations grants you experience, which in turn allows you to level up each of these hero types, granting perks, new weaponry and alternative cosmetics to personalise your trooper with. Just as with the real models, you can go to town here, and make them as different as possible to your friend’s trooper, though there’s a disappointing little dose of microtransactions for some of the other Space Marine chapters’ colour schemes.
If you’d rather be blasting real people, there’s also Eternal War, which is the 6v6 PvP mode pitting Space Marines and their fallen Chaos Marine brethren. Pre-release this has been the portion of the game we’ve had the least amount of time with, but even with that caveat, it’s already a good dose of chunky fun.