Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 review – a fantastic, frustrating hybrid

By the grace of the Emperor, after 13 years of faithful waiting, Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 is finally here – and I can kick off our Space Marine 2 review by reassuring you on at least one point: it feels fantastic. From the first bolt pistol shot and chainsword downswing, to the last wrenching-off of a Tyranid’s chitinous head, this long awaited sequel gets full marks for its most crucial assignment: making you feel like an eight-foot-tall power-armored death machine.

For some folks, that’s enough of a recommendation – after all, the original 2011 Space Marine made our list of the best Warhammer 40k games just for that marvelous gamefeel. If all you truly need from SM2 is another dose of that familiar, euphoric power fantasy – elevated by satisfying tweaks and a gigantic graphical glow-up from a decade’s worth of technical advances – well, rest assured, you’ll get that in spades. The Emperor protects.

Beyond that, however, things get a little messier. The 2011 game was primarily a self-contained eight-hour single-player campaign, with a multiplayer mode that grew into a fan favorite post release. Space Marine 2, by comparison, is unequivocally a multiplayer game whose eight-hour story campaign is merely one mode among several, all designed to be best played with friends. And – despite some awe-inspiring technological set pieces and generally excellent voice acting – the actual story is, I’m afraid to say, bollocks. I’ll justify that view below without dropping any major spoilers (though there’s honestly very little to spoil).

So why do we still score the game a 7/10? This is a game of contradictions. The core combat gameplay, technical performance, and sense of world-building are superb; the co-op gameplay design is assured. Live service aficionados might consider an 8/10, or even higher if they factor in promised features from the roadmap. Single-player fans faced with a short, bland story – and set piece fights that require team coordination way beyond the capability of your inept AI squadmates – may think a 6/10 is too generous.

This review was a joint effort between all the core writers on the Wargamer team, who collectively pushed through the single-player campaign on various difficulty levels, and experimented as much as possible with SM2 PVE multiplayer. We’ve tested the game on PS5 and on a couple of medium-duty gaming rigs – you’ll find my rig specs here if you want to compare.

Space Marine 2’s PVP multiplayer was up and running while we were reviewing, but sadly there weren’t enough other people with review codes (kindly provided by publisher Focus Entertainment) to actually test a match. As such, PVP multiplayer remains a promising but unknown quantity, and doesn’t factor into our review score.

What is Space Marine 2?

Space Marine Two is a third person action game set in the Warhammer 40k universe. Across an eight-hour single-player or co-op campaign, and a narratively connected, replayable PVE multiplayer mode, you’ll rip into hordes of aliens and Chaos heretics with a gory arsenal of guns and blades.

Due to scheduling issues and the cross-platform multiplayer features for the game not yet being live, we’ve all had to play the main campaign solo. This has cemented one very firm opinion across the team: Space Marine 2 is a multiplayer game that you can play single-player, but only if you absolutely must.

Vibes

I’ve imbibed thousands of hours of 40k media, and can confidently say that the grim darkness of the 41st millennium has never looked this good, nor been recreated with such lavish detail. The Space Marines and their arsenal of blocky killing machines, voracious Tyranid biomorphs, and reality-warping Thousand Sons traitors are note-perfect recreations of official Games Workshop art and miniatures, brought to life with fluid, vibrant animation.

Details of the setting that don’t have definitive canon depictions, like a void ship’s command bridge or the workings of an Astropathic relay, are beautifully realised – everything is gothic, grandiose, and absolutely bleeding massive.

Many tiny, incidental scenes decorate the less frantic parts of the campaign, putting the whole breadth and weirdness of the Imperium of Man on display. An irate machine priest telling a servitor slave to go and get its spine refurbished; a Cadian commander bellowing battle oaths from the turret of a tank the size of a semi-detached house; a skull-helmed Space Marine Chaplain leading his brothers in prayer in a side-chapel – Saber Interactive understood the assignment.

The game’s horde technology, first deployed in Saber’s previous co-op multiplayer game World War Z, can render hundreds, perhaps thousands of Tyranids on screen at once, a true marvel for the latest generation of graphics cards and consoles.

While sky-bound Gargoyle flocks are basically just particle effects, many set piece moments will see you defend a position from pulsing rivers of Tyranid ground troops. You’ll pour torrents of gunfire into them as they approach, before they inevitably converge into living ramps of alien bodies that can scale the wall to your position and force you into a frantic melee defense.

There’s particular flare with the special effects. While the general color palette is a little muted, every explosion, melta rifle blast, or plasma discharge is a riot of color. The biggest visual treat comes from the Thousand Sons chaos space marines who show up midway into the story. These ancient heretics are little more than possessed suits of armor, infused with an aura of Chaotic sorcery. Executing one will see you rip it apart, letting out a torrent of coruscating pink and blue light as the last Chaos-tainted dust of their essence blasts away into the warp.

Alexey Romanov’s score is solid and well-suited, a range of gothic classical compositions that you could imagine a High Lord of Terra nodding along to. The music doesn’t reach the blood-pumping heights of Jesper Kyd’s work on Darktide, but there are underground raves that don’t go as hard as Jesper Kyd’s work on Darktide, so we’ll forgive it.

The soundscape is good: the various boltguns could perhaps stand to be a little bit more violent, but they do the job, and the chainsword sounds like a two-stroke motorbike with saw-blades for wheels riding through a frozen pig carcass.

Story

While the presentation of the 41st millennium is gloriously maximalist, dripping in flare and theme, the story is barely there at all. You’re a Space Marine, you’re fighting aliens, and behind the scenes there are some shenanigans involving a secret Imperial research facility and the servants of Chaos.

It’s the same basic story structure you would find in the least consequential of Warhammer 40k books, and more or less the exact same narrative used in the original Space Marine. Bugger all else has been layered on top of those dry, dry bones.

Adding to the tedium, any character you interact with for more than a scene is achingly sincere and deeply uncharismatic, none more so than protagonist Titus. He wasn’t a deep character in the original Space Marine, but there was at least the gloss that he sometimes played fast and loose with the Codex Astartes, and occasionally he sounded like he was having a good time. Now he has a permanent glower instead of a personality, like he’s trying (and slowly failing) to hold in an insistent poop. It’s an impression that Clive Standen’s able, but affectless voice acting does not shake.

Missions in the latter half of the campaign feel oddly clipped, or squeezed, as if whole avenues of mid-story sub-plot had been cut for time, leaving only titillating stubs behind. Fans are given tantalizing whiffs of familiar Warhammer 40k factions and lore that might add some depth and intrigue to an otherwise tepid narrative – but without exception they come to nought.

The main villain – if such they can be called – is characterized only to the barest minimum, and their dastardly plot plays out so suddenly, with so little time to weave in exposition and lend it gravitas, that I was left feeling detached from it all; I was really just running from execution to execution. The finale has lots of ingredients for an exciting climax, but they’re shoved together so haphazardly that the result is extremely forgettable. I came away with the feeling that Space Marine 2’s exceptional gameplay could have carried a more interesting, involved single player story – but that it had elected not to.

The integration between the main campaign and the PVE Operations mode is at least novel. Every Operation fits alongside a specific campaign mission, and lets you play out events that you’ve already heard in radio chatter from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground. That might be a notable achievement in a better story, but here it just feels like efficient filing.

We may find, in time, that the entirety of Space Marine 2’s storytelling – across the campaign, a growing range of tied-in Operations, and (presumably) DLC expansions – ends up being a wonderful tapestry. But, on release, it’s just a bit of a bummer all round.

Space Marine 2 gameplay

By contrast, Space Marine 2’s moment to moment gameplay is sublime. I’ve already waxed lyrical about it in our most recent Space Marine 2 preview, and everything I gushed about there is still true in the review build. This is a celebration of ultraviolence, as if Kratos from God of War found a cache of chainsaws and rapid-fire grenade launchers.

It may take you a moment to adjust to the tempo because it isn’t like anything else, except perhaps that 2011 original. This isn’t a shooter or a melee fighter: it’s a game about unrelenting violence. Your foes are too many and too sturdy to go down easily to gunfire, though ranged volleys (and the odd barrel detonation) are a key part of thinning their ranks. When they reach you, short range carnage begins.

Swapping attack mode is instantaneous, as your main gun and your melee attack are on different buttons. There’s a basic, timing based combo system for melee attacks, as well as telegraphed enemy attacks that you can dodge or parry. Succeeding with a parry or dodge in turn opens up your foes for a quick-fire, guaranteed-headshot pistol attack that never fails to feel cool.

At every turn, you are encouraged towards aggression. There’s a Bloodborne style health regain mechanic that will heal you if you can attack your enemies right after taking damage, while executing a staggered foe with one of many obscenely violent canned animations will regenerate a section of your armor, Doom 2016 style.

Notwithstanding a few rare enemy types, and the truly massive brutes that show up for boss fights, you can divide enemies into ranged and melee foes, and between larger elites and smaller hordes. Ranged foes wear down your armor relentlessly, or snipe you from a distance to break up your melee combos: melee foes lock you in place and hamper your movement; hordes are frail but attack en masse, drawing your attention from all sides; sturdy elites require more focus to take apart.

No single approach, or weapon loadout, is perfect for every foe and every situation, so you must think on the fly – or rely on your allies. Story campaign missions give you regular opportunities to swap your armaments, usually telegraphing an upcoming change in the kind of foes you’ll face, while PVE operations require you to lock in your loadout before you start. Coordinating with your co-op partners to cover every role will be essential on higher difficulties.

Co-op first design

The campaign levels are well paced, with stunning environments, good combat arenas, and plenty of set pieces. I’m inclined to say that these are brilliantly designed levels, with one massive, alpha grade, flashing red caveat: they’re designed for co-op multiplayer.

An example: an early mission sees you delving into a Mechanicus research facility in search of vital intel, only to discover the place is overrun by tiny voracious beasts called Rippers. The only reliable way to deter the living tide of claws and teeth is with the Pyreblaster, a short-ranged flamethrower that crisps the oversized roaches up nicely, but barely singes the larger Tyranids.

It’s a genuinely great design for a section in a co-op mission. One player has to hose down the Rippers with gouts of liquid fire to stop them from massing into large, truly lethal swarms. Meanwhile your battle brothers fend off hordes of larger ‘Nids that can leap through the flames unimpeded, or shoot at you from beyond your maximum range.

But what if you aren’t playing with co-op buddies? Well, neither of the AI companions will take the Pyreblaster, perhaps because the Chapter Master doesn’t trust them with open flames, and you’re left lugging it around. That puts your companions on bug-shooting duty. And they are shit at it.

About the nicest thing I can say for the AI companions is that they stay out of your way in a fight. They’ll politely stand back from staggered enemies to let you land an execution, fight their way to your side to revive you when you’re downed, rarely get themselves killed, and I haven’t once been hit by friendly fire from a grenade. It’s not broken AI, it’s just utterly inadequate for the task at hand.

If you’ve ever had to carry a party of underperforming noobs through the last stages of a co-op multiplayer mission, you know just how tooth-grindingly frustrating this is. Only it’s worse than that, because the only way to boot the AI from the game is to recruit a human player.

Not every set piece requires huge amounts of cooperation: the boss-fights which I wrote so glowingly about in the preview are tough but manageable in single-player, though the game still throws enough low-level mobs into the arena with you that it’s clear the designers want the jolly cooperation to continue. And they are the exception.

This fundamentally hobbles the game as a single-player experience. That excellent combat system is most fun when it’s giving you a solid challenge; but if you set the difficulty level accordingly and don’t have human companions, the co-op set pieces will fuck you up.

PVE Operations mode

I noted a concern in my preview that the PVE operations mode might end up feeling like a rather under-stocked addendum to the single-player campaign. Saber Interactive has since revealed a roadmap of free post-launch content including additional missions. Given the massive pre-order interest, and the largely bug-free state of the review build, the team should have the resources to realize all of it and more, which is exciting.

Each operation is about half the size of a story mission, lasting twenty to forty minutes. There’s more sense of continuous forward motion than the story campaign, free of cutscenes and downtime but just as packed with set piece objectives. With each Operation sitting alongside a particular moment in the story campaign, replaying them feels like fighting through the same, specific events over and over, rather than playing through the infinite procedural content you’ll find in Helldivers 2 or Darktide.

Variation within missions comes from which enemies spawn in, the strict scripting of the story campaign giving way to a slightly more procedural and dynamic system. New sentry enemies need to be killed swiftly before they summon reinforcements, but otherwise you’re facing the same crop of baddies, albeit in configurations you might not have seen before.

The six classes, each with a subset of the main campaign’s weapon loadouts and a unique ultimate power, feel markedly different, and have different responsibilities, accentuated further by your choice of weapon loadout. A Devastator with a rapid-firing Heavy Bolter may be the lynchpin of your defense when assaulted by hordes of Hormagaunts, but a lumbering liability in a toe-to-toe boss fight against a Hive Tyrant – the jump-packed equipped Assault marine can break up hordes of foes with a thunderous alpha-strike, but can only answer hovering Zoanthropes with his measly pistol.

Completing missions grants XP which unlocks new ranks, which in turn give several other currencies you can spend to purchase perks, gear upgrades, and a satisfyingly huge library of cosmetics. Unlocks have felt a little slow so far, but that might just be because – with so few players on the review servers – I was often playing with inept AI companions. Progression is shared with the PVP multiplayer mode, but your loadouts aren’t: this will be a boon for serious players and an irritant for more casual gamers who aren’t optimizing their builds.

7/10 is a conservative score for Operations mode – in two weeks the consensus may be much higher or much lower. Tens of thousands of players may blaze through the content, exposing a tapestry of exploits and weaknesses; or lock in to the mission cycle with utter commitment to the live service gear grind and a hunger for the expansions.

Who is Space Marine 2 for?

Space Marine 2 is for multiplayer gamers in search of their next live service challenge, gangs of exactly three friends who want a co-op story campaign, and Warhammer 40k fans who want a lavish sight-seeing tour of the 41st millennium. Dedicated single-player gamers, and fans of epic narratives, will be sadly disappointed. The core combat system is a delight and the engine has proven very stable, which gives me hope for PVP multiplayer, but that remains untested.

Verdict

Seldom have I felt this conflicted. Space Marine 2 presents the scale, violence, and absurdity of the 41st millennium like nothing else before it, and then squanders that set-up on a dismal nothing of a story. The story campaign missions are brilliantly designed for co-op multiplayer, and accordingly, whether or not you enjoy them will depend entirely on whether or not you have co-op partners to play with. The PVE and PVP modes are underpinned by a stable game engine and glorious combat system, but – as ever the case with live services – whether or not they land with that audience will only become apparent in the weeks and months to come.

Review scores can’t do this wonderful, tragic mess of a game justice. The seven out of ten score here is not the mark of adequacy – it’s the mark of a game that’s brilliant, and infuriatingly crap, in almost equal measure.

Source: Wargamer