Termination, the first free new mission for Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2, ends with a kickass showdown against a kaiju-sized Hierophant bio-titan. Your squad has to power up a battery of defense lasers and then target them on the monster, all while your position is assaulted by hordes of lesser ‘nids and bombarded by the big brute’s lethal bio-acid. It’s a high octane fight that’s got us thinking about all the other Tyranid mega-monsters we want to face in future operations.
Space Marine 2 has the most visually impressive and kinetic representation of the Warhammer 40k universe out there, and the Space Marine 2 enemies roster is already very well stacked. We don’t want to see more monsters in the game because we’re greedy, no – Saber Interactive has done such a great job that we want to see how it brings the rest of the Tyranids bestiary to life.
Arranged in increasing size order, these are the Tyranid monsters we most want to see appear in Space Marine 2:
Malanthrope
Malanthropes look like oversized Zoanthropes, with a longer, dangling tail, and smaller cranium. But instead of being a psychic artilllery platform, they’re a specialised feeder species that collects genetic samples that the hive fleet uses to create new, horrifying biomorphs.
A Malanthrope prowling the battlefields of Avarax in search of Space Marines geneseed would quickly become a priority target for the Ultramarines. As Malanthropes can adapt to the new genetic material they ingest on the fly, this could be an adaptable boss-fight – perhaps with a unique move set based on which Marines were fighting in the mission.
The Swarmlord
When the Tyranids face particularly stubborn and well-coordinated resistance, the hive fleets may spawn a Swarm Lord, the apex of the Hive Tyrant biomorph. The Swarm Lord is typically equipped with four psychically-charged bone swords rather than the Tyrant’s mixed armament, and has an even greater intellect. This would be an excuse for Saber Interactive to go full From Software in its boss design, for the ultimate test of your melee skills.
Stone Crusher Carnifex
The Carnifex is a fantastic Terminus level monster, but you know what would be even cooler? A Carnifex with a biological wrecking ball and massive shoulder-mounted battering rams. The Stone Crusher Carnifex biomorph is spawned to topple defensive lines and breach fortress walls.
Can you imagine a toreador-style fight against one of these brutes, in an arena packed with large scale, destructible scenery? Heck, this might even be an excuse to rip off the Berserker fight from the original Gears of War…
Dominatrix
Yep, you read that right. The Dominatrix hasn’t been referenced in the lore for a while, possibly because of that name, but GW has been known to dust off its old ideas and give them a lick of paint. For example the ‘Squats’, a faction of Space Dwarves that GW stopped making in the 1990s, recently reappeared as the Leagues of Votann Warhammer 40k faction.
The Dominatrix debuted in the small-scale Epic game system in the 1990s – the video above shows YouTuber Bunker 6 painting the original kit. Though it appears to be a huge, hexipedal monster, that’s actually just a carrier for the immobile, immeasurably powerful psychic beacon on its back which enables communication between Tyranid ground forces and the Norn Queen in the fleet.
This could be a multi-stage encounter, with a level-filling Tyranid horde preventing you from making progress towards a weapon capable of ending the Dominatrix. Dealing damage to the Dominatrix’s psychic passenger with small-arms fire could send psychic confusion through the lesser bugs, allowing you to progress to the next stage of the map.
Hive Ship
You fire an orbital defense cannon into a Tyranid hive ship in an early Space Marine 2 mission, so you’ve technically already fought one of these things. But we want to take it apart from the inside. The very first Wahammer 40k book, ‘Space Marine’ by Ian Watson, features a boarding action into a Tyranid hive ship, and there was a 1990s board game called ‘Tyranid Attack’ with that theme.
Admittedly, Ian Watson’s books are among the few titles GW has explicitly labelled as non-canonical, and modern 40k sources suggest that boarding a hive ship is an almost certain death sentence. But that’s exactly the kind of mission that Captain Acheran would send three marines to complete!
It’s not just the spectacle and combat that make Space Marine 2 one of the best Warhammer 40k games out there, but the way that it brings the universe to life like nothing else. It feels like now, anything is possible.
Not that we’re finished with Termination by a long shot. We’ll be keeping our eyes open for the next new Operation update: follow Wargamer on Google News to make sure you don’t miss it!
Source: Wargamer
