As a long-time Warhammer 40,000 fan, I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the playable demo of Space Marine 2 that came out this time last year. Saber Interactive’s game looked the part — more so than any other 40k spin-off — but the combat felt a bit too clunky, even considering I was playing as a gigantic transhuman lad in power armour. So I was glad when the year’s a delay was announced in November last year to “properly polish the game.”
Since then, the developers have had to deal with the consequences of the full version of the game being leaked online (at least it was long out of date), and recently Planned public beta dropped test to focus on polishing. Which brings us to this week and a fresh round of gameplay impressions, the verdict of which is: Actually, it rocks.
This is certainly the view of our Robin Valentine announcement: “That feeling, both of the weight and power of a space marine and the grim but fun atmosphere of Warhammer 40,000, is something I was worried Space Marine 2 wouldn’t get right,” he wrote. “This workable version has allayed any such fears.” I consider Robin to be one of our hardest editors to please, so that’s really good news.
Riding the wave of those good vibes, publisher Focus Entertainment released seven minutes of official multiplayer footage this morning. The video includes action from the co-op PvE Operations mode, as well as some marine-on-marine action from the capture and control PvP modes (embedded above). Playing against real people isn’t exactly what I’m looking for in Space Marine 2, but I liked how faithfully Saber recreated the heretics from the Death Guard, World Eater, and Alpha Legion chapters.
My excitement level for Space Marine 2 has been fully restored. This seems like a tipping point, after which, if it proves successful, we could see more gigantic 40k budget titles, which would ultimately lead to my dream of Respawn making an FPS set during the Horus Heresy. For now, if you’re hungry for more purging, there’s 30 minutes of gameplay in 4K on the Punish channel, with no commentary whatsoever, so you can just enjoy the surprisingly well-written dialogue of Lieutenant Titus and his squadmates as they tear through the xenos scum. I’ve included it below because The Emperor wants to.
