Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 - A Brutal and Satisfying Sequel

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review - a thunderous triple-A spectacle that's truly electric in co-op

Space Marine 2's campaign is a spectacular and mostly thrilling follow-up to the original, but the game's grisly combat shines best in its cooperative Operations mode. I've always been wary of people who say about a game "It's better when you play it in co-op" because virtually every activity is improved by the presence of friends. Cleaning the sink is more fun when you've got one to three pals monkeying around in the kitchen with you, tossing you extra sponge-scourers and reviving you when you faint because of the thing you just pulled out of the plughole. Space Marine 2, however, really is better in coop, and not just because your mate Dan keeps making jokes about 'Krak grenades' being the product of eating too many beans. Not only is its campaign elevated with the presence of player companions, Space Marine 2's real heart lies in what comes after the story has finished - its chaotic, class-based, Left 4 Dead style Operations. None of which is to suggest Space Marine 2 is a bad time in single-player. Saber Interactive's campaign does a perfectly preposterous job in following up Relic's quintessential 7/10. The story once more revolves around the Ultramarine Titus, who has been demoted to a Lieutenant in the big blue brotherhood following accusations of heresy in the original. The introductory mission prefaces all this in a fun way that I won't spoil, but ultimately Titus winds up leading a new squad of marines in a large-scale operation to rid a trio of Imperial planets from a Tyranid infestation. And when I say "large-scale", holy Omnissiah, Space Marine 2 knows how to put on a show. Its linear campaign takes you through gigantic gothic Hive Cities being pummelled by Tyranid spores, vast, churned battlefields crisscrossed by lasgun fire, and sprawling Imperial fortresses that house cathedral-sized artillery guns. It's a gloriously extravagant depiction of the 40k universe, and also a game that feels genuinely next-generational in its presentation. One of the major separating factors here is the busyness of the screen; the skies are constantly filled with whirling flocks of avian Tyranids, while encounters with later game enemies display some of the snazziest particle effects you'll see outside of CERN. The standout trick, however, is Space Marine 2's vast, boiling Tyranid swarms. The game loves to show you them flooding toward you out of the backdrop, or pouring from a spore-missile that landed smack in the middle of the battlefield. Unlike the other points mentioned, the Tyranids are more than just a visual flourish. These Xenomorph-ish aliens are your primary foe in Space Marine 2, and you'll spend much of the campaign mastering how to combat their writhing hordes. As with the first game, Space Marine 2's combat is built around a mixture of melee and ranged fighting, with you swinging chainswords and Thunder Hammers to cleave through large groups of foes, while using boltguns and plasma incinerators to soften up larger enemies or pick off distant targets. Also returning are the eye-poppingly gory executions, with Titus and his team impaling Tyranids on their own talons, squashing their heads between their armoured palms, or in the case of the floating Zoanthrope enemy holding it down by the tail and ripping off its face. Yet while the broad strokes are the same, there's considerably more nuance to the system this time around. Saber sprinkles a dash of FromSoft in the game's dodge and parry system, while performing executions regenerates your armour, helping you remain in the fight for longer a-la Doom Eternal. The most interesting mechanical flourish, however, is the gun strike. A perfectly timed parry or dodge paints a literal target onto your aggressor, at which point pressing fire will see your character whip out their sidearm and fire a snapshot right into your enemy's mush, knocking them backwards and possibly opening them up for an execution. It's a marvellous little innovation, reminiscent of Gears of War's active reload for how disproportionately it contributes to the experience. Overall, I think Space Marine 2's combat is mostly great. That said, it can sometimes feel like trying to play Bloodborne in a mosh pit. While nowhere near as demanding as a Fromsoft game, it does ask you to remember quite a lot, and there are times where your attempt to do a cool thing, like grab a leaping enemy or perform a gun strike, gets gunged up by the roiling swarm. Moreover, some weapon impacts would benefit from being crunchier, as they can be drowned out by the orchestral score and the collective gargling of the Tyranids. There are a couple of other points worth plunging into the campaign's chitinous flesh. Initially, Space Marine 2's story threatens to be interesting, as it peeks beneath the armour of the Ultramarines to prod at the hot mess of trauma underneath. Titus himself has been through a lot since the last game, and both those experiences and the aspersions cast upon him clearly weigh on his shoulders despite his claims to the contrary. Meanwhile his new squadmates, Gadriel and Chairon, are less than thrilled by their assignment to the Lieutenant, and their doubts only intensify as Titus' behaviour grows seemingly more erratic. You can feel them biting their tongues on particular subjects as they follow you around, indirectly questioning and even scolding Titus through the Ultramarines' ornate rhetoric. Saber clearly wants you to think of its characters as more than metal-plated meatheads, and I enjoyed how the campaign hints at the character's emotions by their very attempts to avoid showing them. Sadly, it never delves much further than this, and the campaign drifts increasingly toward tropes and fan-service as it proceeds. It's still entertaining, but doesn't transcend itself in the way it suggests it might in the first half. The other key point is, as you might expect, that the campaign is at its weakest when played solo. Not only are there numerous set-pieces clearly designed to be played in co-op, combat is noticeably less consistent in single-player. The Tyranid swarms lean more toward trickle than torrent, with some engagements ending oddly prematurely, and you left mopping up executions your AI buddies have failed to enact. Yet when a Zoanthrope appears on screen, the difficulty swerves into borderline punishing. Again your AI companions struggle to manage the intensified swarms, leaving you to frantically dodge around as you try to take down their annoying floating master. When played cooperatively, the campaign feels far more consistent. The Tyranids flow better, the combat's more intense, and those difficulty spikes are sanded down. Gadriel and Chairon also have their own active abilities, which lends a campaign replay a slightly different angle. Personally though, I reckon Space Marine 2 is strongest outside of the campaign. Operations mode offers six individual, campaign-like missions with a couple of twists. First, you play as a specific class of Space Marine with distinctive abilities. Assault marines are equipped with a jetpack and Thunder Hammer for maximum smashing, for example, while Bulwark marines carry a shield and can deploy a standard that creates an armour regenerating field. I'm particularly fond of the Vanguard marine, who wields a combat knife and uses a grappling hook to dropkick enemies from a distance, which is tremendous. The other key difference is that its Tyranid swarms are more dynamic, controlled by a Left 4 Dead-style AI director that moderates the frequency and intensity of attacks, and lets larger enemies call in reinforcements. This combination results in a greater emphasis on teamwork, while also facilitating some proper gnarly scrapes. Where the campaign offers the most spectacular set-pieces, Operations is where the mechanical side of Space Marine 2 is allowed to fully breathe. That said, it's worth noting the Operations missions are similar in size and scale to those of the campaign. The first of them, Inferno, is directly tied to an early campaign mission, with you playing as a secondary marine team, tasked with stemming the flow of Tyranids from around a Mechanicus facility by setting off a massive Prometheum bomb. There's a ferocious central set-piece where you have to defend the bomb as it's being primed, and the final battle where you hold off the Tyranid swarm until it detonates is every bit as stunning as anything in the campaign. Each Operation takes about an hour to complete, with more coming post-launch. Combined with a PvP multiplayer mode that's also no slouch (albeit a less natural fit for the systems) Space Marine 2 might just have some post-launch legs. Some might see this as a sad indictment of where AAA gaming is at, that you can't just make a linear, single-player action game anymore without it having some kind of live-service element. Thing is, that was the case thirteen years ago. The original Space Marine launched with a multiplayer mode that was obligatory in the post Call of Duty era. With Space Marine 2, none of this feels tacked on, or like an afterthought. As I said at the outset, the campaign is better in coop, while the Operations might be the strongest part of the whole package. Never mind what Saber might have prepared for the future, I want to play some of these missions again now. I do have one complaint about Space Marine 2's multiplayer functionality, and that's the lack of an external menu for those modes. To get to Operations or Eternal War, you have to load into your campaign, then switch to your chosen mode, then invite your friends (or vice-versa), and then go and alter your abilities and equipment if you need to do that. It's slow, fiddly, and annoying, and no replacement for a menu that lets you do all of those things on one screen. Nonetheless, in an industry that is currently so fraught and volatile, Space Marine 2 is a smart and effective tactical strike. It at once sparks fond memories of the pre-Souls era of third-person action games, while also being cunningly adapted to survive in the modern gaming scene. It also looks mint and lets you smash aliens with a big hammer, which makes it difficult to dislike. It's the KFC party bucket of video games, delightfully messy, almost certainly bad for you, and best shared with friends.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review: "Raises the bar for all Warhammer adaptations"

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy. There are just eight bullets in a heavy bolt pistol. In the grand scheme of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, that's not a lot. You'll regularly fight hordes of aliens and Chaos-fueled demons numbering 10 times that, but for most foes, just one rocket-propelled shot is enough to burst them into gloopy red chunks. Truth be told, they're the lucky ones - the grisliest fates are reserved for anyone within touching distance of supersoldier protagonist Titus, who seems to take great pleasure in ripping off heads, arms, and jaws and using them to kill their previous owner. Space Marine 2 relishes in this excess - every second is spent in shuddering violence and vast, gorgeous battlefields. Developer Saber Interactive has crafted an outrageously over-the-top hack 'n' slash shooter, and while Warhammer fans would expect nothing less, newcomers to this grimdark universe couldn't ask for a better (or bloodier) introduction. Though it's been 13 years since the original Space Marine launched, over 100 years have passed for returning hero Demetrian Titus. After being accused of heresy at the end of the first game - which you don't need to have played for this - he's spent the last century banished from his own Chapter of space marines, and fights in the elite xeno-hunting Deathwatch. When a hive-mind of insectoid, scythe-armed Tyranids descend upon a system of planets housing a secretive Imperium research project, Titus is tasked with re-joining his Chapter to save the day. However, hulking squadmates Gadriel and Chairon are distrustful of Titus' long absence, while Titus himself is frustratingly standoffish. This translates to a lot of catty snark - space marines are many things, but emotionally literate they are not - but we don't get to explore these tensions in any real depth, which leaves the story a little shallow. Dialogue can be boiled down to 10 hours of the word "brother," while the straightforward yet serviceable story rarely reaches beyond carrying players from one desperate shootout to the next. Luckily, those fights are what we're really here for - and by the Emperor, they're phenomenal. Saber Interactive is the developer behind 2019's World War Z game, and its experience with horde-based combat shows. Watching hundreds of Tyranids crest over a hill toward you, or form squirming pyramids to climb over each other and reach your high ground, is dangerously mesmerizing. But you've only got a small window of time to take as many as you can out from afar - whether that's thinning out chaff with fully-automatic bolter fire, lobbing grenades, or whittling down bigger foes with charged plasma rounds and careful lasrifle shots - before the real chaos kicks off. Once you're in the thick of things, combat devolves into vicious hand-to-hand fighting, where you'll often struggle to win enough room to start shooting once again. There's no cover system, so your only means of staying alive is to be aggressive - dealing damage restores health, while killing weakened targets with gory execution animations regenerate your armor plating. It's a thrill - every fight feels like you're constantly fighting just to avoid drowning, but Titus still feels like the strongest soldier in nearly any given battle. A single swing of his chainsword can tear through entire rows of baddies, and parrying is supremely satisfying as in most cases, it allows you to kill your attacker in a single gory animation. One of my favorite executions remains grabbing a bestial demon by the throat and squeezing, which produces an effect I can only compare to squishing a banana so hard its insides fly out of the peel. Tougher enemies, such as Tyranid Warriors (picture a Xenomorph with a sword) and Chaos Space Marines, can take a bit more back-and-forth before they'll drop their guard, but parry enough of their blows and you'll get an opportunity to execute them with a point-blank pistol shot to the head or grisly bisection. It's incredibly fluid, although the formula takes a wobble toward the end of the adventure. You start coming up against more of these special enemies at the cost of fewer giant hordes, and fights start getting a little bit longer range as more baddies get guns - which is a shame, as shooting by itself isn't as interesting. But when Space Marine 2 gets that balance of gunplay and melee right, there's nothing quite like it - it's like watching an exceptionally well-choreographed fight scene, except you're the one ripping Chaos Space Marines' heads off with your bare hands while turning their puny cultist pals to juice with a single bullet. It flows so naturally that you really do feel like the centuries-old death machine Titus is meant to be - you're a formidable soldier facing overwhelming odds, a power fantasy I haven't felt so strongly since the Xbox 360 days of Halo and Gears of War. A large part of what brings that feeling to life is the scope of Space Marine 2. Whether you're in the overgrown jungles of Kadaku, larger than life gothic city on Avarax, or Demerium's Chaos-warped hellscape, Saber's bigger-is-better approach makes it feel like you really are fighting in a planet-spanning war. I lost count of the times I'd stop to admire laser batteries firing into clouds of flying Gargoyle Tyranids, or Space Marines duking it out with their evil cousins across Demerium's vast purple battlefield. There are some brilliantly claustrophobic setpieces - one Alien-inspired segment starts with Tyranids stalking you through dingy service tunnels, and culminates with a frantic shootout in complete darkness - but Space Marine 2 thrives when it makes you seem very, very small. These planets are also the setting of Space Marine 2's Operations, six missions that take place alongside the campaign's events. Operations can be played with three players, but unlike the campaign, co-op feels mandatory for getting the most out of this game mode. While the two AI squadmates are serviceable on easy and normal difficulty, they don't pull their weight above that. As if to emphasize the importance of playing with friends, Operations can't be paused, even if you're playing with AI. This is particularly frustrating as missions tend to be quite long - at one point I was kicked out of my own game for inactivity, which meant losing around 20 minutes of progress. But when playing with other people, Operations are a blast. The six missions currently available are closer to Left 4 Dead than what's on offer through the core campaign, as ammunition and healing items are scarcer, while enemies attack in more choreographed waves. Your gear is also restricted, as here it's broken up into classes. This adds an interesting layer of strategy - you might opt for the Assault class, which gets a Thunder Hammer and jetpack to wade into the thick of things, while someone else uses the Sniper class to take out priority targets from afar. While Operations are significantly harder than Space Marine 2's campaign, they also offer more incentive to keep coming back, as currency and XP rewards can be spent on armor customization, gun upgrades, and class perks. Tweaking your armor feels a little padded for replayability - rather than buying your favorite Chapter's armor set, for example, you need to buy each piece of it individually - but on the upside, this part-by-part approach means there's enough depth to make the mish-mashed space marine of your dreams. The only part of Space Marine 2 I didn't get to play ahead of launch due to matchmaking restrictions is Eternal War, a set of three 6v6 PvP modes with Warhammer twists on team deathmatch, domination, and king of the hill. But from the 17 hours I've had with everything else, it's hard to imagine anything outshining Space Marine 2's PvE offerings. This adventure is a monument to excess, but it's hard to imagine it working any other way. If anyone tells you that a game doesn't need motorized swords and eight-foot tall supersoldiers who can throw around heretics like ragdolls, consider what else they may be lying about - Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is pure, ridiculous fun, and the best third-person shooter I've played in years.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review

Over the course of its roughly eight hour singleplayer campaign, Space Marine 2 presents the Warhammer 40,000 setting at a whole new level of spectacle. It feels huge, authentic, and visually sumptuous. But the sad truth is that I was tired of actually playing it before those eight hours were even up. It's disappointing, because the game does make a fantastic first impression. As space marine warrior Lieutenant Titus, returning from the first game, you're dropped straight into a war against the insectile tyranids, and it's simply awe-inspiring looking out at the horizon and seeing their forces crawling over an entire mega-city. Developer Saber Interactive's swarm tech, already perfected in otherwise limp co-op shooter World War Z, is used to wonderful effect to sell the vast scale of war in the setting. Hyper-gothic architecture towers over you, and as a genetically-modified, power-armoured super-soldier, you tower over the normal humans who scurry around your feet. Like the first game, Space Marine 2 understands that these warriors of the Imperium need to feel massive, weighty, and powerful, far beyond your usual bulky sci-fi protagonist. In combat you're a force of nature, raining down explosive hell on tides of enemies before drawing a combat knife as long as a man and crashing into melee like a furious steam train. Larger elite enemies striding through the flood, such as grinning, chitinous tyranids warriors, are your priority targets. You ram through the crowd to reach them for melee duels, parrying their blows and smashing at their defences until they stand woozy and stunned, ready for an execution animation that restores your shield bar and sees them ripped to gory pieces and frequently stabbed to death with their own appendages. For your first couple of hours of fights, it looks and feels awesome, but unfortunately it's not long before cracks start to show. The biggest problem is those executions which at first feel so cool. Other than the swarming minions, every enemy will enter that stunned state once they're at low enough health, and because executions are one of your only ways to mitigate damage, it's always to your advantage to perform them. The result is that you're constantly sprinting between flashing red foes to watch the same canned animations over and over, a problem that only escalates as the game sends increasing numbers of elite troops at you in its later stages. Your two AI companions -- fellow Space Marines Gadriel and Chairon -- will even stun enemies for you and politely leave them for you to finish off while foes around you stand awkwardly waiting for their turn. At first I found the absurdity funny, but even that wore thin before long. The whole system of combat is warped around this one mechanic. For example, because executions have to be performed at melee range, and are so vital for staying alive, long-range combat is largely pointless, despite the array of scoped weapons that cater for it. But equally the various close-range guns have little use either, because at that range you might as well just draw your melee weapon, and their lack of versatility will leave you caught out against certain enemy types. The sensible choice is always just your standard, mid-range boltgun. That's thematically appropriate, perhaps, but not ideal in a game that already struggles to offer variety in its repetitive combat encounters that far too often simply see you fighting the same small number of enemy types over and over. Beyond that, fights simply feel rough around the edges. Parries are oddly inconsistent -- some attacks come with a huge, flashing indicator and a giant timing window, while others aren't telegraphed at all and are easily missed in the crush. Against some attacks, parries will automatically kill or stagger the foe, but for others they don't -- instead, you want to try and parry or dodge with perfect timing (a window that itself feels inconsistent) in order to be able to perform a bolt pistol counter-shot and recover some shield. But then sometimes simply a charged melee attack will get you that counter-shot instead. None of it quite clicks together. The whole combat system is simply messy in this way -- it feels like the developer iterated on it several times but forgot to go back and delete their old work, so multiple clashing ideas sit jumbled together. There are individual elements that work well -- Titus feels huge without being slow or unresponsive, iconic Warhammer 40,000 weapons such as the thunder hammer are as impactful and empowering as they should be, and there's a great gory sense of humour to the animations. But it doesn't add up to a coherent vision, and over the course of the campaign the charm of the parts that do work is tarnished more and more by the repetition and frustration of the ones that don't. In some ways, the campaign is refreshingly focused -- with no levelling system, unlocks, or side missions, and only a tiny smattering of collectibles, it's an antidote to the cluttered and bloated worlds of modern action games. For the most part it's just you and the combat setpieces, and when the game's firing on all cylinders, especially early on, that works. There's a real ambition and imagination to its spectacle, and the short campaign is full of sights to delight Warhammer 40,000 fans in particular. But again it's undermined by what you're actually doing. Much of the encounter design feels overly inspired by the game's co-op mode (more on that later) -- you're constantly standing in a circle until a bar fills up, or defending a big inanimate object, or running between computer consoles pressing buttons, while arbitrary waves of enemies spawn at you. (You even have to wait for your two allies to "assemble" with you at the end of every area before you can push a button to move into the next one.) There's a mid-game sequence, for example, where an enormous swarm of tyranids attempt to hurl themselves bodily into a colossal power generator to try and destablise it. It's a wonderful visual -- that perfect Warhammer mix of cool, scary, and completely absurd -- but it's essentially a cross between wave-based survival and an escort mission, and the actual process of trying to keep the generator's health from ticking down while countless creatures much smaller and faster than you sprint at it is more tedious than epic. What does shine through is how passionate and knowledgeable about this setting Saber Interactive is. Though the story is fairly thin (essentially Titus is just in the middle of a big war trying to prevent the use of a dangerous macguffin) it nails both the broad strokes of how Warhammer 40,000 should feel, and its quieter, more nuanced elements. More often than not, videogames in this setting simply tell stories of heroic Imperials fighting against the forces of pure evil. So it was a pleasant surprise to see this game incorporate themes such as the simmering tension between the space marines and the Adeptus Mechanicus, a divergent cult needed for their engineering prowess but with their own inscrutable ambitions. Or the low-level internal politics within Titus' chapter, around questions of faith, corruption, and his own murky past. Or the strange layers of superstition and ignorance that hamper the Imperium's relationship with its own technology -- there's something both poignant and funny about such powerful warriors having to follow awkward automated bureaucratic processes to get a machine started in the middle of a warzone, or offer some burnt incense and a prayer before accessing classified computer files. In some ways it's authentic to a fault, even -- it's likely to be too in-depth for those unfamiliar with the universe, or even just more casual Warhammer fans. The game spends almost no time on exposition about the setting, trusting players to have done their homework, and it doesn't shy away from more obscure or complex reference points. If you don't know how the Deathwatch works and why being a Blackshield in it would be shameful, or the function of a Neurothrope in the synaptic network of the Tyranids, or the reason that a soldier of the Thousand Sons would have no corporeal body inside their armour... then you're likely to find yourself confused not just by the details of the plot but by what you see in fights, too. For those who are dedicated Warhammer 40,000 aficionados, however, there's a real thrill in such a major game not only representing the setting so well but refusing to compromise on it for a mainstream audience. Space Marine 2 revels in the specifics of Games Workshop's universe in a way I think very few games ever have, and that's something the community is sure to take to heart even if the overall experience is flawed. But while that atmosphere and authenticity never breaks, like the combat the story increasingly loses its way as the game goes on. It has an odd structure -- by the end of the second act, any intrigue and mystery in the plot has been fully resolved already, and the character arcs of your companions have concluded. (Titus himself doesn't have an arc -- he's just always right, and spends the game stoically waiting for everyone else to realise.) That leaves the third act with nothing to do but try and escalate all the fighting and shouting and apocalyptic threats ever higher and higher, and though the visuals are mostly impressive enough to back it up, it does all start to feel like so much noise. It's not helped by an increasing shift in focus over the course of the game from the tyranids to the forces of Chaos -- specifically the Thousand Sons, worshippers of the god of magic and scheming, Tzeentch. Compared to the utterly alien tyranids, this dark cult offers a more understandable foe, but their plans are frustratingly underbaked, and in a game with so many surprisingly nuanced details, its key villains are oddly two-dimensional. Worse, they're simply a lot less fun to fight than the bugs. Chaos space marines, your evil counterparts, are unflinching damage sponges that put out heaps of near-unavoidable ranged damage -- they're sent at you in increasingly large waves, and of course you'll need to perform a lengthy execution on every single one of them to stay alive. The point at which the combat is most wearing out its welcome is the point where the game goes all-in on its least satisfying enemies. Throughout the campaign, Titus sends another small team out to complete vital objectives that intersect with his own. This is your cue to hop over into the separate but narratively interwoven co-op mode, where you can play out these missions with up to two friends as one of six different Space Marine classes. While in the story Titus is battling to reach the astropaths to send a message off-world, for example, you can play out the effort to destroy signal jammers around the area, or perform the assassination of a Hive Tyrant that clears the way for him to get there. It's an interesting idea, and does add some extra drama to the six co-op missions. There is fun to be had, too, in the sheer chaos of three player-controlled marines crashing around taking on even greater numbers of foes, and at least the mission objectives that feel contrived in the singleplayer fit more neatly in multiplayer. There's no less attention to detail in the visuals and setpieces, either -- there are moments in the co-op that feel just as spectacular and must-see as anything in the campaign. It's clear Saber Interactive's hope is that this is where players will end up sinking a lot of time into the game. Unlike the singleplayer, co-op has currencies to earn, weapons to unlock, and other forms of progression to keep you coming back -- and there's more content planned for release post-launch. After playing each of the six missions for the first time, however, I already felt I'd essentially seen everything co-op has to offer. Those problems with the combat system are even more pronounced in a mode that pushes you to test your skills (and includes two people ready to steal your executions), and compared to the Warhammer co-op elephant-in-the-room Darktide there just isn't the depth here to dig into over a long period of time, either in the action or in the very linear levelling. Though the missions are very cinematic, one of the consequences of that is they don't really have the variability to stand up to repeated replaying -- once you've seen the cool things once, they'll be the same again next time you see them. But even on your first play you'll notice serious problems with how each mission is paced. Where Darktide has a natural ebb and flow, interspersing intense fights with moments of eerie quiet, Space Marine 2 feels like it's spawning enemies haphazardly just to try and keep you busy. The result is that missions feel oddly flat, existing at much the same level of action throughout and inevitably ending with the three players present saying "Oh, I guess that was the end?" when it suddenly cuts to the outro cinematic. Following the fairly short singleplayer campaign, I was hoping the co-op would make Space Marine 2 a more complete package, but it feels just as fire-and-forget -- worth trying for its cool, cinematic moments and the initial rush of the action, but wearing out its welcome a while before its roughly five hours of content is up. Future updates will add more to do and may smooth off some of the rough edges, but I'll be surprised if they can improve the core systems and mission design enough to give the mode the depth it would need for long term play. Though the original Space Marine, from developer Relic Entertainment, is remembered fondly, it too certainly had its flaws. So I decided I'd finish off my review by going back to the now 13 year old game and seeing how they compare. What I discovered is that, though its sequel easily beats it for visual splendour, ambition, and authenticity to the setting, the original is simply far more fun to play. Combat has a clearer rhythm that feels far more under the player's control, and though it's shallower, it benefits from being less cluttered with overlapping systems. That's damning -- after more than a decade of advancements in gaming design and technology, I'd still rather fight orks on Graia than tyranids on Kadaku. And yet there are moments in Space Marine 2 that I think every fan of Warhammer 40,000 owes it to themselves to see. It's rough and uneven, but still operating on a grander scale and level of production value than we've ever seen from the setting before. It puts me in the odd position of feeling that this is fundamentally not a good game, but one that I think will still be a great source of joy for its intended audience. As a few hours of seeing cool stuff, feeling big, and nerding out before it runs out of steam, Space Marine 2 is a decent bit of fun. But at full price, and after 13 years since the original, I think you'd expect a bit more than that. I commend Saber Interactive for its clearly genuine and deep love for Warhammer 40,000, but though it's done right by the venerable setting, I wish as much care had been put into the parts I actually get to control.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review: grim, glorious, and bloody brilliant

Loud, boisterous, and gleefully violent, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 delivers a thrilling power fantasy. Saber Interactive's third-person slaughter-fest invites you to step into the power-armored boots of a 10-foot-tall superhuman Space Marine as you carve your way through hordes of alien Tyranids and Chaos cultists. Crunchy, bloody, and immensely satisfying, Space Marine 2's core gameplay loop distinguishes the title, ensuring that occasional moments of ambitious overreach or old-school jankiness are easily forgotten. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a lovingly maintained relic of a bygone era. To stomp through its gorgeous, detailed levels is to bask in the third-person glory days of the late 2000s. The pressures of 2024's open-world-saturated design environment are nowhere to be seen here. Space Marine 2's punchy single-player campaign and generous co-op missions are linear, well-structured affairs. This allows for an attention to detail when it comes to encounters and level design alike and, while this may be off-putting to some, those wishing to nestle into the comforting embrace of a traditional action game will find their desires met. However, this is not to say that Space Marine 2 rejects the advantages of modern design approaches either. When it comes to realizing the immense scale of Games Workshop's beloved Warhammer 40,000 dystopian sci-fi universe, Space Marine 2 makes generous use of modern hardware. Awe-inspiring vistas come almost every minute in Space Marine 2. Looming gothic structures loom across busy battlefields populated by swarms of enemies. The Space Marines themselves tower over human and alien foot soldiers alike, a sense echoed by weighty animations which capture the sheer bulk and presence of these immense killing machines. That said the game occasionally bites off more than it can chew. The scale of its ambitions cause some sections of the campaign to feel rushed. For instance, while they look great at a distance, many of your mortal human allies during the campaign use canned and dull animations - a stark contrast to the gorgeous and deliberate movements on show from the Space Marines themselves. Allied tanks stay quiet, their massed machine guns pointing at the enemy seemingly never to fire. Additionally, though chocked full of unlockables, Space Marine 2's co-op mode asks for a serious amount of grinding from players, leading to a stolid progression system that lets down the otherwise joyful co-op missions. Missteps aside, the combat loop at the core of Space Marine 2 reaches lofty heights. At its best, it induced in me a Doom-like flow state of action and re-action, with controls shifting seamlessly between ranged attacks and melee cut and thrust. This alone is an exceptional achievement. Space Marine 2 boasts a panoply of over-the-top weapons, each of which feels like a violent, adolescent fever dream brought to life. Brutal automatic rifles stand alongside deadly plasma weapons and precision laser snipers. While the selection in melee is a little more limited, it is no less captivating. Warhammer 40,000's iconic chainsword (that's a sword that's also a literal, actual chainsaw) is captured lusciously. Its blades roar with each attack as the weapon's side radiators billow with excess heat. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the Thunder Hammer, a heavy, deliberate weapon specialized in crowd control through massive swings crowned with explosive detonations. In contrast to what you might expect from a third-person action game, Space Marine 2 does not use a cover system. Instead, Space Marines recover health by slaying enemies in dramatic executions. These brutal over-the-top animations elicited excited shouts of "bruh!" from myself and anyone else who chanced into the living room at the time. Smaller targets can be executed with a well-timed parry, while larger foes must be beaten into submission with crunchy melee attacks or ruthless barrages of gunfire. This fluid process does a great deal to feed into the power fantasy at the heart of Space Marine 2, refining the system as it was first introduced in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (2011). Space Marine 2 builds on its predecessor in every conceivable respect. The battles are louder, the setpieces more dramatic and the central campaign more audacious - with the notable exception of its lackluster finale. Throughout the roughly 12-hour-long main campaign, you play as Demetrian Titus - the star of the first game. A roller coaster rather than a sandbox, Space Marine 2's campaign takes advantage of a linear mission structure to dole out gorgeous cutscenes and satisfying setpieces at an impressive, if occasionally overwhelming, pace. You'll fight through alien-infested jungles, ancient facilities, forgotten tombs, and towering megacities to defend humanity from a sinister conspiracy and an alien menace. Despite this breadth, the campaign rarely loses its grounding, thanks, in part, to the supporting cast. For most of the campaign, you'll be followed by two subordinates who'll back you up and even revive you should you fall. Their constant presence adds a sense of camaraderie, reinforcing the sense of siblinghood at the heart of Space Marine culture. Co-op mode doubles down on this sense of camaraderie, offering six exciting missions which each slot into the story of the single-player campaign, adding plenty of extra context and worldbuilding. However, though these missions fully capture the well-paced ebb and flow of the campaign missions, the fact that there are only six available at launch makes the co-op feel like an ancillary feature, subordinate to the main story. What is never subordinate, however, is the rich Warhammer 40,000 setting which is lovingly and impressively presented throughout. Die-hard fans will notice references to significant events throughout the canon which help to place Space Marine 2 in a wider context. That said, the title remains remarkably accessible for a newcomer. The first few hours of the campaign gently dole out key concepts, ensuring that the exposition never gets bogged down in unnecessary minutia. Space Marine 2 also boasts the most dramatic and impressive opening crawl and prologue mission that I've ever seen for a Warhammer 40,000 game. What's more, the writers take the opportunity to deliberately crack the image of the stoic, Space Marine killing machine through occasional glimmers of human dialogue. While you shouldn't expect hyper-developed characters, these Space Marines feel well-rounded. This is especially true in softer moments of conversation. Some of the dialogue between the supporting cast (whom you control in co-op mode) is so earnest and wholesome that it veers towards the homoromantic. This sort of hidden depth is a hallmark of Space Marine 2. While its characters, storylines, and set pieces lack the depth of more story-heavy action-adventure titles like The Last of Us, they absolutely contain more than meets the eye. Coupled with an exceptionally satisfying combat system and a heartfelt dedication to the source material, this quality helps lift Space Marine 2 comfortably out of forgettability and easily into the realm of the genuinely entertaining. While elements of Space Marine 2 may feel rushed or overstretched, the title stands on its own two feet, distinctive, bombastic, and proud. Space Marine 2 offers bare-bones accessibility features, sporting a colorblind mode and adjustable subtitles. Players can also toggle off-screen markers allowing for clearer gameplay - useful for those with visual impairments. There are also a range of difficulty modes. Unfortunately, the title offers little else when it comes to accessibility. An adjustable parry window or an option for automatic parries would have been most welcome. An option for colour cues to distinguish between heavy and light melee attacks is also conspicuously absent. I played Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 for roughly 16 hours, taking time to complete the campaign, replay some of my favorite missions, and play through almost every co-op mission with both AI allies and other players. Since the game was in a pre-release state, there was an insufficient pool of players to evaluate the PvP mode. I reviewed the game in performance mode on PS5 using a Dualsense Wireless Controller on a 48-inch LG C2 OLED 4K TV. The game ran smoothly and, while there were some frame rate drops, these were few and far between, amounting to less than half a dozen over my 16-hour playtime.