Originally published February 2016

Yes, I'm still deep in my Warhammer 40,000 obsession. Yes, I played the action game, Space Marine. Yes, it's made by the same developers of the Dawn of War strategy games for the PC. No, it's not as good.

But let's back up for a bit here. It's not as good, but it's still pretty good. Space Marine is a good game and a satisfying romp through the action genre for those interested in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. For those who aren't, it might not be as entertaining, but it will still give you a bit of that visceral satisfaction you might get from a Gears of War or God of War or [insert masculine icon] of War game.

Story

The story doesn't bother to tell people about the Warhammer 40k universe if you aren't already familiar with it, so neither will I. All you need to know is that there's a planet that has a titan on it and it's being completely overrun by Orks. Thus, the command is given to send in mankind's greatest army: the space marines.

You take control of Captain Titus, leader of a company of the Ultramarine chapter of Space Marines. The game begins with Titus and his two comrades in arms aboard one of their armed transport ships. In the opening cut-scene and leap out with only a jetpack to cushion their fall, directly into harm’s way, to quickly take on the Ork menace and set the stage for the rest of the game. It takes no time at all for Titus and his crew to do some seemingly impossible stunts to elevate them as badass killing machines. Eventually, the Ultramarines encounter the human resistance on the planet and are told of a resource on the planet other than the Titan that, if the Orks were to find it, could destroy the whole planet. It's up to our heroes to find this resource and safeguard it against the Ork threat.

There's really not much going on here in terms of story and, in all honesty, it's probably better for the experience if you just ignore it. Everything that occurs within the game, from the Titan to the types of enemies you face, to how the game ends seems rather eventful and should be a big deal in terms of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Yet, Space Marine does a poor job with these big set-pieces and undermines the impact of these moments and the story overall. I'm not sure if it was the music or the cinematography within the game, but when something "cool" was happening, it didn't feel that way. An easy example is the opening cut-scene where they're dropping out of the sky onto Ork warships: These guys are flying through the air at intense speeds with ships exploding all around them, and Titus manages to not only safely land on a warship, but take it down by himself and force it to crash-land. Yet it felt flat and kind of uninterested in how it was presented. By the standards of the universe's mythos, this whole game should be an exciting and exhilarating ride through the adventures of the greatest heroes of the galaxy. Instead, the story feels like little more than just justification for moving the player forward from one battle to another.

It's not that the developers at Relic didn't put effort into their story. Their characters behave in ways that are consistent (for the most part) with what you expect of that universe. At times, the writing still ends up being way too cliché for its own good, but they still had a standout character here and there to make up for it. Nonetheless, I just found that focusing on the story would only take away from the fun of the game. My advice to anyone playing this is to only pay attention when the Ork warboss is talking. Otherwise, just ignore the story and pay attention to the real star of the show: the gameplay!

Gameplay

I'm a fan of action-adventure games. I enjoyed playing games like Devil May Cry and God of War that allow you to take on hordes of enemies at a time and tear through them with your sharp blades or unrelenting guns. Space Marine has guns like Devil May Cry and it has the brutality of God of War, but it lacks the same level of complexity and coordination required in both. And that's okay! It's that simplicity that I think helps Space Marine become more accessible to people who may have no interest in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It's easy to pick up and play. Before you know it, you're already making full use of your melee and projectile capacities as you destroy dozens and dozens of Orks.

The mechanics of Space Marine consist of switching between long-range and close-range tactics, with an important focus on close-range attacks using a unique mechanic. Space Marine is a third-person action game with the camera set over the shoulder most of the time, allowing players to use the targeting reticle to take aim and mow down enemies with a variety of guns that exist within the Warhammer 40,000 universe. You start off with a basic bolt-pistol, which does the job well enough taking out most of the Orks with a simple head-shot. As you progress, you pick up more and more long-range weapons like sub-machine guns, grenade launchers, shotgun equivalents, and sniper rifles. You can even take a turret gun off its stand and use that for a little while as well.

The game does a decent job of supplying you with a new gun at a steady pace. There are enough different weapons for you to find throughout the campaign that they're giving you new stuff to play with all the way up to the final act of the game. Not all of the guns you pick up are great, but I think that Relic did a decent job at trying to keep variety present throughout the campaign, in terms of the weapons anyway.

In addition to your long-range weapons, you also have melee capabilities. When enemies get in close, you can press a couple of different buttons to unleash some basic melee combos on enemies. You start out with just a knife, but eventually, you get the signature chainsword, a weapon that Gears of War took from the Warhammer 40,000 universe and put into the front of their guns. There are a few others to play with along the way that change the combos and execution moves around, but there are not nearly as many melee weapons as guns.

The melee is where Space Marine is at its most satisfying. When I'm swinging around the energy warhammer, slamming it into the ground, and sending foes flying through the air from the sheer impact, I'm having a blast. It's for this gameplay alone that I hope Relic makes another game like it, because even when I stopped caring about the story and the game was coming to a close, I was still having fun flying around on a jetpack and slamming down on enemies with my hammer. While Devil May Cry was satisfying because of its variety and the challenge of learning different combos with weapons for the sake of being cool, Space Marine gets it right in its simplicity just because of the heft of your attacks and the feel of the fight. This is further enunciated by the executions you can perform on your enemies, which is crucial to your very survival.

I mentioned a mechanic unique to the combat of Space Marine earlier and it has to do with melee combat. Space marines are not the type to hide behind cover and pick away at their targets from a distance; they get right up in the thick of it. So with that in mind, the developers did not include any cover mechanics and made it so that players had to get close to their enemies on a regular basis. When you are attacked, you have an energy shield to take most of the hits. It eventually runs out but recharges over time. Before it starts recharging, however, the health of your space marine is at risk. If too much damage is taken in this point in time, you die. To heal, you must stun an enemy and perform a brutal execution move with whichever melee weapon you have equipped. There are no medkits or health items you can pick up. The only way to recharge your health is to execute an enemy with a melee attack. There's a small variety of animations for each weapon that manage to stay satisfying to the end as you work your way through the campaign.

There were some downsides to this mechanic. One of which is that you are not invulnerable during these animations, which take a bit longer than you'd want. In the specific moments where I desperately needed health and tried to claim some by executing an enemy, there were a few times when I was quickly surrounded and killed before the healing powers of a curb stomp took effect. It certainly adds some strategy to the gameplay, forcing you to be prudent with your aggression, but it can get frustrating if you need to heal up before the next big skirmish and your AI compatriots, who have been almost useless at killing other enemies, decide to kill your meat medkits before you get a chance. Nonetheless, I found these moments to be uncommon and the desperation often added to the excitement.

The other downside meant that boss fights would be restricted to a particular format. You couldn't have a simple one-on-one match that would last longer than a few minutes because if you were to have a fair fight with any chance of healing, you would need some cronies to crush and heal yourself. The developers may have foreseen this issue and instead of having multiple boss encounters with the same sort of scenario, they only had two boss fights for the whole game. This is a bit disappointing, considering what I expected of a game about the space marines, but at least it wasn't overly repetitive.

By the end of the single-player campaign, there were certainly some mechanics being repeated and the lack of boss fights was disappointing, but I was still having fun taking on waves of enemies. When I finished it, I still had another mode to play: multiplayer.

Multiplayer

I don't play the multiplayer of too many video games these days, excluding fighting games and the occasional addicting shooter. Space Marine manages to fall into the latter category, however, as I played so much of it that I almost reached the level cap before calling it quits. I can't even think of the last time I did that in a shooter.

I played the multiplayer to Space Marine back when the game was relatively new and picked it up again when I started playing the game for the Dagon Dogs YouTube channel. It's fun, but it doesn't bring too much to the table that you can't find elsewhere. The game modes were nothing innovative, and if you're looking for another Gears of War experience, I doubt you'll find much of it here. It was more of a mode that further builds upon the Warhammer 40,000 universe for fans and gives customization options and the ability to shoot space marines with futuristic weaponry.

Nowadays, there are not many people still playing, but the game is still supported by the developers. So, on weekends, during peak hours, you might be able to find a few games. The problem is that if you lack patience, you may call it quits quickly. The people playing are mostly pros who have been practicing and have not given up on it since day one. I've seen people in the chat say the matchmaking is broken, but I think it's just working with what it’s got, considering how few people are still playing. If you start now, be prepared to be someone's target practice for a while.

The lag was also a bit of a frustrating issue. There were numerous deaths I experienced where I would be shooting another player for just as long, if not longer, with the same gun, class, and perks, yet I would be the one who died. Or I'd duck behind cover but still die a second later. I'd also often see other players teleporting/floating through the air on a regular basis. Once again, I think the game is doing the best it can with what it has and you'll have to deal with the occasion game hosted by someone in Jordan.

As for the gameplay when it works, it changes a lot of the core mechanics to balance it. The melee satisfaction from the campaign is unfortunately stripped away, focusing more on the gunplay. Despite the fact that the melee is toned down for this, it mostly works. It also gives you the ability to play as different classes of space marines and focus on specific weapons from the campaign. Do you want to be a slow devastator with a heavy machine gun, a fast tactical marine with a shotgun, or a jetpack junkie assault marine with a war hammer and little health? This variety in the classes and their weapons, coupled with the different customizations tailored to Warhammer fans, helped keep me interested in the multiplayer for a long time. It was fun, even with the frustrations, but the multiplayer is not the reason I would recommend Space Marine.

Presentation

I already mentioned how the big "exciting" set pieces fall flat because of their surprising lack of impact. Space Marine is a mixed bag when it comes to its presentation. There are times when it looks and sounds really good, and others where it's rather poor.

I'll say that the voice acting is serviceable, for the most part. There are a few characters who end up being inconsistent in their portrayal. I'm not sure how much work the sound editor put into the game, but it feels like there are clips from the actors that made it into the game that are out of place, or should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Also, get used to hearing Orks say "Space marines!" in a cockney accent, because you'll hear it a lot. At least the guns and the noises of Titus clobbering and crushing his foes sound really good. It's as though the focus of the whole game was just on its gameplay, imagine that!

As for the way the game looks, it has its high and low points. The features on Titus look good and there are plenty of areas where the graphical quality is high. But there are numerous spots where the textures are blurry and the camera is giving us far too close of a view of these textures. Plus, there are skyboxes and backgrounds that look straight out of a cheap sci-fi flick's backlot set. It's funny how the pixelization of these backgrounds makes it look like a set on a cheap movie, but that's what it felt like much of the time.

The main thing that stands out in terms of the physical presentation is the effort put into making the space marines and the world look like they belong in that universe. If you're a fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, you'll probably gush over the architecture of the buildings, the designs on the armor, the gun designs, and the customization of your marine in the multiplayer. The artists of the game seemed to have fun making this, which makes up for the blurry textures that coat their creations.

Conclusion

Space Marine is a flawed game; it has a lot of bits and pieces that don't quite line up. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun playing through the short campaign (about 8 hours), and I spent plenty of time on the almost-dead multiplayer modes. At its core, the gameplay is solid, and satisfying enough to make up for many of its other shortcomings. Space Marine is easier to recommend to fans of the Warhammer 40,000 universe who will be able to pull more out of the bland story and multiplayer customizations, but even non-fans can enjoy the short run through the campaign if they just want a simple, and fun action game.