The first Space Marine has a special place in people’s hearts. When I reviewed it, I conceded it had the visual flair that evoked the universe, but the combat was under designed. It had neat ideas that didn’t quite work, like the executions that were meant to replenish life but more regularly left the player at the whims of the hordes around them.
At best it was a flawed piece of fun, at worst it was a shooter in desperate need of a cover system.
It has been over 10 years, and an unexpected sequel has arrived. After Relic Entertainment made the last one, Saber Interactive (World War Z and Evil Dead: The Game) is now at the helm.
The good news is, based on this early copy, anyone coming to this with fond memories of the original will find a game that does those memories justice while introducing enough new things as well.
The story picks up some 100 years after the first Space Marine. Titus, the disgraced “Adeptus Astartes”, is back and has been given a second chance after being accused of heresy at the end of the first game. He now teams up with two new walking tanks and they are tasked with taking on a Tyranid (think xenomorphs with guns) invasion. For anyone worried that they won’t be able to jump right in and enjoy the story, the narrative team do a good job of filling in the player and not relying on too many callbacks to the previous title.
Space Marine II sticks to its third person perspective, with the lumbering body of Titus dead center of the screen. It also keeps its mixture of melee and ranged combat, with the player being able to switch between the two on the fly – using ranged to thin the numbers of enemies before wading in to cut up the rest.
The thing is, all of it is better this time around – guns now pack more of a punch and the melee is more developed. Over the course of the 10-hour campaign a large range of weapons are unlocked starting with the traditional heavy bolter. Later the player gets access to a Melta rifle (flamey shotgun stand-in), Las Fusil (laser sniper rifle) and many more. The Tyranid enemy they now face includes a lot of ‘fodder’ type enemies that can be annoying in big groups (or when supporting at range) but only take a couple of shots to kill.
The selection of melee weapons is leaner, but this does not undermine their utility – knives, swords and hammers – at cutting through the hordes as well as engaging with the bigger, nastier opposition. Whereas previously Space Marine was very button-bashy, this new iteration introduces effective parries and heavy-hits-to-one-shot-executions. Having parries allows for the players to be more aggressive, not needing rely on their dodge ability to get them out of trouble and instead keep a forward flow of an engagement. These seem like simple additions but when in the middle of a throng it ends up doing a good job of being challenging as a player tries to keep track of what is going on.
And there is always a lot going on – Space Marine II delights in throwing tons of enemies at the player and getting them to take a chainsword to them. This busy-ness is first showcased in the Tutorial when the Space Marine the player controls must hold off Tyranids that scale the walls in front of him. They do so in the hundreds, teeming over each other to get up.
Similarly, when the foreground is not taking up your full attention, the backgrounds are hectic too. Often Titus and his friends will be gunning their way through insectoid aliens, while large scale combat is playing out in the distance, or they will be jetpacking from platform to platform while flak cannons and imperial tanks repel full scale assaults. The level geometry and skyboxes complement this scale, murky swamps with heavily pustuled plants give way to crumbling cityscapes and otherworldly sarcophaguses with immense buildings crowding over the Marines.
In singleplayer Space Marine II is a good time, the AI does a decent enough job of helping out, however it is when 2 human players are added to the mix that the combat really sings. For starters, it becomes possible for people to take on different roles, with those preferring the crunchy combat to be able to get stuck in while they get support from snipers, and mid range shooters. Having 3 people being able to strategise like this makes even the tougher challenges feel worth dealing with.
Once the campaign is over, there are ‘Operations’ to tackle. These are standalone stories that follow other characters in the conflict and serves as a way for Space Marine II to offer procedural co-op missions with upgradeable classes and weapons. There is your Sniper class that can go invisible, the Vanguard that gets a grappling hook for close range attacks, a Bulwark with a melee shield (and extra armour) and a couple of others.
This is where I think the developers plan to introduce a long tail for the game. There seem to be a lot of perks to unlock, customisation to purchase (with in-game currency earned from completing Operations), and other upgrades to explore. It is too early for me to verify this but what I’ve played of it so far, the Operations do offer more tense encounters and the ammo and loadouts seem far more important. Not to mention the fabulous paint jobs you can make.
Not everything is ichor-covered delights. The campaign still needs a little polish as over the course of my playthrough there were a few crashes, and some connectivity issues with my co-op partner (in the room next to me) having some problems in terms of lag on my screen.
There were also some very odd choices for loading screens, and cutscenes used in lieu of a loading screen. Sometimes these appeared between very small areas and broke up the flow of the game in unfortunate ways. That, or worse, they were cutscenes that felt completely superfluous when an in-game section would have been better rather than queueing a cinematic where I had to wait for the textures to load in.
Then there are some strange design decisions too – like the fact that private lobbies for Operations will not be available at launch. This means that you can invite friends to your lobby and have them blocked from entry by some random person quick-joining. The solution was to start a campaign, invite all players, then switch to Operations. This is a leaden way to solve this, and prone to complications, if a player accidentally drops out due to a crash or disconnection – you can end up with an unwanted joinee.
Another decision that I did not like was that Horde mode is not planned until 2025; this is a big selling point for me and people I know. So, being made to wait until a point when lobbies may be empty is a missed opportunity.
Which leads me to the PvP – there are three basic modes right now, it took me well over an hour to get into a game that was fully populated and didn’t immediately time out to a server error. This is a problem I expect will be fixed by larger numbers of players at launch. The class system seems like it could be interesting with certain classes being hard counters for others, and being able to change on the fly to try and battle what the opponent is throwing at your team Right now, in practice, it all feels a bit scrappy and unappealing in the grand scheme of this being a power fantasy, there is a lot of cowering behind walls while you wait for your shield to recharge, and grenades land everywhere.
Only time will tell if the PvP ends up being popular, but I don’t have high hopes.
As a singleplayer/Co-Op experience, Space Marine II is one of the big delights of this year and I cannot recommend it enough. As a game that feels desperate to be a AAA title and therefore cobbles on extra baubles, it is less successful.
Conclusion
Space Marine II builds upon and improves on its predecessor in every way. Come for the big stompy Space Marines, stay for the intricate interplay between melee and ranged combat.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
