Let’s get this out the way — I’m not Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s target audience. My experience with Warhammer has been buying an Age of Sigmar starter set and then never painting it, downloading Horus Rising on my Kindle but then never reading it, and occasionally seeing Henry Cavill gushing over the hobby in interviews. But Space Marine 2’s brutally frenetic combat appeals to more than just the Warhammer diehards — who doesn’t love 7-foot tall improbably wide soldiers cutting alien dinosaurs in half with Chainswords?
Space Marine 2 is a third-person shooter and hack-n-slash hybrid set across Warhammer 40K’s grimdark sci-fi worlds. Its central campaign is playable with up to two friends via drop-in co-op (matchmaking is also available, though wasn’t online during the review period), with there also being separate PvE Operations missions and a PvP component for 12 players. As a long-awaited sequel to a 2011 fan-favorite, I was concerned that it’d be difficult for a newbie like me to get into it. But while this sequel doesn’t spend time politely acquainting players with the overwhelmingly huge Warhammer universe, it does set the stage well.
Putting the ‘war’ in Warhammer
This starts with its introduction to our stoic protagonist, Titus. If there was any doubt that Warhammers’ soldiers have little else going on other than war, Titus waking up from a mortal injury, finding that his entire body has been reconstructed, and then marching right back into battle perfectly illustrates that. This is a world that solely revolves around interminable combat, so all chatter between characters is limited to descriptions of bloodshed. The Shakespearean prose they use to describe it is also routinely over-the-top and hilarious — one soldier telling another to essentially get over their feelings becomes “raise the armor of your contempt.”
I imagine there’s plenty of lore here for Warhammer fans to sink their teeth into, with a hell of a lot of overwhelming terminology bandied about throughout. But for players like me, it’s still an interesting setting where traditional good and bad guys are replaced with monastic, perfunctorally violent superhumans. This isn’t the type of sci-fi where plucky characters look up at the stars in wonderment and dream of more, and as far as “heroes” go, Titus and his genocidal comrades Gadriel and Chairon don’t do much in the way of heroics. They’re mostly occupied with chopping up every other race in their immediate vicinity.
But as grim as this all sounds, Space Marine 2 is a surprisingly colorful game, authentically replicating the bold designs of Games Workshop’s painted miniatures. It truly looks like a tabletop Warhammer game brought to life, with bright and blue marines stomping around towering gothic architecture and through lush jungles. Its multiplayer modes also allow for a great deal of customization, letting you unlock different armor pieces or paint styles that mimic armies such as the Space Wolves or the Blood Angels. Parts are individually customizable, too, meaning that your marine can wind up looking vastly different from his teammates.
Gears of Warhammer
Its gameplay will be compared to Gears of War, which also focuses on burly men killing monsters in the goriest ways possible, but this isn’t a cover-based shooter. Most of the time, you’re encouraged to get up close with your enemies, utilizing a wide selection of melee weapons to dice them up. Ranged weapons are also plentiful, though will mostly be used for picking targets off at a distance before they inevitably get all up in your face with their horrible claws.
Each melee weapon has its own set of combos and moves, ranging from the Combat Knife’s quick slicing and dicing to the Power Sword electrifying incoming swarms. Certain enemy attacks can be parried, which will either kill them outright or leave them vulnerable to a swift gunshot that regenerates your armor. Larger enemies need to be worn down with light and heavy attacks, and after they take enough damage, they can be executed in a visceral Doom-esque animation that also recharges armor.
A typical engagement will see the player picking off ranged enemies with their guns, storming headfirst into a throng of enemies, and parrying any attacks they can before executing their bigger opponents to regain the armor they’ve lost. It’s a satisfying loop, and forces players to heal by actively getting into the thick of the action rather than avoiding it.
Developer Saber Interactive uses its Swarm Engine, first utilized in World War Z, to add a huge number of enemies on screen, so there are plenty of Tyranids to swat away in any given confrontation. Watching fleets of monsters run full-pelt towards you in the distance, then seeing them scramble up walls in their hundreds desperately trying to attack you, is a daunting visual that plays out like an alien version of Lord of the Ring’s Battle of Helm’s Deep.
PS5’s performance mode held up very well despite all of the bodies on-screen, but there were occasional frame rate dips in particularly busy moments, and I wouldn’t recommend quality mode for this reason. While I experienced no performance issues throughout, the same couldn’t be said for one of my co-op partners, who was struck with a continuous frame rate problem that rendered the game unplayable even after reinstalling it. We were told by the Space Marine 2 team that this wasn’t a problem faced elsewhere, and given my own pretty flawless experience, I can imagine this won’t be a problem on launch day, but it’s still worth mentioning.
Bothersome Battle Brothers
Despite these swarms of enemies out for my blood, I rarely struggled with the normal difficulty setting in single-player, but on a harder difficulty, multiple retries were required. Missions will often require you to complete objectives as you’re fighting, from capturing points to preventing enemies from attacking equipment. Given that gameplay is mostly all hacking and slashing, variety instead comes from these set-pieces, and the majority of them require you to juggle killing and securing objectives. Unfortunately, my AI battle-brothers often made this frustrating.
If you’re playing solo, your AI teammates won’t help you capture objectives, with them instead running off and fighting their own battle. They’ll helpfully revive you if you take too much damage, so they do come in some use, but I also found myself loading the last checkpoint a couple of times as they wouldn’t make their own to the next part objective. It’s perfectly playable in single-player, but three-player co-op is definitely the ideal way to play. Keep in mind that story progress will only be saved for the host, though, so you’ll need to make sure you have a consistent team of players by your side.
For those who won’t be able to commit to a full story playthrough with friends, Operations mode provides PvE missions with fully customizable space marines, ability upgrades, and armor unlocks. Six missions are available at launch, with more to come down the line, and higher rewards for completing them on harder difficulty settings. There’s not a lot of variety here at launch, but there’s a good deal of scope for this mode to be expanded on and potentially become Space Marine 2’s chief offering down the line. Unfortunately, the PvP mode wasn’t available for review.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Review: The Final Verdict
Space Marine 2 is a great hack ‘n’ slasher regardless of whether or not you’re a Warhammer fan. Its true-to-life recreations of the tabletop game’s painted miniatures will please fans, but its satisfying combat will please anyone. However, it’s definitely best enjoyed in multiplayer given some AI frustrations, and its Operations Mode is a few pieces of content short of being an excellent addition to the package.
Satisfying hack ‘n’ slash combat
Regenerative armor system keeps players on their toes
Warhammer world looks beautiful and authentic
AI teammates can be frustrating
A major performance issue suffered by one our party members
Operations Mode has great potential, but is lacking missions at launch