Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2; Glory to the emperor!

FakeSympathy

Elite Member
Legacy
Jun 8, 2015
3,479
3,214
118
Seattle, WA
Country
US
Let me prefence by stating that I have near-zero knowledge of WH 40k verse. All I know is that it's based on a tabletop game, soldiers are in big-ass armors, and there are crap ton of WH 40K games. I've decided to get this game because the gameplay looked so badass.

And what a badass game it is! I just started, and my first 2 hours of this game consisted of blood and guts flying everywhere, sounds of guns ringing in my ears, and those glorious execution animations.

I missed this gameplay format. Mission-based shooter moving through a linear path, slaughtering everything in my path. While games these days always seem to go for bigger experience, sometimes it's okay to experiment and go back to the classic gameplay loop.

As for the story, as I have said in the beginning I had little knowledge of this universe, but I'm starting to get the world-setting; Imperial mankind fighting against the horde of foul vermins, for the glory of his emperor. Normally I would classify Titus's character as bland and boring, but I came to realize it's that sort of world, and he is a hardened bio-engineered soldier who is willing to fight the hell to his dying breath.

And to his dying breath I led him, multiple times, as I wanted a true experience of what it's like being a space marine.

Despite the hardest difficulty, I had no trouble slaughtering all the enemies, albeit difficult and long crueling process.

While I do enjoy parrying, the follow-up sidearm shot, and the execution moves, I do think you become relying on them a bit too much. Doing the follow-up shot or execution earns you the armor points, and they are critical especially in the higher difficulty. I just feel I am forced to do these because of how quickly I lose both HP and Armor. Speaking of HP, when you take a damage there's a brief window of opportunity to get them back by executing an enemy, which is easier said then done, because the opportunities won't always match. There are health stims and revival items you can pick up, but those are rare.

Boss fights are fine, but I feel they always throw in an horde at you in middle of them; Take the Lictor boss for example; On the surface, it's a great boss for you to get comfortable timing your dodges and parries. But Just as you start getting the pattern down, BOOM, tyranid horde! And the boss doesn't even have the decency to wait in the back, and will attack you along with the horde!

Campaign I believe was designed to be played in co-op, because not only do they drop crap load of ammo and guns to switch, but the companion AIs are stupid and pretty much is there as a meat shield or to revive you. Some objectives makes you hold down a button, meaning someone should be covering you. Really wish solo campaign had a different balancing

Operations are really fun, because they are tied to the main campaign and serve as a side-story of the other squad members who were on the same mission but for different objectives. I feel this is were Space Marine 2's strength lies, because you can customize pretty much everything for each class. Some stuff you need to earn points to unlock. This used to be such a common practice in the past, and I am kinda sad to see how rare it is these days.

Will continue to play through this game, except for the PVP. Not only did I promise myself to stay away from those gamemodes, but as of this post I am seeing so many complaints about unbalanced weapons
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
6,419
5,676
118
Australia
I watched a LetsPlay of the co-op mission against the Swarm Lord a few days ago. My knowledge of 40K is limited to a web comedy series, some discord chats and the occasional look at the wiki but I’ve always thought it had a great aesthetic even if the setting is…..not one I’d want to spend too much time in.

Game looks great, epic in scope but focused on linear objectives. And any game where you can use a Jetpack to wind up and wallop someone with a grav-hammer so hard they turn into raspberry custard is very welcome.

My only issues are for all the bigging up they get, the Bolters don’t sound as ‘meaty’ as I expected them to. And that the super deluxe version, Ultra, was not called the Ultramarine Edition. They left a golden opportunity on the table there.

Other than that, I can see myself owning this sooner rather than later.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

Dirty Hipsters

This is how we praise the sun!
Legacy
Feb 7, 2011
8,574
3,098
118
Country
'Merica
Gender
3 children in a trench coat
I'm having a ton of fun playing it in coop with friends. I really do wish that it was 4 player coop instead of 3 though, someone always gets left out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,957
3,832
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
Its pretty cool, looks fantastic and feels... decent. Its one of those games that is good, but within spitting distance of being great. I feel like the emphasis on multi (even in the campaign) harms the campaign (ends up lacking some of those big moments since you have to have your support be playable), the story is decent, but could be better if your main character was one of the squad mates instead of Titus. And ranged combat would be greatly improved if enemies flinched when being shot.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
Legacy
Jan 30, 2011
2,060
906
118
I am aware that this is a reductive and probably incorrect assesment from a complete outsider to the series, but:

The Warhammer 40K series as a whole, to me, always felt like the attempt to stretch the joke behind Starship Troopers to the point the punchline is barely recognizable anymore.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

Dirty Hipsters

This is how we praise the sun!
Legacy
Feb 7, 2011
8,574
3,098
118
Country
'Merica
Gender
3 children in a trench coat
And ranged combat would be greatly improved if enemies flinched when being shot.
They do, but it depends on the size of the enemy and the size of your gun.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,957
3,832
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
As for the story, as I have said in the beginning I had little knowledge of this universe, but I'm starting to get the world-setting; Imperial mankind fighting against the horde of foul vermins, for the glory of his emperor. Normally I would classify Titus's character as bland and boring, but I came to realize it's that sort of world, and he is a hardened bio-engineered soldier who is willing to fight the hell to his dying breath.
Space Marines are kinda boring in general. Think of them as warrior monks from the middle ages. Different chapters will have different things going on, but compared to... pretty much every other faction, they are boring. Popular and with cool designs, but boring.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,957
3,832
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
They do, but it depends on the size of the enemy and the size of your gun.
To reliably make them flinch you need a melta or lascannon. Would be better if the bolters could reliably do that.
 

Dirty Hipsters

This is how we praise the sun!
Legacy
Feb 7, 2011
8,574
3,098
118
Country
'Merica
Gender
3 children in a trench coat
Space Marines are kinda boring in general. Think of them as warrior monks from the middle ages. Different chapters will have different things going on, but compared to... pretty much every other faction, they are boring. Popular and with cool designs, but boring.
It's kind of funny that you start the game as part of the Deathwatch, which is one of the more interesting space marine factions, and then get slapped into the Ultramarines chapter, which are the most boring "default" space marines.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,957
3,832
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
It's kind of funny that you start the game as part of the Deathwatch, which is one of the more interesting space marine factions, and then get slapped into the Ultramarines chapter, which are the most boring "default" space marines.
One of the things that made the original Space Marine game so interesting was that it actually gave a lot of personality to the chapter and Titus. Its kinda lacking in 2, probably because of the multi focus. Plus, the Ultramarines are actually probably the best Space Marine chapter, the worlds they control tend to be much nicer then the rest of the imperium and they are probably the most stable chapter, both of which are kinda boring.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

Satinavian

Elite Member
Legacy
Apr 30, 2016
1,928
801
118
Honestly, currently i get my 40k video game expore from the (pretty good but not bug free) Rogue Trader, the (somewhat repitative but otherwise fun) Mechanicus and probably soon Mechanicus 2.

But space marines are so boring that i have no interest whatsoever in this space marine game, even if it has ten times the budget and is well received.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,957
3,832
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
Honestly, currently i get my 40k video game expore from the (pretty good but not bug free) Rogue Trader, the (somewhat repitative but otherwise fun) Mechanicus and probably soon Mechanicus 2.

But space marines are so boring that i have no interest whatsoever in this space marine game, even if it has ten times the budget and is well received.
Try out the original game. It actually does some interesting things narratively with Space Marines.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Satinavian

Dirty Hipsters

This is how we praise the sun!
Legacy
Feb 7, 2011
8,574
3,098
118
Country
'Merica
Gender
3 children in a trench coat
I own this game on Steam, and generally play shooters with a mouse and keyboard, so on the first day I played it with a mouse and keyboard, and found the controls to be a bit clunky and awkward, but figured I would get used to them. Melee is such an important part of the gameplay (in some ways more important than the shooting) so it made sense to have dedicated melee buttons on the mouse. The default control set up is melee on right mouse button, fire on left mouse button, but that made aiming and shooting awkward because I'm so used to holding right mouse to aim and left mouse to fire.

Yesterday I swapped over to a controller to try that and it feels much better and more intuitive. My aim is worse on a controller (I haven't played an actual shooter on a controller in years), but the game has enough auto aim that it works fine. I would honestly consider this more of an action game than a shooter though.

My only (minor) problem now is that the game doesn't let you fully customize the controls on a controller the way it does with the mouse and keyboard, and I'm honestly not sure why. The game gives you fully remappable controls for the mouse and keyboard (even if it fails to detect some of my mouse inputs, like tilting the mouse wheel), but only gives you 7 pre-sets for the controller. Preset B is pretty close to what I would have set up myself, but there's one slight thing that bothers me. I want to set heal as up on the D pad instead of right on the D-pad (muscle memory from Sekiro), but the game doesn't offer that as a pre-set option.

I really wish devs would get over themselves and just let people fully customize their controller set-ups. They could say it's an accessibility feature. I believe steam overlay lets you fully customize controls on a game by game basis if you want, but it's something that should really be baked into every game, and be changed on the fly within the game without having to mess around with settings inside a launcher, especially since this game is available on a lot of platforms that aren't steam.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

The Rogue Wolf

Stealthy Carnivore
Legacy
Nov 25, 2007
16,842
9,511
118
Stalking the Digital Tundra
Gender
✅
It looks nice, but it's too melee focused for my tastes.
To reliably make them flinch you need a melta or lascannon. Would be better if the bolters could reliably do that.
You'd think something about the size of a (pretty large) human would react more to being hit by a fucking 19mm explosive gyrojet round.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,957
3,832
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
You'd think something about the size of a (pretty large) human would react more to being hit by a fucking 19mm explosive gyrojet round.
Or at least react to being shot by 20 of them. In fact, in the campaign the heavy bolter tends to be not worth the effort, its fun, but it doesn't flinch the things that matter so... fun. Its annoying how close this game is to greatness, since its just stuck at goodness.
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
6,419
5,676
118
Australia
I am aware that this is a reductive and probably incorrect assesment from a complete outsider to the series, but:

The Warhammer 40K series as a whole, to me, always felt like the attempt to stretch the joke behind Starship Troopers to the point the punchline is barely recognizable anymore.
I don’t blame you for thinking so, though the first edition of WH40K predates the movie - since the novel is played very straight and serious - by a full decade. Most of the Starship Troopers influence is likely to come from the novel.