I finally got around to, and finished, the singleplayer of Space Marine 2. I gotta say, it's very rare for games to impress me with their technical prowess these days anymore, but Space Marine 2 genuinely manages it with its vistas of devastation, but more importantly, swarms of Tyranids. It genuinely feels like you're fighting an avalanche of thousands, and like it could not have been done on any previous-gen hardware. So props for that. The game in general is a big step up from the first. Though still about on par in complexity with the first, the addition of a parry mechanic brings a surprising amount of satisfaction into the combat. It's definitely pretty easy on Normal once you get into grips with it, so I ended up turning the difficulty up to Hard towards the end. There's a lot more visual and setpiece variety, and it's a lot more vibrant and colourful. Even the story manages to hit some pretty interesting notes, though it kind of ditches them by the end for a good old baddies vs goodies blowout. But you can't really expect more out of this franchise.
The singleplayer may be brief, but the way it incorporates co-op missions is quite ingenious. You basically have two campaigns running in parallel, and affecting each other's stories where a squad will head out in multiplayer for a mission, and that objective will in turn be referenced in a singleplayer mission. And these aren't half-assed filler either: the multiplayer missions include unique enemies, environments and even boss fights. It not only creates variety if you switch between the missions, but it also creates a much wider sense of scale on a personal level. Titus and his squad don't feel like the center of the universe, but merely a part of a larger whole.
In fact the singleplayer almost feels like a tutorial to the multiplayer: there you get the customization, the upgrades and other progression systems. I haven't even played it that much yet, but I might for a good while.
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