Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Review

[BroJing]

Loved this game, loved the story (end boss was kind of lame but thinking on it don't know how you could of done a boss of that type better without it being either a massive bullet sponge or ridiculous telegraphed attacks type) and have to say loved Titus.

It's nice to see a protaganist in a game who can actually string a sentence together other then 'Grr. Anger.' or 'My wife, we gotta find me wife' (hate that guy). Of course it helps that I love 40K universe but even without that I think this is a solid game with a good story and pretty solid mechanics.

 

[Agayek]

Although at the end of the day, the story and dialogue were still absolutely mind-numbing. But maybe that's an intrinsic part of the franchise as well. I wouldn't know.

It's mostly the franchise, to be perfectly honest. The core premise of the universe is to turn everything Up To Eleven [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UpToEleven], while being completely straight faced and ignoring the sheer absurdity of it. It's the nature of the beast.

That said, they could have had a more interesting story if they really tried at it. It wasn't bad by any means, but it could have been much better. Personally, I would have preferred the story to be about either a Tyranid invasion, and making us deal with protecting civilians who may or may not be genestealer infected. Add in some "moral choices" with regards to purging the infection or not, and ending the game with a fight against a hive tyrant.

 

[Harry Mason]

Man, I've never been so disappointed with a game in my life.

You know what would have made a good 40k game? A game done in the styles of Star Wars: Battlefront. You could have massive ground battles and then take to the sky (or I guess space) in Battlefleet Gothic fighter.

 

[Sean Deli]

Oh, on the question of character motivations and Captain Titus:

There is a good story to be told about a character bound by duty, if you do it right.

I mean, if you try to look at WH40k with a straight face - you see that a life of everyday human in this world is an endless horror of backbreaking labor, mind-numbing imperial dogma, draft army that thinks nothing about it's losses, you can be killed several times over in your lifetime for crimes of thought, and literally dozens of nearly omnipotent enemies, that can whisk your life away at a whim.
You have immortal (let me spell it out - i-m-m-o-r-t-a-l) gods of Chaos, that can find their way into hearts and minds of anyone around you, you have Necrons - sentient machines awakening from slumber and bound on eradication of all life in the universe (sounds familiar Bioware?), you have a living tide of destruction called Tyranids, you have unpurgable infestation of orks, who seem to survive and come back no matter how carefully you cleanse the solar systems from them.

So what keeps Imperial citizens from dying of pure horror the second they think about all this? Faith - they believe that in their deaths they'll be happier than in their lives, and duty - each of them believes, that they are born to fuel the life of humanity as a whole, that people should give their lives so that the greater Humanity lives under endless onslaught of it's foes.

Again, you can tell a good story about a character, whose only way to stay sane is to have faith and believe in his duty. I am not saying that this game got it right, but you can. You need to really describe the unspeakable horror of the world around such character, and show how following the simple truths allows him to live in such a world.

Just because a lot of characters say "Duty" in their lines, doesn't mean that we have a lot of characters that are defined through their sense of duty. Mostly they are not, they are just bland and say words without meaning it.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

It's a fun game, but a few caveats;

Needs to be able to block close combat attacks, the dodge isn't responsive enough.
The AI squadmates need to be able to do something apart from shooting the walls.
Multiplayer is broken, badly.

 

[nyysjan]

Edit: yes i am aware that some European countries pronounce it that way but i dont care it sounds dumb and the Etymology disagrees with that pronunciation.

That's how the Canadian forces pronounce it. Once again your country is trying to be different but tried you guys tried to hard....sad sad USA.

I also had a problem with that. Lieutenant is pronounced Lewtenant, not leftenant. In that case I assume there are also rightenants. In this case the U.S. is right and it is Europe and Canada that can't say it right. Maybe they could patch it to have Titus say it correctly.

/facepalm
You know, it's called English language for a reason.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Edit: yes i am aware that some European countries pronounce it that way but i dont care it sounds dumb and the Etymology disagrees with that pronunciation.

That's how the Canadian forces pronounce it. Once again your country is trying to be different but tried you guys tried to hard....sad sad USA.

I also had a problem with that. Lieutenant is pronounced Lewtenant, not leftenant. In that case I assume there are also rightenants. In this case the U.S. is right and it is Europe and Canada that can't say it right. Maybe they could patch it to have Titus say it correctly.

/facepalm
You know, it's called English language for a reason.

Which makes it all the funnier since it means the english can't speak english right.

 

[Versuvius]

Although at the end of the day, the story and dialogue were still absolutely mind-numbing. But maybe that's an intrinsic part of the franchise as well. I wouldn't know.

I was surprised at this myself. The Dawn of War games have always had decent to well-written storylines and dialogue. Most of the 40k books are pretty decent as well. No idea why they decided to go with something as simplistic as this... oh well. Game was fun enough for me, but I'm a huge fan to begin with.

Soulstorm being the exception for this, being filled with narm, hammier-than-though hams and absolutely memetastic.

TO THE PEOPLE ON PAGE 2 DISCUSSING ASSASSINS: It's Eversor. Not Eviscerator, Eversor.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Although at the end of the day, the story and dialogue were still absolutely mind-numbing. But maybe that's an intrinsic part of the franchise as well. I wouldn't know.

No, you don't know, so you really shouldn't make generalisations like that. Especially if you don't (seem to) know much about the 40K universe and franchise (especially the many novels).

The Dawn of War series (except for Soulstorm) has almost perfectly voiced characters and lines of dialogue that fit each respective character.

Winter Assault and Dark Crusade in particular have some of the most memorable one-liners I've ever heard in a video game, and they're just simple battle cries and orders.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Stupid double post...

 

[The Human Torch]

This is a game that stands up only because of it's license. If it had no license at all and was original IP, it wouldn't sell at all, way too mediocre.

 

[Cody Holden]

Although at the end of the day, the story and dialogue were still absolutely mind-numbing. But maybe that's an intrinsic part of the franchise as well. I wouldn't know.

It's mostly the franchise, to be perfectly honest. The core premise of the universe is to turn everything Up To Eleven [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UpToEleven], while being completely straight faced and ignoring the sheer absurdity of it. It's the nature of the beast.

That said, they could have had a more interesting story if they really tried at it. It wasn't bad by any means, but it could have been much better. Personally, I would have preferred the story to be about either a Tyranid invasion, and making us deal with protecting civilians who may or may not be genestealer infected. Add in some "moral choices" with regards to purging the infection or not, and ending the game with a fight against a hive tyrant.

I agree, especially given that were talking about the Ultrasmurfs: the mariniest marines who ever marined. They are bland, they are super-cool?, and everyone hates them because they dumb down the entire franchise.

Also, by "moral choices" I'm assuming you meant "Should I inflict massive Imperial and Tyranid casualties with fire, or with nukes?" and "Do I tell everyone I killed all of those folks to be safe, or because they looked at me funny and that was somehow heresy?" >=)

 

[uzo]

I think I mentioned this on the Escapist before in one of the many many 40K fan threads - and let's not deny the sheer awesomeness of the setting. C'mon, give it up for the Emperor!

Ahem .. anyway, just wanted to say that I'm still playing through the game and enjoying it quite a bit. What I'd really like to see would be the Horus Heresy in this manner of game, and the option to play as a marine from different chapters fighting through the Great Crusade at the side of the Emperor and the Primarchs, to the corruption of Horus, and then onto the desperate civil war as Humanity tears itself apart again.

Relic has put down the foundations with this game - and from here they'll just reskin it a dozen times to make more games; adding new races, stories, and playable factions. Imagine playing an Eldar fighting to reclaim a Maiden World from the Empire of Man? Or even the sheer choppy fun of playing an Ork enjoying a little Waaagh!?

EDIT: And holy shit guys, why the hell are people arguing about 'lew'tenant, or 'lef'tenant? The fact of the matter is 40K is of British-origin, and the games (DoW included) generally feature British-English actors. If 40K was of US-origin Titus would be called 'Maverick' ffs.

 

[Frankster]

Personally I'm not very good at rts but I can like them at times, it's just I don't have the best reaction time when it comes to tons of units all over the place, but I don't know if dow 2 is naturally better because it's simpler on that or not.

Opinions? Also for some asinine reason they are the same price, and I really don't have the money for both.

Both games are different from each other but from your preference for smaller scaled battles, dow2 might suit you more.
That said, dow1 is more forgiving then most rts in regard to army control as you control squads rather then individuals.

Dow1 gold edition maybe?

 

[Redryhno]

I like the 40k games and all, but I wish they would do something other than Space Marines as the main characters, I mean, who wouldn't want to play a campaign as an Aspect Warrior or Ork Boyz or (Emperor and Harlequin strike me down for admitting this) a Tyranid? Personally I think that they need to make a 40k game that includes like a six hour campaign for each of the Officio Assassinorium branches, they could really go for different gameplay mechanics for each since each has their own way of doing things and would make around a 30 hour game in campaigns alone, and then release different DLC for each branch that adds like another couple hours to each, or just make each branch a ten or twenty hour game in itself

Dawn of War II: Retribution; already happened.

I talking about taking control of one person in the campaign, not a squad or army, specifically the Imperial Assassins, if you had read further, and the DOW series I don't really consider to be 40k games seeing as how the first was base-based (pun intended), and the second was jump down, collect people, shoot, wipe off blood, repeat, even though I did enjoy them.

Well there was Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior where you play as a Tau but that game isn't great.

The reason that every one-person Warhammer 40,000 game is about Space Marines is that about half the people who play the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game play a Space Marine army. Sure, playing a cut-above the average warrior of any other race would work within the lore (although the Space Marines are really the only ones who are famous for small squad tactics that allow for maximum solidarity.) You could play an Ork nob or an aspect warrior exarch or some such. Unfortunately, demographics won't allow for that prospect.

Yeah, I understand, but I've never seen what's so great about the SM, the only ones I ever thought were any fun or good to begin with were the SW, and even then all I got were the names and a couple of the other squads because I liked having a back-up army and I liked the models and color scheme.

The only thing that really separates the SM from the other races is that they had to be engineered to be better than others and even then they are rarely on par with them, I've just always liked the Eldar and other races better because most of them don't have add-ons that make them better, they're mostly just run-of-the-mill guys for their species.I don't so much hate SM so much as just because they're the poster-child of the universe doesn't mean they really are better than the other races. That may also be why I dislike Tyranids so much.

 

[nyysjan]

Edit: yes i am aware that some European countries pronounce it that way but i dont care it sounds dumb and the Etymology disagrees with that pronunciation.

That's how the Canadian forces pronounce it. Once again your country is trying to be different but tried you guys tried to hard....sad sad USA.

I also had a problem with that. Lieutenant is pronounced Lewtenant, not leftenant. In that case I assume there are also rightenants. In this case the U.S. is right and it is Europe and Canada that can't say it right. Maybe they could patch it to have Titus say it correctly.

/facepalm
You know, it's called English language for a reason.

Which makes it all the funnier since it means the english can't speak english right.

Yeah, because only the american pronounciation is right... Are you serious?

On reflection, i suspect he is either a troll or he is something i would probably get banned for calling him.
So let's go with a rather lackluster troll.