Videogame Review: Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2

Warhammer 40k is in my top three sci-fi franchises, up there with Star Trek and Dune. I wish I had gotten into it younger; it was only as an adult that I started reading the novels and getting into the games on PC and tabletop. The lore is just so rich and goes so deep. The Horus Heresy books are a great place to start. For the gamers out there, Space Marine 2 also serves as a nice starting point. Even if you haven’t played the first title the game does a good job of getting you up to speed quickly. You’ll be purging monstrosities with the best of them in no time.

You play as Lieutenant Titus of the Ultramarines. If you played the first game then you already know his backstory; he was accused of corruption and forced to serve in the Deathwatch for a century. The game starts with Titus rejoining the Ultramarines to battle against the Tyranids — a race of giant alien bugs. You will also square off against heretics and warp demons in the later missions. The campaign, though short, is engaging and tells a tight narrative with a strong group of companion Ultramarines and side characters.

You will get a solid introduction to core Warhammer 40k concepts such as the Immaterium, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Inquisition, and the Astartes. It’s a fun story but to be clear this is not a game you buy just to run the campaign once single player; you’ll be done in under 10 hours. The main draw is the PVE and PVP modes which offer endless content and deep character customization with numerous unique character classes. I personally ran the Bulwark class as a Dark Souls parry god and sword and shield enjoyer, if you want to really get nuts you should try a jump pack build to bring retribution from above.

One thing I have always loved about Warhammer 40k is the aesthetic. The drip is out of this world. Those menacing helmets and visors on Astartes armor are so iconic. Space Marine 2 has nicely detailed visual design capturing the look and feel effectively. You get lots of skulls, crosses, gold, scrolls, books, and lots of Latin. It’s all very ornate and Catholic which, as a Catholic, of course I love. The ministers with their incense thuribles standing outside of the armory are one example. The obsession with codexes, scripture, and doctrine are another. You won’t get far with any of that new age, “personal relationship with God”, stuff with these dudes. Warhammer 40k is a world chalk full of cool concepts like machine spirits, saints, penance, heresy, and devotions.

The main thing I appreciate is that it is a world that takes itself seriously. Unlike, say, Helldivers 2, there is no satire here. There is no MCU quippy humor, no winking at the audience, no irony or tongue in cheek pose. The characters and the story play everything straight. ‘Conviction’ is the word that underpins the world of Warhammer 40k and it is a breath of fresh air in the media climate of today. This thoughtful and sincere world-building alone may be enough to merit checking out Space Marine 2 if you have even a passing interest in the franchise.

Fortunately, unlike some other Warhammer videogames, this is not one you only play for the cool lore. The gameplay is generally very solid. The gunplay is intuitive, tight, and responsive. Bolt guns are super fun and there are plenty of other cool options including plasma and flame weapons both as primaries and sidearms. The melee combat is also really neat thanks to a good variety of weapons including power swords, combat knives, axes, hammers, and fists. Slicing through swarms of tyranids never gets old and the visceral execution attacks to finish off enemies are enjoyably gory.

In spite of all these positives there are a series of small problems that combine together to severely reduce the replay value of the game, at least for me. First issue: Heavy reliance on execution moves. These cinematic finisher techniques are all super neat the first few times you see them. Who doesn’t love watching an Astartes stab a stealth cloaked tyranid hunter with its own arm? However by the 300th time it gets a bit stale. Similar to Doom Eternal, the game requires you to frequently use finishers in order to restore armor. I would have preferred if these had been reserved for bosses. They could have at least made them quicker or have more variety.

Second issue: The heavy reliance on color and sound queues for dodges and parries. This is another thing that works better when used sparingly. Stellar Blade had similar mechanics for letting you know when an attack is unblockable or needs to be countered with the ‘blink’ skill or some other specific technique. It worked there because it wasn’t spammed multiple times per second in every enemy encounter. In Space Marine 2 during enemy swarms you are constantly hearing that annoying little buzzer and getting flashing blue and red lights dictating ‘dodge!’ or ‘parry!’ right away. It turns the combat into a very transparent sort of rhythm game that clashes with the cinematic feel they obviously wanted with the executions. All the buzzers, flashing lights, and blinking enemies (to signal when to do an execution) make it feel very artificial and videogame-y in a bad way.

Truly cinematic games do not rely so heavily on contrived signals. Ninja Gaiden 2, for example, did the whole “execution” thing better by making finishers really fast and signaled by enemies being visibly injured and not blinking bright red. More creative game design could have infused Space Marine 2’s actual gameplay with that unpredictable action movie vibe they clearly wanted to achieve. Helldivers 2 is a great example of this. The standard gameplay naturally creates constant moments of absolute cinema because every encounter can be approached a thousand different ways. You can load out with a bunch of turrets, lean into air strikes and orbital weapons, rely on drones or gas grenades or incendiaries or missile launchers or machine guns or whatever tickles your fancy. It is deliciously unpredictable. This is true of all the best action/adventure games, from Bloodborne to Bayonetta. In Space Marine 2, even though there is a good variety of weapons, there is only one right way to play, especially at higher difficulties.

The net result is that I lost the desire to try to master the game’s combat and conquer the most punishing difficulties. There is just too much RNG — too many swarms interrupting your attack animations, too many snipers, too many frantic searches for blinking enemies to do a finisher to get back some shield, too much hoping that a Carnifex and a Trygon don’t both do a red attack at the wrong timing guaranteeing you get downed on wave five of a siege, killing all your progress. You are more than welcome to just shout “git gud!” at me but I just didn’t find the juice to be worth the squeeze in terms of fun factor at higher difficulties. As for PVP, I gave it a few spins and was unimpressed, particularly because of how unviable melee is and the lack of interesting mechanics.

I found I had the most fun when I started exploring the mod scene. Hop on to Nexus and there are some neat addons that not only add more armor customization, new classes, and new weapons, but also rebalance combat — basically making it easier and more of a straight up power fantasy. You can have some really comfy times playing single player in this way. I appreciate that the game lets you use bots as squadmates. Their AI isn’t great but it gives the game longer shelf life, especially if you are offline or in private mode using mods.

If the gameplay really gels with you and you go deep into PVP or PVE, then Space Marine 2 is an “A” level game. For me it just didn’t click in that way. I still had a ton of fun with the campaign and online co-op missions. Mostly I just play single player when I feel like ripping and tearing some xeno scum. Due to the issues I laid out, in spite of my love of the franchise, I don’t see this game getting the hundreds of hours I have dumped into Helldivers 2. Only a handful of games garner that level of obsession from me (Nioh 2, Elden Ring, Street Fighter 6, Ninja Gaiden, to name some) and what they all have in common is that the skill ceiling is both rewarding and fun to master. Yet even lacking this I still strongly recommend Space Marine 2 both for action game fans and people looking to dip their feet into the world of Warhammer 40k. Even for a single campaign playthrough and some occasional online, it’s a hell of a good time.

Grade: B+