Recently, I’ve been making an effort to catch up with some of the games I purchased a while ago. Space Marine was one of them.
Warhammer 40,000 is a table top collectible hobby game that revolves around futuristic battles using miniatures. There have been a few games released that have attempted to capture this grim future, most notably is the Dawn of War series. Space Marine is the first game to take on a third-person shooter perspective. There are some first person shooter games, like Space Hulk and Firewarrior, but that is it.
My play through of Space Marine took roughly 9-10 hours on Normal difficulty.
What did I like? What stood out? Atmosphere and Story, Combat, Pace
If you’re a huge fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, then you’ll appreciate the atmosphere that the game sets for you. Battle is raging all around you for the most part, and you fight wave upon wave of Orks as you move to your next objective. The character interactions are true to what it would really be like, and the story is fairly well done for this type of game. You play as Captain Titus and he is one tough Space Marine. Your objective when you are landing is to secure the weapons on the forge world before the Orks can get to them. There are some plot twists and, if you have ever read any of the lore from Warhammer 40k, you’ll definitely enjoy it. New people to this universe may or may not like it, but I think it’s excellent.
Combat in the game really makes you feel powerful. It’s basically a hack and slash with some shooting mixed in. Some of the weapons are not as I would have imagined them to be, but otherwise it’s well done. It really gave me that feeling of what it would be like to be a Space Marine.
The games moves along at a fast rate for the most part, and that is a good thing. It doesn’t seem like there is too much combat between plot points, but there’s enough. It’s good to keep a good pace so that the combat doesn’t get boring or drawn out.
What did I dislike? What could have been better? Slightly Repetitive, Refilling Health, Extremely Straight Forward
The game’s combat isn’t really all that amazing. It’s awesome in the beginning and you do feel powerful, but it wears on you a bit later on. Not much variations in deaths or execution maneuvers. It would have been nice for there to be an upgrade system for weapons or some new moves to learn. I’ll be expecting something like that to be implemented into future Space Marine games, if there are any.
Regaining your health in Space Marine is a bit different. There are not health pick-ups, and your armour is the only thing that regenerates (it’s power armour, so it makes sense), but your health does not regenerate. It requires you to do a special execution move on enemies to regain health. This doesn’t really make any sense to me. I guess it could account for adrenaline, but that’s about it. I would have expected either regeneration or health pick-ups of some sort. It can be a bitch if you have no health left, and are expected to kill a bunch of Orks or a boss. Mind you, when you die, you restart from your last checkpoint with full health.
This game is linear. Extremely linear. There are no puzzles, and there are no experience points. You find new stuff as you move along, but there’s no real upgrade system. It’s a straight up third-person shooter, and that is all.
Overall
I didn’t get a chance to play the multi-player yet, but it sounds like it’s pretty fun. There is team based capture the flag, and death matches, and a co-op mode where you do a horde mode kind of scenario. I would suggest this game to fans of Warhammer 40,000 more so than those who are not. Fans should get it, non-fans can wait for a price drop. It’s a solid game, but hopefully they can do a lot more with the next installment.
