"Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II" Review

Publisher: Focus Entertainment

Developer: Saber Interactive

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed for), Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows

Let's get this out of the way right from the get-go: I'm not really a Warhammer 40k person. I have a passing interest in the lore and the aesthetic, but I generally don't do tabletop stuff or collect miniatures, so I can't really say I'm a "fan." In terms of games, the only one I've played within that universe is Necromunda: Hired Gun. I loved that game, but I couldn't give it a good score or put it on the best games of the year list because it was just too technically flawed. So, that's the impression I've had of Warhammer 40k games: if they're good, they're also super janky....and from what I understand, that's an accurate impression! With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that I never played the original Space Marine. But it's really not like there's much actual story that can happen in these games...it's the lore that's the hard part for newcomers! Anyway, I pretty much knew I was going to give this one a shot because 1) I did enjoy Necromunda, 2) the gameplay actually looked pretty promising, and 3) this year has been kind of bland and the GOTY list needs all the help it can get...so here we are. So, what did I, a heretic to the Imperium of Man by way of unfamiliarity, think of this evidently new standard for Warhammer 40k games? Let's find out!

In Space Marine II, you play as Titus, who I thought was modeled after Henry Cavill but I might actually be wrong about that and he was just going to appear in the Amazon show? I don't really know for sure, but either way, the man looks like someone took Henry Cavill's face, stuffed a bike pump into his mouth, and started pumping. He's just like any character in this universe: big, dumb, and loyal to a fault. Having served his penance for suspected heresy at the end of the last game (evidently), Titus is put in charge of a new team of Ultra Marines and ordered to take part in the fight against the Tyranid scourge. There's really not much to talk about on the story front because as I already said, you can't really do too much with a story in this universe...and that's kind of one of the draws of it. I may only have a passing familiarity with the lore here, but even I know that one of the best parts of the whole thing is its consistency. If you look at a tabletop session where one player is a muscular bald guy with racial slurs tattooed on his head and the other is a string bean guy with a blue man bun and a "be kind" shirt, you have no way of knowing which of these players is committing the worse war crimes in-game. Everybody is evil and everything is terrible all the time, and when you engage with this universe, part of the fun is choosing which brand of horrible terrible awful unforgivable no good very bad fascist you want to be. That's what I mean by consistency. There's no mamby-pamby "I'm starting to doubt that the Emperor is actually all that and a bag of chips" storylines to be found. It's all 100% unwavering loyalty to the cause at all times, and it's glorious to see. There's a point in the story, for instance, where one of the squadmates goes AWOL temporarily after an emotional moment, and after that segment ends, Titus goes over to chew him out. Rather than giving this character any kind of encouragement or "think of all the people you'd be letting down" speeches, Titus rips him a gaping new one because his life belongs to the Emperor, and it's the Emperor's decision when and where he dies, not his. And while Titus doesn't impose any disciplinary action at that point, he makes it clear that one more bit of faltering will result in a report to the proper authorities (which would likely end with that squad mate being tortured in ways no modern person can fathom). But despite what I've just finished saying, this isn't a totally flat, totally brutal and evil story. No, there's a strong thematic through-line in this story about comaraderie and trust that almost reaches Lord of the Rings-level vulnerable masculinity...if that were applied to the forces of Sauron instead of the fellowship. "You had reasonable doubts about my leadership and I did nothing to assuage them, the fault lies with me" said by an orc captain because that lack of trust within the garrison has been keeping them from slaughtering all the humans as efficiently as they can, in other words. I've kind of been rambling a bit here, but it's just refreshing to see something like this stick to its guns (no pun intended) so strictly. So if you like the general vibe of your average Warhammer 40k story, you'll like this one too....especially a specific sequence in the final mission (anyone who has played it immediately knows what I mean).

I sure did ramble a lot there despite opening that segment up by saying there isn't much that can be done with story, huh? Well, let's go ahead and move on to gameplay. Full disclosure going in: I'm allergic to all things co-op and multiplayer outside of From Software's library. So, I played exactly none of the multiplayer (a solid at least half of the content) and only played with AI companions. And if you just said "ooh, poor guy" under your breath, you're correct in that despite this being an option, it was very clearly not the intended way to play. So, take that with you as you read on. 

Space Marine II is ultimately an early-2010's style squad-based shooter with the only major difference being a lack of a cover system. As Titus, you carry a melee weapon and two guns. The melee weapons are pretty simple: you choose based on what speed you want. If you want to swing fast but not do quite as much damage, you'll choose the tiny knife, whereas if you want to do the most damage possible, you'll pick one of the heavy ones (like the titular warhammer). The guns, on the other hand, are both more complicated and less. They're more complicated in that they have other things to consider such as magazine size and range...but they're also less complicated than their melee compatriots in that I couldn't possibly have cared any less during my playthrough and therefore can't comment too much. All I wanted was the bolt rifle model with the grenade launcher, and literally all other guns were ones I just shrugged at. If you're playing with friends, trying to do this campaign on harder difficulties, or other cases like that, you might want to pay more attention than I did, but you really don't need to all that much otherwise. 

So, regardless of what loadouts you choose before you embark on a mission, you'll ultimately always be doing the same thing. You'll be facing waves upon waves of hundreds upon hundreds of Tyranids (think Xenomorphs but more insectoid) as they rush you and stumble over themselves like they're in World War Z (a comparison that all critics are legally required to make). Surely you can understand why I didn't really care too much about the kind of gun I used now, right? With the bolt rifle I could spray and pray the hordes of enemies and use the attached grenade launcher to buy some breathing room when necessary. That became especially handy during some of the story objectives involving defense. But more on that in a bit. Besides that gun, I tended to use the heavier melee weapons to cut massive swaths through the hordes like Sauron during the prologue of Fellowship of the Ring (huh...two LotR references in one review...must be time to rewatch). This all works pretty well, but there's a little bit more variety than I'm making it sound like there is. For one thing, amongst the hordes there are higher-threat enemies that require some actual strategic play to defeat. For another thing, individual members of the horde will often launch special attacks that need to be parried. So even at the game's dumbest, most mongoloid moments, you'll actually have to pay some attention. 

Speaking of needing to pay some attention, you may recall I mentioned objectives earlier. As wonderful as it would've been for this game to be so deep in the lore and so giant forehead knuckle-dragging mongol caveman monkey brain that all you do is shoot from beginning to end with no dialogue whatsoever, you do actually have things you're trying to do in any given mission other than just killing. Realistically, a good 3/4 of the objectives boil down to "survive for x amount of time" or "protect this thing for a while"...which (again, realistically) means that 3/4 of the objectives just see you killing, but with some additional story context and a need for some additional focus. As for the remaining 1/4 of the objectives, you'll have to interact with something for a limited amount of time while your teammates cover you to keep you from getting killed by enemies. 

And that's ultimately what I bring the objectives up to discuss: your teammates. Remember how I said playing with AI ones clearly wasn't the correct way to play? Well, it's because the AI is dumber than a sack of hammers. They thankfully do a great job of healing you when you're down (because that will happen even on easy mode), but you can only get downed a handful of times before you have to restart, so they actually do have to do things other than healing well....and they don't. They're always off doing their own thing, and thankfully they're at least killing enemies, but they'll be off to the sides killing enemies on the edge of the horde. Meanwhile, you'll be getting overwhelmed with basically no help....until you run out of health, at which point a teammate will come heal you before going off to shave off the edge of the horde again. As a result, I legitimately can't imagine this game being beatable on higher difficulties if you aren't with other people. I got through a couple of missions on normal difficulty, but before too long things were getting too desperate too quickly and I had to drop it down to easy. Obviously there isn't anything inherently wrong with playing something on easy difficulty, but ideally harder difficulties should still feel doable. 

When AI isn't too smart, it tends to be a fairly effective harbinger of jank to come. The same can be said when a game belongs to the Warhammer 40k lore, as I've already mentioned. However, the only clear misstep was a couple framerate drops towards the end of the game. The character models definitely aren't the best and I've already said my piece about the AI, but if memory serves, there weren't any crashes or texture pop-in or what have you. Clearly, the budget went into making the hordes feel impossibly large, and while I would've liked a more stable framerate, it's impossible to deny how far that horde money goes. Just about everyone who has played the game remembers their first time seeing a horde come over the horizon, writing it off as just a little effect in the distance to artificially inflate the sense of scale, then realizing that they were actually going to have to fight it. Imagine Days Gone, but good and with characters not nearly as concerned about being viewed as gay. So, a far more solid report card than Warhammer games typically get, even though it isn't perfect.

Warhammer 40k: Space Marine II is an old-fashioned game in the best possible sense of the word: a gameplay-first experience with an unapologetic, honest dedication to its world, no microtransactions in its single-player campaign, and an overall sense that it was made with love. Having played none of the multiplayer or co-op, I think I probably had the worst experience you can get, and even that was pretty fantastic. So, even if you don't know anything about the lore, if you have a couple buddies you can fire this thing up with, I think you'll probably have an excellent time for far longer than I did!

Let us review:

Lackluster single-player - 1.0

Some technical concerns - 0.5

The final score for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II is...

8.5/10 - Near Fantastic

Good job, Saber Interactive, good job!