Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2024
Gears of War is my jam and I've played them all since the first release. Warhammer 40,000, on the other hand, is completely unfamiliar territory. But how did I end up playing and enjoying Space Marine II so much?!
It’s not often I come across titles that play and look this close to a Gears of War title, I've gathered the first game also was very alike Gears but I have no experience with it. And sure, there are tons of third person shooters around, but most of them don’t really feel like a Gears title does.
Thankfully, since I have no prior knowledge to the Warhammer 40K universe either, I’ve had the pleasure of playing through Space Marine II with a friend who’s deep into the lore. Doing so has helped me better understand the various Space Marine classes, story, aliens and characters. It’s a quite messed up and violent lore to dig into, with a ton of small detail captured cleverly in the game. Having some background context before playing might be a good idea, then again, if you love Gears of War and just want a similar experience, go for it!
Let’s honour the emperor and look closer at Space Marine II!
Premise of the story is that the Space Marine you play, called Titus, has served his sentence of punishment after being accused of Heresy. He's been put in charge of a Deathwatch team, tasked for special and secretive missions behind enemy lines. In this team he’s accompanied by two additional Ultra Marines, all stationed on the hub world of the game: a massive battle barge spaceship. From here, you can engage in the main story missions, either with AI controlled teammates or real players in coop, as well as side-missions titled "operations" and multiplayer modes.
You see, there’s another team of three space marines, which take on tasks required for Titus' team to succeed, you meet and hear about them during the main story missions. These side-missions take place alongside the main story but often in other areas of the battlefield. They feel just as fleshed out as the missions with Titus and combined together the campaign expands up from a 6-8 hour length to 10-12 hours on normal difficulty.
Released: 2024
Gears of War is my jam and I've played them all since the first release. Warhammer 40,000, on the other hand, is completely unfamiliar territory. But how did I end up playing and enjoying Space Marine II so much?!
It’s not often I come across titles that play and look this close to a Gears of War title, I've gathered the first game also was very alike Gears but I have no experience with it. And sure, there are tons of third person shooters around, but most of them don’t really feel like a Gears title does.
Thankfully, since I have no prior knowledge to the Warhammer 40K universe either, I’ve had the pleasure of playing through Space Marine II with a friend who’s deep into the lore. Doing so has helped me better understand the various Space Marine classes, story, aliens and characters. It’s a quite messed up and violent lore to dig into, with a ton of small detail captured cleverly in the game. Having some background context before playing might be a good idea, then again, if you love Gears of War and just want a similar experience, go for it!
Let’s honour the emperor and look closer at Space Marine II!
Premise of the story is that the Space Marine you play, called Titus, has served his sentence of punishment after being accused of Heresy. He's been put in charge of a Deathwatch team, tasked for special and secretive missions behind enemy lines. In this team he’s accompanied by two additional Ultra Marines, all stationed on the hub world of the game: a massive battle barge spaceship. From here, you can engage in the main story missions, either with AI controlled teammates or real players in coop, as well as side-missions titled "operations" and multiplayer modes.
You see, there’s another team of three space marines, which take on tasks required for Titus' team to succeed, you meet and hear about them during the main story missions. These side-missions take place alongside the main story but often in other areas of the battlefield. They feel just as fleshed out as the missions with Titus and combined together the campaign expands up from a 6-8 hour length to 10-12 hours on normal difficulty.
In addition, operations allow the player to make a custom space marine. Choosing soldier classes and colour themes from the Warhammer 40K lore. While the main three protagonists sport their blue Ultra Marine battle armours, making your own armour is surprisingly fun! It allows you to colour each part of the armour individually, as well as unlock parts to swap out and add details like leather satchels and ornaments to them. Each soldier class has its own special ability and weapon set too.
You can even upgrade the weapons and skills for each class. These upgrades are shared with the multiplayer mode, so all XP earned in team deathmatches and operations are counted as one. An annoyance here though, is that the XP earned is stingy and there's a really slow grind to finally get to the spacesuit parts and weapons upgrades you want.
For coop enthusiasts I'm happy to see that the progression and collected items like data slates is shared for all players that join the campaign. As such, you can continue your progression by yourself if you don't want to play coop anymore. Together with my friend we could easily fill the third AI companion slot with real players too. Sadly, we did run into some connection issues now and then. Resulting in all players being sent back to their individual battle barge hubs, having to rejoin and restart the current mission.
The multiplayer deathmatch fundamentals are there, but as it stands I'd heavily recommend playing Gears 5 for multiplayer as a similar experience and with a larger variety of modes. That said, Gears online requires serious training in cover mechanics, not present in Space Marine II, and as such the learning curve is steep.
When it comes to gameplay Space Marine II really delivers. It has a heavy, over the shoulder, third person shooter feel very reminiscent of Gears of War. So much that fans of that franchise will feel at home at once! Same goes for the limited weapons you carry; one main gun, a sidearm and a handful of grenades. Each bullet feels immensely powerful though, almost one shot killing small enemies, while large enemies take quite a beating to take down. You can do rolls to avoid fire, but not take cover behind objects.
Differentiating itself from Gears is the added melee combat, ranging from a fast combat knife, to a classic Warhammer 40K chainsaw sword, a medieval-like electrical sword and a massive heavy hammer. In addition, there are parry blocks and dodge rolls. The parry and dodge mechanic are given coloured coded, pre-warnings, on screen before an enemy attacks. Thus requiring the player to either parry or dodge to avoid massive damage.
I understand their addition, but I felt it made the larger enemies like bullet sponges and having to cope with the insane amount of enemies while parrying in addition to just dodging quickly becomes overwhelming. When you finally have damaged large enemies enough they'll start blinking red, similar to Doom (2016), allowing you to run up to them and finish them off in an extremely violent but entertaining finishing move.
Each mission has lovely detailed levels, albeit a lot of the visual splendor works mostly as massive backdrops to give a sense of the size of the battles, rather than being directly interactive. It works well to depict the sense of scale, covering that the playable area is mostly a linear path through each level. The most unrestricted levels are ones where you’re equipped with a rocket backpack, allowing more movement freedom and a vertical approach to attacks.
There’s an eye for the smaller detail in the close environments too, especially the indoors ones. Depicting tons of Warhammer 40K lore if you look closely, fans of the franchise will absolutely love going around and soaking it all in and finding easter eggs. Even the main battle barge, hub world, in between missions is full of detail and movement.
Visually it's a very impressive experience, with enough variation even though there's an overall heavy industrial them and planet fauna reused throughout. Each mission cleverly depicts quite different areas of the planets you visit, so while they're not that many in number, they feel visually distinct from each other.
There's and impressive amount of visual effect going on too, from space battles in the background, huge swarms of flying creatures to heavy bombardment on battlefields with fireballs raising skywards. In close combat there's lots of blood and gore effects as your gun rips through aliens!
Apart from the massive battlefield scenes, one particular area stood out to me as both visually impressive and unique. It's a level where you travel deep inside a research center. Here you have to use flame throwers to get past hundreds of tiny creatures running about on the floor. The way the flames light up the dark environment and how well fire is depicted is breathtaking. It puts shivers down your spine every time the flame lights up hundreds of little alien faces as you burn your way out of the facility!
On the Xbox Series X I played on, you can choose from a picture or performance mode, basically 30fps vs 60fps. However, we're talking a substantial resolution gulf here: 4K vs 1080p. A throwback to how Gears of War 4 was divided when running on the Xbox One X.
While I understand many will opt for the sharp and crisp resolution mode, I personally can’t do without the high framerate for responsive controls in hectic and speedy shooters like this. However, the end result is a blurrier picture on a large TV when you stop to admire distant objects and backdrops in performance. During combat the 60fps is very welcome and the lower resolution isn't as noticeable.
Even if you have no prior knowledge to the Warhammer 40k universe or previous titles from the franchise, they span a lot of genres and generations of hardware after all, but love Gears of War; I can highly recommend buying this!
Overall, I'm super happy with Space Marine II. It really went so much further than my expectations and showcases some really impressive technical sides to depicting a detailed Warhammer 40K world, while at the same time being a gritty and fun shooter. It's a fantastic stopgap amidst a lack of new Gears of War releases. Scratching that itch for a brutal, heavy and gritty third person shooter.
Campaign is perhaps on the short side, and while I appreciate the visuals, there's a little lack of interaction with the actual environments. Can't put my finger on it, maybe I'm so used using the environment being cover like Gears?! Naturally, the main protagonists come off a bit one-note personalities too, but this kind of reflects the dedication and brainwashed world the space marines are part of, it suits the setting.
Perhaps more variety could've been introduced through using the Battle Sisters as a female alternative for character options, bringing variety to dialogue. That said, it's an interesting story to follow and some of the cinematics are really entertaining to watch with the massive scale to battles, buildings, spaceships and aliens.
It’s a tough and gameplay focused experience though, so it won’t suit casual players that mostly play for story, requiring shooter skills amidst the chaos of tons of enemies. Those that do love a gritty and violent shooter are in for a treat both in gameplay and visuals, though!
