SPACED OUT

After a strong first impression, WARHAMMER 40K: SPACE MARINE 2 runs out of steam

- Robin Valentine

Over the course of its roughly eight-hour story campaign, Space Marine 2 presents the Warhammer 40,000 setting at a whole new level of spectacle. It feels huge, authentic, and visually sumptuous—the kind of proper, grown-up, bigbudget experience fans of the tabletop game have been dreaming of for years. But the sad truth is that I was tired of actually playing it before those eight hours were even up.

It’s disappointing, because the game does make a fantastic first impression. As Space Marine warrior Lieutenant Titus, returning from the first game, you’re dropped straight into a war against the insectile tyranids, and it’s simply awe-inspiring looking out at the horizon and seeing their forces crawling over an entire mega-city. Saber Interactive’s swarm tech, already perfected in otherwise limp co-op shooter World War Z, is used to wonderful effect to sell the vast scale of the war.

Hyper-gothic architecture towers over you, and as a geneticallymodified, power-armored supersoldier, you tower over the normal humans who scurry around your feet. Like the first game, Space Marine 2 understands that the warriors of the Imperium need to feel massive, weighty, and powerful, far beyond your usual bulky sci-fi protagonist.

In combat you’re a force of nature, raining down explosive hell on tides of enemies before drawing a combat knife as long as a man and crashing into melee like a furious steam train. Larger elite enemies striding through the flood, such as grinning, chitinous tyranid warriors, are your priority targets. You ram through the crowd to reach them for melee duels, parrying their blows and smashing at their defenses until they stand woozy and stunned, ready for an execution animation that restores your shield bar and sees them ripped to gory pieces and frequently stabbed to death with their own appendages.