Into the grimdark
Scale is a hard thing to get right. Just because something is big, doesn’t mean it feels big. You have to have context, and a point of view that helps us empathize with our hero. Most games — and films — lose that in their hurry to make things “epic”.
Sitting down to test Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, I felt nervous whether the game could achieve this sense of scale. After all, Warhammer 40,000 is all about scale – and your infinitely small part in all things. I shouldn’t have worried: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a brilliant action horror game that captures the horror of Warhammer 40,000 beautifully.
For the uninitiated, Warhammer 40,000 takes place tens of thousands of years from now. 40k, to be precise. The grimdark future is a hopeless wasteland of infinite expansion, where humanity has lost its way eons ago. The destruction of everything is inevitable. The only thing humanity has left to decide is how they march into that eternal darkness.
Space Marines are the arm of the galactic empire. They’re no longer human, at least not in any way that matters. In the face of galactic hordes and unspeakable terror, they throw themselves into gory battle time and time again. Not for peace or the safety of civilians, but for their emperor, who lives on Earth, light-years away.
The hordes of hell
In Space Marine 2, you take the role of these creatures of war. But you’re not the hero, nor will you ever change the tide of what’s to come. Instead, you push against the inevitable, as the world around you falls to pieces. During the demo, which let me play through a campaign mission early in the story, I witnessed the hopeless future, and came away stunned and impressed.
First off, the hordes in Space Marine 2 are terrifying. They’re a tsunami of galactic horror, unspeakable in scope. Even as you kill hundreds, Space Marine 2 reminds you of the countless more that are to come. In the background, you can see waves of them wash away civilians and comrades. Each battle has the same Pyrrhic victory. No matter how many monsters you kill, the next encounter is already waiting.
Space Marine 2 didn’t make me feel like a badass. I felt unstoppable, to a degree, but never a hero. Instead, there’s a sense of grim determination. Like I need to get through this next encounter, because I’ll be damned if I let the monsters win. It put me in a headspace I rarely feel in action games, and I applaud it for that.
Visually, the monsters are clearly defined and easily understood. It makes their hordes that even scarier. Space Marine 2 is a gorgeous game, and that fidelity serves to terrify the player.
Brutal co-op
Your teammates, controlled by AI in solo and by two friends in co-op, share that burden. If one of you falls, it’s up to another to revive another. But in the midst of gory battle, it’s often impossible to take the time to help anyone else. You’re too busy hacking away at the thousands of monstrosities to even consider helping. While this sounds like a hindrance to gameplay, it actually enriches the experience. Space Marines aren’t compassionate creatures. They’re there to do the grim work, and that’s it. Placing the players into that situation creates a symbiosis of carnage. You’re a team, but only by definition.
I played the campaign mission solo, yet I found the AI partners responsive and reliable. Though Space Marine 2 is best experienced with friends, it’s good to see that it doesn’t shun the single player experience. The difficulty level felt challenging, but not unfair, even as I found myself going up against a gargantuan creature all on my own.
A gorgeous apocalypse
Space Marine 2 is a gorgeous game that is hard to look at. That’s because every aspect of the visuals serves to remind you that the world is coming to an end.
Great architecture collapses before your eyes. Human settlements burn in the distance. Endless rivers of blood flow freely. It is an intergalactic nightmare from which there is no escape. For fans of dark sci-fi, it is the pinnacle of what we’ve received to date. Space Marine 2 captures the hopelessness of its literary and tabletop influences perfectly.
On a more technical level, the animations are gorgeous, and I lost count how many unique variations of each attack, defense, and grimace I saw. Even in the hectic warfare, you can pick out highlights of brutal efficiency, as your Space Marine decimates monsters with a variety of weapons.
In one instance, I had to pause the game just to fully admire the epic bloodshed. Behind me, a horde of monsters crashed like a wave onto my comrades. Both firing their machine guns at the towering flesh before them. I was surrounded by insect-like creatures, their mandibles stretched out to claw me. In my fist, I held the throat of a monstrosity. My other hand held a sword that is also a chainsaw, stuck into the belly of the creature.
It is a scene Dante might dream of in his nightmares. A horrific beauty that encapsulates everything that makes Space Marine 2 special.
Space Marine 2 releases on September 9th. Look for a review closer to the release date.