Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Review

Set a few centuries after the original 2011 game, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 encompasses much of what makes the Warhammer series so great. Its dense lore is lathed throughout the campaign, its brutal warfare is delivered across every mission and its action kept me going throughout my time with the game.

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a sequel to the original 2011 game. While the team behind the project say you don’t have to have played the first game, I highly recommend you do. Either that or watch a catch-up video. Much of the story campaign revolves around Demetrian Titus and his past endeavours. There are important throwbacks to his career as an Ultramarine and his supposed heresy.

The campaign kicks off during an ongoing invasion by the Tyranids. These hideous overgrown insects have set their eyes on the planet of Kadaku. As the invasion begins, the Space Marines are sent in to fight them off. And so begins the explosive campaign in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

Throughout the thirteen story chapters, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is delivered as a juicy morsel of intense action and war. Gorgeous cutscenes help immerse you in the story while action-packed objectives kept me feeling involved in the fight. Every chapter felt incredibly well-crafted with large-scale assaults taking place in the distance, massive buildings collapsing around me and even the skybox lit up with falling debris and fleets of ships flying above.

There’s no shortage of polish here. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 feels like a good old action game we used to play back on PS3. Something you would binge during a weekend and leave satisfied and craving more. What starts out as an innocent call for aid turns into a mission to save the galaxy from a dark threat.

The climatic ending missions are even delivered with stellar CG cinematics in between that absolutely blew me away. Something you would expect from a World of Warcraft opening cinematic. The sheer production level here makes the campaign alone with the spend. Even if you don’t stick around for the end-game grind modes.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 doesn’t only excel in the scale of the story but it also feels incredibly fun to play. Every hour stood out in its own way. Be it flying around a large mountainside with a jetpack while enjoyingly squashing enemies on the ground below with a stomp or fighting off swarms of Tyranids while a bomb armed itself before we sent it into a skyscraper to blow it up.

This is all delivered in an experience that sort of reminded me of the first time I played Gears of War back in the day. You know when you booted that up after unboxing your fresh new Xbox 360 and you could not believe that games could look that good, I had a similar experience with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

The level design is impeccable with tall buildings towering around you and full environmental vistas rolling off into the distance. I often took a break from the action to take in the sheer attention to detail put into the world. Keep in mind that all missions in the game span different locations and planets so there is a lot to enjoy from a visual point of view.

Moment-to-moment gameplay in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 plays into the fantasy of living as a Space Marine. These large brutes are the frontlines in the war and killing everything in sight was quite therapeutic. Played as a third-person action, the game relies on your traditional shooting mechanics while also pushing a close-combat melee feature at the same time.

Running and gunning felt great. Various weapons expand the game’s shooting as the campaign plays out. Primary weapons come in long-range and short-range forms. The Bolt Carbine is a slow-shooting scout rifle with great precision but a slow fire rate. The Melta Rifle is a close-range thermal weapon that shoots out a large blast of fire energy. However, it has a low magazine and it also means getting up-close with the enemy.

Weapons feel great to use. Even the odd special weapon, while they didn’t last very long, had an impact. The Las Fusil, for example, is an incredibly powerful charged rifle that can take down even an elite brute with a headshot. Throughout the campaign, these unique weapons come and go but all provided a great taste of the variety the game has to offer.

When it comes to melee combat, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 kind of forces you to adopt the parry and dodge system. Dodging an attack with perfect timing triggers a countershot opportunity. Here, I would quickly press a button and shoot a targetted enemy dealing high damage while also granting me an armour buff. This can also be triggered by performing a powerful attack.

Parrying is a similar system. When a blue icon appeared on the screen, I had to press a button and parry the attack. Smaller enemies are executed as a result but larger ones can be countershot. Both would then give me an armour segment.

Melee works and feels as great to use as guns. The combination of shooting and the close-combat attacks, provide non-stop action. It all ties together beautifully when you’re shooting enemies, tossing grenades into another oncoming group and fending off the smaller enemies with melee attacks all at the same time. Again, the fantasy of being a Space Marine has never been as perfectly portrayed until now.

Of course, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 uses Saber’s Swarm Engine and it won’t be a review of the game without mentioning the swarms. Similar to World War Z, Space Marine 2 has moments where thousands of enemies come swarming at you. They climb on top of each other to scale walls and gather in the distance to add drama to the scene.

These scenarios aren’t used as often as in World War Z but when they were, it provided ample fun fighting off a literal swarm of aliens. I am actually glad this system wasn’t overly used because if you ask me, the Tyranids stacking on top of one another to scale a wall felt a bit out of character. They are aliens with sharp claws who can easily just climb walls anywhere without the need for a ladder of Tyranids to do so. There is another enemy type in the game and this feature just doesn’t work at all for them. Thankfully, there’s no scenario where it was used.

Granted, if you have played any other third-person co-op shooter, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 doesn’t really do much different. The mission-based gameplay revolves around doing something, shooting stuff, moving to the next objective and repeating the process. Along the way you’ll get new guns to change to, medical stims to refill your health and listen to radio chatter about the war.

However, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 does make this traditional shooter look and feel better than the rest. The authenticity of the series adds a lot of personality to the genre even if most of the fluff is pretty much the same as the past decade’s greatest shooters.

After the campaign, the same rinse-and-repeat process is then delivered in the post-game grind mode, Operations. These missions take place at key moments in the campaign missions. So when you encounter a story chapter that says “This squad is going here to do this”, the Operation mission is that squad’s mission that you’re playing.

This approach is rather brilliant if you ask me. To actively engage in another objective that you remember seeing as a different character from a different perspective, was a cool way to expand the story even more.

Operations is where you’ll spend most of your game time if you’re dedicated to the grind. With four difficulties and five classes to level up, it will keep you busy for a long time. These five classes all come with their own good and bad. Each also includes its own unique ability. The Heavy class can summon a shield and deflect ranged attacks, the Bulwark can drop a flag and grant armour to teammates inside of it. The Vanguard can then launch himself towards an enemy and deal heavy damage.

These classes are great to use and each also comes with its own perk trees to level up by simply replaying the missions. Higher difficulties grant more XP but you’ll need to have some perks to withstand the extra damage and enemies here. Weapons also level up and get better with increased damage, accuracy, cooldown reductions and other perks.

With all this in mind, Operations has a lot of life in it if you’re ready to replay the same six missions over and over again. The mode is okay but it isn’t without its flaws. For starters, some classes just don’t work as well as others essentially making them more awkward to use in some missions. The Sniper class, for example, is a tough sell. Not all encounters benefit from long range and the class just doesn’t seem made for the higher intense difficulty. This ammo-restricted class has a steep learning curve.

The melee-based classes are also squishy and often feel useless during heavy swarm encounters. They can just shoot with a pistol while the enemies scale walls around them. I also felt at times that when overrun with a swarm, melee felt unreliable when it came time to survivability.

Secondly, the six missions are only just that – six missions. This experience will grow tired very quickly in my books. Perhaps 10 missions would have offered a bit more excitement here but I just can’t see myself loving six missions for the next three months while we wait for more content. Especially given that every class and weapon will require playing these missions a few dozen, if not a hundred times, to max out perks and abilities.

I do have hope that Operations expands into something wonderful over time. Given how huge World War Z is now, and the sheer amount of content available in the game, I hope Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 gets there too. But I just expected a bit more than six missions at launch. Especially considering the campaign has zero replay value other than doing it for some data pad collectables. It would be great to have some of these missions available in Operations to pad the content a bit.

There’s also PvP called Enteral War. However, I wasn’t able to test this mode given the low server count during the review. I doubt I will play much of this mode anyway.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a fantastic game. The campaign alone is outstanding and the end-game grind will provide countless hours of entertainment. It will be a better game with more content in a year’s time so you have to ask yourself whether you want to spend the money on this now or wait for a fuller package later on. Everything about Space Marines 2 felt top-notch. This is a good action game that is made better with friends but again, those six Operation missions are incredibly tedious. I worry about how long the game will be able to keep the player base hooked at this point.

With that being said, I haven’t played an action game as exhilarating as this in a while. Space Marine 2 is an absolute blockbuster. It is just good fun. I can’t wait to see where the game goes from here. I am sure Space Marine 2 will be the game I go back to quite often as new content drops. Its future definitely looks exciting.

This Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review is based on a PS5 code sent to us by Focus Entertainment. The game is available in early access starting on 4 September for Gold and Ultimate Edition owners. Standard Edition releases on 9 September. You can pick up the game starting from R1399.