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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 | Previews are up

Draugoth

Gold Member
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The mission I played, aptly named Invasion, had me carve a path of corpses through jungle swamps and concrete bunkers during the early stages of an alien attack. The invading Tyranids (think Starship Troopers’ bugs as designed by HR Giger) arrive in swarms, courtesy of Saber’s impressive World War Z engine which can render a thousand enemies on screen. A tidal wave of raptor-like Hormagaunts, supported by handfuls of imposing Warriors, crash against barricades and buildings. They even clamber over each other to form writhing towers that scale shear walls. While at range your guns will easily tear these crowds apart, there’s simply not enough ammunition in the galaxy to hose them all down before they break through your line of fire. That’s where Space Marine 2 switches into melee mode, and the satisfying strikes of its chainsword come into play.

Shooting feels sturdy and powerful, but it's in the middle of blood-soaked brawls that Space Marine 2 really comes alive. Saber has put together a well-judged melee system that has depth thanks to combos, parries, and dodges, but is still simple enough for you to largely revel in the slaughter. The smaller Hormagaunts are essentially powerless against your strikes; those that try to leap at your face can be caught mid-air and slammed into the ground for an instant kill. But the sheer number of them means they can gnaw away at your armour. Should they break through, they’ll be able to damage your precious health bar, which is primarily replenished with rarely found medical kits. Staying alive in the midst of these hordes, then, is not quite as easy as it first seems for your eight feet-tall, armour-clad Ultramarine.

Executions are gloriously gory, with the chainsword cutting its way through flesh and bone in a spray of blood.


This is where Space Marine 2’s executions come into play. They’re a bit like Doom’s Glory Kills - if you can perform a brutal execution move on an enemy, part of your four-segment armour bar is replenished. The bigger and nastier the enemy, the more armour you regain. And so when fights in my demo began, I instantly sought out the bigger Warriors. They’re a much more imposing challenge. With arms made of swords, they make for a proper duel. Parries are vital, as is watching out for unblockable attacks that you need to dodge. Performing a good counter or a stun combo opens them up to a point-blank pistol shot to the face. Do enough damage, and you can eventually trigger an execution finisher. These are gloriously gory, with the chainsword cutting its way through flesh and bone in a spray of blood that repaints your blue Marine red. It’s a reward in itself, but the real prize is the replenished armour that keeps you in the fight.

And so appears the flow of Space Marine 2. With so few medic packs in the demo mission, I desperately needed to keep my armour topped up. In the latter half of my hands-on I had just a smidge of health left, and so my survival completely hinged on my ability to keep those executions coming. It altered how I approached each encounter; I’d thin out a crowd with bursts of gunfire and grenades, but ensure plenty of targets remained alive so I could charge into melee and perform those executions. It made the entire second half of the mission a tense battle for survival; my Ultramarine’s life quite literally depended on tearing the guts out of disgusting Tyranids.


What I’d like to see next is how that melee system scales and evolves with different enemy types. This demo was pulled from the campaign’s second mission, and featured just two main Tyranid types plus some exploding poison bugs. But Games Workshop, the company behind the Warhammer 40,000 universe, sells over 25 different Tyranid creatures for the tabletop game, and there’s even more in the lore. While I love the horde effects created by the Hormagaunts and the melee duels with the Warriors, they’re likely not enough to sustain an entire campaign. My hope is that the story frequently offers new challenges via bigger and stranger Tyranids, such as the towering Hive Tyrants and flying Gargoyles (the latter of which could be seen in the skies of the demo, but didn’t yet pose a threat). If each type of Tyranid builds on the melee and shooting fundamentals in different ways, then I think Space Marine 2 will avoid exhausting itself within a few missions and prove a real blast.

While the ranged-to-melee combat cycle kept me engaged throughout the demo, the constant love for the 40k universe had me delighted. Saber clearly knows its stuff; your protagonist, Lieutenant Titus, wears lore-accurate Primaris armour. He fights alongside a regiment of Cadian guardsmen outfitted with Lasguns and Basilisk cannons pulled straight from the tabletop. The Tyranids are a hivemind, and so killing the more senior Warriors stuns surrounding enemies as their synaptic connections are severed. And across just one mission I used almost every type of modern Boltgun, from the basic rifle to the tactical carbine and turret-like Heavy Bolter. Each has a different firing pattern and effective range, which made them distinct despite each using the same explosive ammunition. For more devastating results I had a play around with a Meltagun, which evaporated dozens of Tyranids in a single trigger pull. It made me excited to see how many other wild weapons from the setting are included in the full campaign (fingers crossed for a Neo-Volkite pistol).

The uncomplicated spirit of late 2000s campaigns is loud and clear.


Best of all, every weapon I picked up was a good, old-fashioned shooter gun; no stats, no mods, no power levels. You pick 'em up, pull the trigger, and the alien splatters across the ground. This is definitely a modern iteration of Space Marine thanks to the melee combat, but - in this mission, at least - the uncomplicated spirit of late 2000s campaigns is loud and clear.

I’ve been waiting for Space Marine 2 for over a decade. For 40k fans, it’s a pretty big deal. It’s a big deal for Games Workshop, too; the latest edition of tabletop Warhammer 40,000 is also focused on the war between the Space Marines and Tyranids. This game is at the very centre of the universe. But I think that faith may be rewarded. I really like what I’ve seen so far; a solid balance between the simple linear shooters of yesteryear and the complex melee fighters of today. An entire campaign of what I played in the demo risks becoming repetitive, but there’s an entire universe of weapons, enemies, and concepts to build a varied set of missions around. I hope that’s what Saber has done. Because, as my Primaris Lieutenant stomped up a ramp made of a thousand Tyranid corpses, it was clear that Space Marine 2 has at the very least fully captured the grimdark spirit of the fearless Adeptus Astartes.


 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
My God.

I need to watch the videos, but the written preview has me very, very hyped. This could be a major hit to end a year of fantastic games .
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Cannot wait for this, there's been no inkling of a release date yet, yeah? I want it to be this year, but it's really hard to tell, lol.
 

R6Rider

Gold Member
For the Emperor!

Space Marine Army GIF by Xbox
 

hinch7

Member
Bigger and better than the first game sound good to me. The vastly improved graphics and scale of the battles looks darn epic too.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Cannot wait for this, there's been no inkling of a release date yet, yeah? I want it to be this year, but it's really hard to tell, lol.

Only a vague "winter 2023", but that's still this year. The fact previews are going out is a promising sign.
 

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
Since this is a direct sequel with the same character from the first one, I wonder if they're going to go into his Chaos taint.

The game seems to be focused on the Tyranids but I'd also like to know more about how Titus was affected by Chaos.
 

VN1X

Banned
Oh fuck... I had forgotten this was UE5. :lollipop_anguish:

*pensively strokes 6800XT*
 
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Romulus

Member
Looks fucking great. My biggest pet peeve is the Space Marine not wearing a helmet. All that R&D expense, training etc. and they don't wear a helmet when hordes surround them? Not only that, but the helmet looks badass. Hopefully, there is some customization.
 

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
Looks fucking great. My biggest pet peeve is the Space Marine not wearing a helmet. All that R&D expense, training etc. and they don't wear a helmet when hordes surround them? Not only that, but the helmet looks badass. Hopefully, there is some customization.
Yeah you're right but to be fair the original game is not canon. It's one of the few instances in which a Warhammer 40,000 video game doesn't fit into the lore.

Maybe they changed that or they will but last I checked the original game was not.
 

Apocryphon

Member
This looks outstanding! I’m in chapter 18 of Fallen Angels atm so I should be able to wrap up the Horus Hersey before this drops. Super excited.
 

Trogdor1123

Member
This looks outstanding! I’m in chapter 18 of Fallen Angels atm so I should be able to wrap up the Horus Hersey before this drops. Super excited.
How many books are there in the series? I bought the first 5 books on audible and will buy the rest as the go on sale but when is the “ideal” time to start the siege of terra series?
 

Trogdor1123

Member
Currently there are 62 books in the series and more to come. You have many, many more to purchase and read.
That is a lot! Isn’t the last in the series coming soon? I’m 1/2 the first book and loving it. Bought the ciphias cane books too. Those are a gem.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Trust me, don’t try to read the whole heresy. Some of the books are absolute garbage. Of the 60 plus, I’d say no more than a dozen are required reading.

Watch this:



Thank you.

The amount of books in this series has always put me off. Glad to know I don't need to read all of them.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Thank you.

The amount of books in this series has always put me off. Glad to know I don't need to read all of them.

Fuck no. There’s a lot of stuff that’s easily skippable, that doesn’t really factor into the heresy story all that much, unless you really want to read about a specific chapter. I’ve read about twenty, and that’s more than enough for me. You could read from Horus Rising to Legion, then only a few more across the series, before getting to the siege of terra stuff. No point doing more than that, especially when there are so many great 40k books to read as well.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Yeah you're right but to be fair the original game is not canon. It's one of the few instances in which a Warhammer 40,000 video game doesn't fit into the lore.

Maybe they changed that or they will but last I checked the original game was not.

I hope they do make it canon. Always felt a bit odd the first one not being, with Titus captain at the same time as Sicarius. That was the issue, I think…

They need to do the old ‘unreliable narrator’ bit and stick Titus in the timeline properly somewhere. Everything is canon - not everything is true.

EDIT: Titus is a lieutenant primaris now, so this is indomitus era. That’d make him canon, I guess.
 
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Fbh

Member
Looks so freaking good.
I miss games like these.

Gives me vibes of a Gears 4 if it actually was Gears 4 and not "The B cast from Hunger games fights robots".
 

Apocryphon

Member
Umm wow. What ones would a person need to read to be up to date? The first 5 I see and then it seems to be all over the place
Something like…

Horus Rising
False Gods
Galaxy in Flames
A Thousand Sons
Flight of the Eisenstein
Prospero Burns
Fulgrim
Legion
The First Heretic
Aurelian
Deliverance Lost
The Unremembered Empire
Praetorian of Dorn
The Garro Anthology
Vengeful Spirit
Mechanicum
Master of Mankind

Honestly though, the first 5 and then most people decide which Space Marine chapters or narrative threads they really like and go from there.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
I am so gonna buy this game.

Same. Day one. This has become one of my most anticipated games of the year.

I just hope it's not just the Tyranids we'll be fighting against. I think Chaos Demons would work well with this tech.

I want to team up with the Grey Knights and take on a Bloodthirster!
 

Dazraell

Member
Really looking forward to play this. Tyranids are such a great idea for a main enemy. I still have to finish original Space Marine, but I enjoyed the hell out of it based on levels I completed
 
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