Just so we get this out of the way right off; I am a big fan of Warhammer 40K’s video games. I’ve played every Warhammer RTS that’s come out and I love them the way that some girls love chocolate. They can’t get enough and they eat it slowly; sensually even. So when I say that there are things I don’t like about this latest of games from Relic and THQ. It’s not because I either don’t understand or don’t appreciate the material. In fact, it’s because of this that I have some problems.
I certainly love the feel of the game’s controls. Every movement makes the player feel like a badass Space Marine. A seven foot titan of man who knows no fear and is filled with the power of the Emperor. Rushing into a horde of Orks with only your chain sword and bolter is no problem at all. Even the silly system of getting health from execution moves, once gotten used to, is a pretty good system. But I STILL would have preferred recharging health. Mostly because it would fit. Nanomachines within each Marine repairs their damage. So, really, the current system is just an excuse to do execution moves all the time. Not that, that’s a bad thing, these moves are cool and fun; even if their animation priorities can kill you if you do them at an inopportune time.
The variety of weapons in the game is vast and probably more than the average Marine would have on a mission. But it’s fun to play with all the different effects; and yes, some weapons work better in some situations than others. But I would have been happy to carry the war hammer and plasma bolter the whole game, but that doesn’t necessarily work in every situation the game puts in. Sadly…
Unfortunately this arsenal is the first thing that begins to chip away at Space Marine’s glossy armor. First, the game really never requires the player to use one weapon over another. So why have them in there? Also, the amount of cannon fodder in Parts 1-3 of the game can get really old unless the player is simply playing with different weapons. I would have liked to see more Chaos Marines and different daemons earlier in the game to make the game not only a little more varied but reduce the amount of battle fatigue that some of the sections can create. Chaos Marines are smart and more deadly than Orks. Which would have really changed the early game. Not that the final boss is anything to go crazy over.
I did really like, the mid-boss Ork battle. It was hard without being stupid. Also, I did like how it required the player to change up his tactics. That is what a boss battle should be. As much as I liked the fury meter in the game, I also felt that this was a weak way of handling crowd control. In the RTS games, the Marines have different equipment and powers they can activate; it would have been a lot of fun to explore these in a third person shooter. They have barely scratched the surface of this breath of choices in this game.
The rest of the game is great. Graphics, sound, even a descent story with likable characters. Especially Captain Titus. He is unwavering, he is a man who gets things done. The perfect UltraMarine. But he still puts people over mission, which is a nice touch to the game. The way, it is the game’s length is about right at around 6-9 hours depending on difficulty and how good the player is at the game. I died often, mostly from stupid mistakes I made.
Multiplayer… I loved it and hated it. The player is able to unlock different armors, that do nothing special, different perks(that unlock too slowly), some different weapons(that mostly do what your weapons do in single player), and the player gets three different classes of Marine. No Librarians, no TechPriests, and no crazy powers. Especially from the Chaos side of things, a Sorcerer would have made quite a difference. I like the modes (Team Deathmatch, and Capture and Hold). But it all ways seemed like the games devolved into one team standing on one side of the map shooting the other. The single player is all about melee and the multiplayer seems to be all about gun play. It is a very startling break. The melee in multiplayer exists and it can be good in some cases. But for the most part, it devolves into two guys mashing buttons until one guy wins or some one comes from behind and starts shooting. Having so few maps certainly makes it easy for new players to get into the game, but players will tire of them quickly. This could certainly be solved with some DLC. But I was playing in the launch week for the game, and it was already starting to become difficult to find games. Matchmaking had to put higher level players into lower level games just to fill up teams. Which created the problem that because so much is behind XP unlock walls, the lower level character the player has the weaker they are. One or two high level characters can completely destroy the balance between teams.
Probably more health would help to make multiplayer more interesting; but creating character classes around weapons seems limiting. I certainly would have liked to see a Librarian like in the XBLA game Kill Team. Which seems to be a much better representation of the Warhammer Universe. But has it’s own problems. I think a game that was a cross between Space Marine and Kill Team probably would have been the best way to go.
Would I buy Space Marine? No, but I would rent it. But if you find the multiplayer more compelling than I do; you would probably do well buying it. The multiplayer could easily occupy someone for a couple dozen hours at least. But, again, this isn’t a review…
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