Warhammer 40k Space Marine Review
This is a game I played when it came out and I remember it positively for the gore and insanity, but negatively for the control awkwardness and philosophical emptiness. I remember none of the story except that we're killing orks and there's a half hearted twist at the end. I also remember it being super short, with a strange tendency to die suddenly.
I'm surprised at how clear my memories are, especially since I played this game so long ago and was a literal child then. But I do have a strange tendency to remember a lot of the media I consume. I suppose that's when I'm paying the most attention. I had one thing wrong tho, this game is not that short. I had a the whole chaos section at the end blacked out. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
What Is This Game?
This was my introduction to the Warhammer 40K universe, which I did not know was a franchise back then. I did search around and find a bunch of other Warhammer games, but other than Dawn of War, nothing really caught my childish fancy. Since I have gotten around to the franchise through Total War Warhammer, Necromunda: Hired Gun and Boltgun, all of which I adore with all my heart. Seeing as there's a sequel, I did my usual ritual and play the first one beforehand. There is also a remastered version, but I never like remasters, enhanced editions or what have you. I'll take it as it was and I'll be more than satisfied to save some disk space.
Gameplay
TLDR
You hack & slash, shoot and throw grenades at orks, while traversing an invaded manufacturing planet, rarely going through the beautiful surface and mostly being condemned to the deep halls of ruined factories.
World
The game feels rushed throughout, with no part feeling as fleshed out as it should be. The environment is beautiful at first and almost never again. Most of the game happens in dark tunnels or more spacious dark tunnels, or spacious runes. The combat feels awkward due to the lack of a dodge or parry mechanic, you just shoot your shot or they shoot theirs. You can avoid or attack. That's it.
Weapons
There is a lot of gun variety, with 4 possible slots, two of which you can't change (the pistol and boltgun). Shooting feels fine and ammo is plentiful. Plus there are turrets you can use or unmount, so I', happy there. But there is never a change to your grenades, start to finish - they are the same.You have a fury ability that recharges fast when you melee opponents and receive damage, slow if you shoot. It enhances your damage, fills your health bar and slows time when aiming.
The only other gameplay difference are the jump-pack sections, where you have a jetpack that enlarges your jump and makes your already wonky avatar control even wonkier. The first few I found fun, but the last one has you jumping over ruined platforms with falls that kill you and I found myself falling a lot.
Enemies
You start off killing orks in melee, ranged and tiny goblin variety. They have exploding creature thingies, large ones and rocket launchers. They easy to kill up front, but devastating ranged. In true orkish fashion, the minions are there to take your attention while the ranged or exploding ones actually do the job. It's a good strategy to do when you have countless orks to throw to the meat grinder. Doing the Stalingrad or just WW1.
By the 70% point of the game, the main enemies change to chaos and they are tougher to melee and do more damage from a distance. There are corrupted imperial guardsmen who blasst you incessantly but die at the slightest touch. Chaos Marines who do incredible damage from afar and take a while to kill, but sadly don't ever engage in melee. Sadly they never even come close to being an equal and it's a huge missed opportunity. The chaos daemons can easily overwhelm and defeat you, which is something the orks never do.
All in all, I'm happy with the variety and especially love the brief section where you get both types of enemies killing each other. I'm sad that went by so quickly.
Story
While I admit I'm not all too informed of the 40k lore (as opposed to the fantasy lore, for which I've played far too many hours of Total War & have read a few books and short stories), I get the techno-fascist Lord of the Rings meets Star Wars future. Much to learn, many books to read, games to play for the future.
But I barely need to know anything for this game, since the story is less than minimal. Titus (you) and two other Space Marines, the old friend and the follow the book rookie who's names really don't matter, even if they're kind awesome - the characters just don't do them justice. You try to save the imperial guardsmen that held off against the orks by flipping switches, activating defenses and just killing countless orks.
On the way you get a distress signal from an inquisitor who's about to fight for his life, so you divert to go save him. When we find him he's perfectly fine, nominally injured but kept in one piece by force magic, or whatever. But the dark corridors he's in are strangely deserted. He gets you to get and activate a power source that he shares no information for and after a series of tasks we accomplish for him, we open up a portal for a chaos invasion.
Turns out our inquisitor was a daemon in disguise, that killed the real inquisitor after his experiments with the wharp power source. So we kill all the orks and kill all the chaos daemons. Old friend space marine dies and by the book rookie tattles to the inquisition about our chaos resistance. The main daemon kept telling us we're resistant and we also survived a chaos wharp energy blast. Game ends with the inquisition and Titus wowing to find out.
Final Thoughts
I probably over-explained it, but I'm still new at this. Point is, the story is barely there and you get a decent time killing things with interesting weapons. A nice 7/10 game and I have a lot of respect for them. The perfect game to turn on when you get a long phone call and have such crippling ADHD that you cannot fully focus on an activity that only requires your voice. Go play it!