Space Marine 2 – you can’t kill the Metal (Focus Interactive)
The best-looking Warhammer 40,000 game so far features thousands of angry aliens, gallons of blood, and one very overworked chainsword.
Star Wars Outlaws is by no means a perfect game but its portrayal of a galaxy far, far away is authentic enough that it forgives a number of minor sins, if you’re a fan. Both Star Wars and Warhammer 40,000 have had plenty of video game tie-ins in the past but for both these news games their worlds are recreated in a level of detail – in terms of the quality and scale of the graphics – that has never been seen before.
Exploring the seedy side of the Star Wars universe has been a real pleasure but Space Marine 2 is arguably even more exciting for its fans, as the grim darkness of the far future has never looked as impressive as it does here. With hordes of bloodthirsty aliens filling the screen at every moment and the Imperium of Man pictured in fascinating detail, in terms of its technology and society, this is the most immersive the franchise has ever been.
As an adaptation of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Space Marine 2 is essentially perfect and if you’re a fan then nothing we say subsequently is going to put you off wanting to play it. For everyone else though it’s a frustrating game, that comes perilously close to being something truly special but just doesn’t quite get there in terms of either storytelling or gameplay.
If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of Space Marine 1, it was a quickly forgotten third person shooter from 2011, by Homeworld creator Relic Entertainment and published by THQ. The sequel is published by Focus Entertainment and made by World War Z developer Saber Interactive. We guess maybe they thought the name was too good to give up, but for whatever reason this is a direct sequel to the original – although with a 200 year time jump that means you don’t really need to know anything that happened before.
The original Space Marine was also very good at maintaining an authentic Warhammer 40,000 vibe but it was let down by simplistic and repetitive combat, with too little variety in enemies and set pieces. And despite a great central performance by Mark Strong, the story and characters proved disappointingly unengaging.
Space Marine 2 has exactly the same problems, only less so. The plot picks up with Titus (now voiced by Taken’s Clive Standen) being reinstated as an Ultramarine, after being suspected of heresy at the end of the last game. In the original, the primary enemies were Orks but here it’s Tyranids, a cross between dinosaurs and the xenomorphs from Alien (and very clearly the ‘inspiration’ for the Zerg in Starcraft).
The Tyranids are invading a number of Imperium planets and so you’re called in to delay them long enough to evacuate important assets, although you soon realise there’s more to what’s going …read more
Source:: Metro
