Crush The Heretics
A review of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, "videogame ass videogames", and heartily shouting battle cries with a friend.
“In the grim darkness of the far future… There is only war…”
You should play Space Marine II.
Like, seriously.
You should drop what you are doing, buy the game at full price, and start playing it as soon as possible.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II is that good of a game.
I am a casual Warhammer 40k ‘enjoyer’.
I love the lore, mostly. I love watching YouTube explainer videos on all the factions and characters that make up the people that populate the vast outer spaces of the 40k universe.
(Shout out to Bricky on YouTube, he is a fantastic content creator who primarily focuses on everything Warhammer 40k. Check his stuff out for sure!)
I love the dead seriousness of the stories and characters of Warhammer 40k.
Everyone in the universe is a bummer, and rarely are there moments of levity in a story that takes place in the universe of 40k.
Everyone has serious jobs, and they put on serious faces while they do them, which mostly involves seriously maiming or dismembering their foes.
Chances are, if a character in a WH40k story is happy and smiling, it could very well be that either they have one or two screws loose on their cybernetics, or they just really love killing the enemy. It’s mostly the latter…
After all, there is only war.
I can’t speak to the entire history of 40k, and its minute story details.. Honestly, I don’t even think I am that knowledgeable enough to understand what is going on on a basic plot and lore level, if asked by a veteran of the franchise’s lore. I would love to be as up to date and ‘with it’, if I could be– but it’s a ‘time’ thing, for me.
There is also the reality of there being quite a lot of WH40k ‘stuff’ to get invested in at any given time.
There is the model painting hobby, the army collecting hobby, the ‘playing’ portion of the hobby, the book part of the hobby, and recently, the video game portion of the hobby.
There is a little bit of media in the television sector of entertainment, but really, so far it’s really only that one episode “Secret Level”, on Amazon Prime Video that I quite enjoyed.
(Sidebar: The series as a whole is hit or miss for me, but that episode specifically is a major highlight of the show.)
Other than that episode, and talks of a new show being both produced by and featuring Henry Cavill (a self-proclaimed Warhammer 40k super-fan), there isn’t much on the cross-media branch of Warhammer 40k yet to readily enjoy, besides video games.
All that being said… What I do know is this: I like cool shit when I see it… and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II has it in spades.
It’s one of the most bombastic and gonzo things I think I have played in a while.
So, Space Marine II is a sequel (obviously) to the underrated gem from Relic Entertainment (the original creators of the Torchlight series of games), Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.
In the original, you also play as Demetrian Titus, a beefy, surly Space Marine captain leading a 3-man squad of Adeptus Astartes soldiers against a seemingly never-ending invasion of Orks on the forgeworld of Graia.
Voiced by venerable British actor Mark Strong, in the original game, you take control of Captain Titus as he hacks, smacks, cuts, stabs, stomps, and crushes endless waves of green Ork fiends.
In short, I think that the first game is just okay. I enjoyed what I played of it. I didn’t finish the whole thing, because I got sidetracked when I had my game of the year list to whittle down for my personal projects.
After having finished the second entry, I am more keen on finishing the first, given that both share characters and arcs in small ways. The squad dynamics are good, the story is generic and predictable but well-made, and the combat is solid and workman-like, but a bit repetitive, in my opinion.
It’s a solid 7 out of 10 if you were going by the old games media scoring rules.
Another side-bar: I don’t score games I review on this Substack.
The biggest reason I feel that way is that I believe that art and media cannot and should not be just reduced to an arbitrary number. You lose all the nuance and the meaning of a detailed review if you boil it down to a numbered verdict, in my opinion.
Having maybe the Giant Bomb or The Washington Post’s 5-star rating scale is a better indicator of a piece of media’s quality, I think.
Anyway, that game is good, but not great. I enjoyed it, and I thought the game was a pretty good first crack at making a 3rd-person “over-the-shoulder” Warhammer 40k “hack n’ slash” action game.
It’s a neat little thing that is good for a Warhammer game, which is a big deal.
Because, at least back when the first Space Marine game came out, there weren’t many good 40k games you could play besides games like the Dawn of War strategy simulation games.
So it’s to its credit that the first Space Marine game as a product is far more competent than the other licensed fare of the Warhammer 40k franchise, when it comes to video games.
The quality of some titles using the 40k license is up for debate, to say the least. Games Workshop, the owner of the Warhammer IP seems to give out the license to their stuff to most video game studios that want to work on it. The quality of products are getting better, but this feels like the first time since maybe the original and perhaps Warhammer 40,000 Darktide, and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader that a Warhammer game has been universally seen as very good. Oh, and the Dawn of War games. Those are good too, I hear, but I am rambling…
I say all of the previous to add context to this statement.
Warhammer 40,000: SpaceMarine II is on a different stratosphere to the original. It’s pretty impressive how much better the sequel is than the first one. I think it is just so excellent in so many key areas. It’s more than a solid game. It’s a great game that is very worth your time.
In fact, the game has been so well-regarded and has sold so well that the sequel’s developer, Saber Interactive, has already green-lit a sequel, not even a full year after its release.
I am very excited about that. I would easily play a game like this every year.
In Space Marine II, you again play as Captain Titus, but voiced by a new actor this time: Clive Standen. It’s not quite a downgrade necessarily because he does do some great work as Titus in this effort, but ANY role vacated by Mark Strong is a gaping hole of talent to fill, in my opinion.
Standen does an admirable job at filling these large shoes as Titus, and he commits wholeheartedly to the zealous nature a Space Marine ought to have while he fights in the name of his Emperor.
The hook of Warhammer 40k, as a franchise, is that the nuance lies in its characters, all of whom land on different degrees of the “Evil” part of the ‘temperance spectrum’, for lack of a better term.
You know the one: the “Good, Neutral, and Evil” Spectrums where you rank ‘temperances’, by their nuances of “Lawful, Neutral, and Evil”. It’s like a chart you do with your friends.
You have for sure done one of those games with your friends, right? The shitty friends always get chaotic evil, et cetera?
Anyways, with this eventuality of bad dudes doing bad things all in the name of their faction chapter’s crusade, it ends up being all about one thing at the end of the day: crushing heretics, and crush them, you do, in Space Marine II.
Titus makes destroying heretic scum an art form in this game.
A returning feature from the original the the ability to engage in ‘finishers’ (a gameplay feature almost identical to the ‘glory-kill’ mechanic in the recent DOOM games), to finish off your enemy with great style and gusto.
Once you lower an enemy into a vulnerable state (with a flashing red silhouette around their model), you can engage in a finisher and destroy the opposition with a flashy killing move.
It’s a great feeling to be surrounded by literal hundreds of Xenos, hacking away at them while you chain finishers to complete waves and waves of encounters. It never got old to just hip-fire into a crowd of roiling Xenos enemies while they cornered me, spraying and praying as I went, and engaging in finishers along the way while I whittled down their numbers.
It is hectic as hell to fight back these endless hordes in the early game of Space Marine II. I love it.
It’s scratches that Left 4 Dead itch I get when I wanna fight against hordes of baddies, but without having to coordinate a multiplayer gaming session with my friends. I am not a huge multiplayer enthusiast, if I can help it.
The single-player life is simple, but I am comfortable.
It’s so satisfying to just mow down thousands of enemies throughout the 10-hour campaign. Sure, it’s repetitive gameplay, but the presentation of the game and the enemy technology on display in large-scale battles more than make up for it on the whole. It’s great fun.
The core mechanics of Space Marine haven’t changed much from the first to the second game, and that’s not bad at all.
Keeping it familiar mechanically in the combat, adding to the number of enemies you are fighting, as well as increasing the scale of the battlefields you are fighting through during your journey in the campaign, is more than enough to keep the whole exercise fresh.
That’s another bright spot of the game, for me. The scale of the world. It’s very, very impressive how BIG shit is in this game.
Your base of operations is on this ‘battle-barge’ ship that houses most of your chapter of Astartes soldiers, and if you know anything about Warhammer 40k, you know that spaceships in-universe are, for lack of a better term, flying cathedrals.
There is a sort of opulence and religious zealotry on display in the architecture of these monolithic warships that is represented here that left my mouth on the floor. It’s staggering.
You feel minuscule… like that of the size of a worker ant set against the backdrop of a real-life house, if I were to put it in plain terms for you descriptively.
It’s jaw-dropping. I was consistently surprised at how visually well-composed the backdrops could be.
Bungie, the makers of Halo, Destiny, and Marathon, are known for the ‘sky-boxes’ in their video games. In their games, they always know how to render their worlds in a particular way to incite amazement. They get the scale right when it comes to the size of their world as it compares to the settings within it.
The crew at Saber, I believe, has given Bungie a run for its money with this game. It’s fantastic work in the art design department.
I think everything about Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II just works.
It knows what it is, it owns it, and it’s just fun as hell to play.
I dug about every second while I was playing it, which is high praise coming from me, someone who is very critical about repetition in video games.
I get bored very easily, so it’s the mark of a good product that it can get me invested for the long haul. The things you do, see, and hear in the game are just top notch on a production value level.
There is one scene in particular involving portals that I won’t spoil, that damn near had me on my feet cheering as it happened.
He planted that flag and stood his ground, dammit. That was some good shit.
Every story setpiece, every boss encounter, horde invasion, and piece of dialogue has a purpose in the game. It’s an economy of words, terms, and resources that are smartly used, wielded by a more than capable team in Saber Interactive, and I am really satisfied with the product they made.
It’s just a video game ass video game, man.
It took me 10 hours to blaze through the campaign, but with some friends, I am sure that one day I will return to it.
There is quite a lot on offer for folks who want to play with one another, with a full multiplayer suite, both competitive and campaign, to entice those willing to hang out and talk to people.
There are lots and lots of customization options for those who want to cosplay as other chapters, like the Blood Angels, Salamanders, and Raven Guard.
You know what’s a good time? Shouting out battlecries over Discord with a buddy, while playing stuff like this. That’s a good time. Everyone needs a bit of “Leeroy Jenkins”, in their multiplayer gaming, right? Helldivers 2 captured this very feeling recently for me, and you can do it here too, if you want to.
I’m feeling very zealous just thinking about it…
Yelling over comms, “THE EMPEROR DOES NOT SUFFER TRAITORS!!!” while fighting against the advancing Chaos hordes, is good, clean fun if you ask me.
Nothing like solving a problem with a heavy swing of your power sword, you know?
Maybe I won’t ever engage with the multiplayer, but there is certainly a world where I am motivated to try, given how much I liked this game. Guess I need to convince some friends to get it, one day…
I had a great time with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II.
I am not gonna get too into the weeds with gameplay systems and moment-to-moment action because it’s really not the most complex thing in the world to cover when talking about this game.
It’s so much fun to play, great to look at, and awesome to listen to. What more could you want in your Warhammer 40,000 game??
The last thing I want to say is this: Warhammer 40,000 SpaceMarine II is like the best PS2 game ever.
It’s got mechanics that are easy to grock, a decent military storyline about fighting aliens in space, and it just looks fantastic while you play it.
Like I said before, it’s just a video game ass video game, and we don’t get a lot of those at this scale and budget these days, it feels like.
I heartily recommend it for a casual playthrough, and for those who want more, there is more than enough in the multiplayer to be worth your while for a bit while you wait for that hot new video game you are waiting on to come out.
Turns out when it comes to dealing with heretics, all you need is a big-ass chainsword, a trusty boltgun and maybe a throaty war cry to get the job done.
I appreciate you time, keep gaming and don’t forget…..
FOR THE IMPERIUM!!
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Link to Bricky on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@bricky?si=v44-bxBj6Qtk-V1t
Link to the announcement of Space Marine 3 being greenlit: https://www.focus-entmt.com/en/news/focus-entertainment-publishing-announces-the-development-of-warhammer-40000-space-marine-3