Back Talk With Kurorahk: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

Welcome to the Grim-Dark future where there is only war!

A Ork Nob obsessed with everything that goes boom.

 In the far flung future created by the British tabletop game company Games Workshop there is only war. In this universe humanity is a massive cruel regime in which trillions live across the breath and width of the galaxy. But there are those who stand much taller above the rift raft of humanity. They are the Space Marines, 2-3 meter tall with cybernetic and genetic augmentations clad in armor that makes modern tank armor look antiquated. And today we step into the shoes of a captain among these men in the Ultramarines chapter, poster boys for Games Workshop themselves.

The Ultramarines are said to be the most loyal and the most popular type of space marine holding 60% of all successor chapters to all space marine Legions as their own. Now then enough propping up the ultrasmurfs, they are alright, but yeah not a fan of them. However I am a fan of the game play of Space Marine, now then I also will say this game was for me and two of my friends ridiculously hard in the later stages. Myself I played it on Normal all the way though, my other friend who beat it did so on Hard. Now with saying this, Normal feels like Legendary from Halo Reach, where you die a lot or almost die a lot and the checkpoints feel like they are against you not with you. As for my friend who did it on Hard... Yeah I will get into that once we talk about the story.

A Warlord Titan, third largest class of Imperial Titans.

 The game begins with a establishing shot of a Forge World, a planet that exists only to produce whatever the Imperium of Mankind needs, and one such facility on this planet produces some of the most fearsome weapons known to the races of Warhammer 40,000 Titans. These massive mechas that throw back to Macross and Battletech (mostly Battletech due to the blocky style) carry weapons that can vaporize entire companies of infantry and slag dozens of vehicles in seconds. As the intro continues we find that this planet is under siege by the Orks who seek to loot the various weapons factories of this planet and turn such devices against the galaxy with reckless abandon. Thus the someone, most likely the Inquisition orders the deployment of Adeptus Astartes also known as Space Marines. As such we cut to a Thunderhawk dropship with at least three Ultramarines, one of which is out main character Captain Titus. As the dropship gets hit with heavy AA fire he grabs a jump pack and dives out the front door flying through ships destroyed and in free-fall before landing on the offending Ork ship and proceeds to destroy it with it's own weapons. From here he takes the ship down to the surface and walks away without a scratch and heads to meet back up with his allies.

From here we fight our way through Orks, reunite with the other two marines from earlier then together come to the aid of the Imperial Guard, the common fighter for mankind. We are tasked with taking out a massive fortress which houses a cannon capable of taking out any aircraft that get near and probably space craft as well. As such we wade through Orks to the facility to where we sabotage a round which then is set off collapsing the whole building as we run out. From here we head to a facility that houses warlord Titans we also hear about a Inquisitor in need and is at the Titan facility as well so we head out to save his ass. As we arrive we are still wading through orks but now have a power axe which makes Orks much more manageable when in close combat as well as popping their heads off with bolter or stalker pattern bolter at range. As you can tell by now, we cut through them and find the Inquisitor and clear the titan facility well enough to hold it. From here we aid the Inquisitor with getting his experimental weapon against the Orks ready, and then head to his secret facility.

The Inquisitor's secret weapon.

At this point I am going to stop because this is where the story gets good and I know some people do not want this spoiled. As such I am going to jump into the gameplay.

Now a lot of people have said Space Marine rips off of Gears of War in both looks and play style. Now really if anything Gears of War rips off the weapons and Grim-Dark of 40K, but that is a whole debate I can't touch due to never playing a single Gears of War game. Now then from what I do know Space Marine feel a lot like Darksiders with a bit better health system in some ways since you get a regenerating shield but worse in that you don't get health except in close combat from executions instead of randomly from just killing enemies. Now this would not be a issue except the over the top executions are a few second long scripted event which you can die during which makes doing one while tied up in combat or being shot at with low heath a gamble, a very cruel gamble. This cruelness is evident later on in the game, in effectively the second half. To be honest I pre-ordered this game and was very excited about getting it, and to be honest it was fun for a majority of it. Then I started hitting a rock wall, with my face. The game hits a certain point where Chaos starts to be a enemy, which initially is not to bad on Normal, but well... I will explain about some of the things that make their sections worse than they should be.

The first problem is that the saves can be far and few between when in a lot of action that takes a long time to get though. Worst is in wave fights where it would be easy to toss one in and hold the wave off for a second and a half. This would make things a lot easier by eliminating the game itself fighting you as well as hoards of enemies. This gets very evident later in the game. Now then the second problem are enemies that are bigger than normal foes and thus are harder to take down and even more so have a short, very short, quick time event battle for executions which is just pounding mouse 1 on computer. Now this is not to bad, until later in the game when you start facing more than the occasional Nob that you can take down with this and regain all your health by executing. Now when chaos rolls around we get bogged down with chaos marines. These guys are just like Titus with the shield and everything, thus making it a lot harder to take down, but also can take your shield down very quickly so you have to make use of cover. Oh and by the way, there is no cover system so you have to just stand behind the cover and learn how to walk against it to get in a good position to get shots off. Until you get bombarded with Grenades and Plasma Cannons. At this point the game gets hard, painfully hard, however, you can still walk through it pretty easily if you are aware of your surroundings.

Thunder Hammer, Plasma Pistol, and Jump Pack is a fun combo.

Now then, there comes a part where someone dies and you are stuck waiting for a dropship to pick you up and get you out of there. This part is where the game really gets mean. It is a wave fight, where there are two enemies that sap your shields if you in the open and also continuously summon more enemies to replace the ones you drop. Now this is not to bad since they are traitor guard which you can just hit 'E' or whatever you have execute set to and auto kill them for health, but there are also chaos marines with plasma cannons which are the bane of every players existence. Now here either the AI will get really weird and completely ignore you for your invulnerable ally or they will only shoot at you and your ally will stand out in the open with his back to the foe. This is where my friend and I got stuck for a while to the point of rage induced cursing and quitting. The worst part is after you take out the two Chaos Cultists who summon enemies, more Chaos Marines show up, two aspiring champions with power mauls. These guys are no push over and at this point your probably out of ammo for everything besides the plasma pistol or bolt pistol which have, thankfully, unlimited ammo. These guys are cruel and if you die here, well yeah you have to go through the whole wave battle again which close combat for most of it is not a viable option.

Now at this point there are not more Orks to take out our rage at so we just fight traitor Guardsmen and Chaos Marines, with daemons of Khorne and Nurgle. Now then Khorne daemons are not that bad, generally on Normal you can shoot them and let them come to you then smash them dead in close combat. Now here I really have to praise something, the switch between close combat melee attacks and ranged combat is smooth, as in so smooth it is freaking perfect. The only hang ups are when you are shooting and then start to reload automatically, which oddly will not happen for some reason at times, or are having to dodge roll away. Both cases is due to a longer animation going on that can't be interrupted by starting something else. This gets bad to the point of dying, but it is more on the players side, except the inconsistent reload issue, that just feels more of a coding issue for when to initiate reload without player hitting r to reload.

Now then, the last fight of the game high lights this issue greatly. It is four waves of enemies, first is Bloodletters which are the basic lesser daemon of Khorne, which on their own are just fine. The next wave happens about five seconds later with three chaos marines and six to eight traitor guardsmen. This would not be a problem, except the chaos marines and guardsmen drop your shields and health fast as soon as you pop out of cover or try to take one of them out in close combat. They also love to throw grenades. Now normally it would be a challenging fight, except there was no save between waves. This is where it gets painful, the next wave, again with no save, is two waves of six Bloodletters and two Chaos Cultists which exist only to sap your shields, oh and yeah they also have their own shields which takes a las-cannon shot to just drop, if you can hit them while dealing with close combat daemons. So yeah you kill these guys and then... boom two Aspiring Champions with Power Mauls again, at this point I myself had only ammo for my plasma pistol and ended up dodge rolling around the outside ring of the area tell I dropped one to the point I could execute him then popped him off and focused on the other. This fight was the hardest for me in the whole game, harder than the Warboss of the Orks and the final boss... is a push over.

The big bad daemon prince, is the easiest fight in the game.

Now to give Relic credit they had the game flow very nicely and besides a few hiccups with the difficulty making a five minute long room into a forty five minute head bashing chore, Space Marine is a fun game. I say it is worth a bit less than retail, but that is not including the free dlc that adds a firefight like mode to the game, this I feel brings it back up to full retail price if it is done well. We will see come October when the co-op dlc comes out because at the moment Multiplayer is so bland that after a couple hours of it you have seen everything in it, there are to few levels and far to few game types.

Also sequel bait at the end, with also showing how dickish the standard Ultramarine is.

So with my return we clear Warhammer 40K's most recent attempt at becoming mainstream, and thanks to the free demo that was put out a few weeks prior to launch the game went gold very quickly and we will get a sequel after Dawn of War 3 which is set to come out next year some time from current quotes.

Until next time may the Emperor watch over you in your fights against all the foes that beset mankind on all sides. Or if your chaos, may your dark gods grant you gifts and you don't turn into chaos spawn!

As always here is a link to all screenshots taken from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, I do not own or pretend to own the copyright for any of the source material as it belongs to Relic, THQ, and Games Workshop, I simply expressed my opinion on this game.