Today was my day off so I dedicated an unhealthy chunk of time to Space Marine.

Results!

7-8 Hours to beat single player on Normal.
1-2 hours to get to level 10 in multiplayer.
Totally stable the entire time, never got stuck, but a few odd glitches (you move into chaos marines when you execute them. happened 100% of the time.)

It’s OK I guess. If anything it made me more appreciative of DXHR and reminded me why I never played any of the Halos. Switching between melee and ranged feels really good, but the melee is still just right click right click right click F, right click right click right click F over and over for every weapon. You can only hold 4 weapons and your first 2 slots are always your pistol and bolter, but some of the guns just feel really really off (sniper and lascannon especially) so I just stuck with the melta shotgun and grenade launcher. The combat feels best when you’re fighting orks since the Chaos troops all tend to hide behind cover and chip at your health while a few demons attack in melee. The highlight is probably when you have a 3-way war between everyone and you just sprint into the middle with a thunder hammer. After that they start throwing bullshit shooter sections and force you to improvise cover while you have no way of healing since all the enemies are waaaaaaaay over there*. Wasn’t their whole schtick that they were breaking the Gears of War trend and making a big gun brawler hybrid? Did they scrap the plan halfway through? Is that why so much is ripped straight from the Gears of War template?

Everyone already knows the story. You’re fighting orks. Then the chaos comes. Then you fight the chaos while resisting the warp. It’s the same as every other 40K game. They try to spice it up by adding audio logs, but of all the games that have had this feature, this is probably the worst example. Part of that is probably because they’re usually a way to expand the universe and characters, but since the 40K universe is already firmly established the whole thing just falls flat. I thought giving the player history lessons on the horus heresy or how space marines are made would have been way more interesting but they were just trying to play it safe.

The whole thing is one long corridor, but it’s a pretty one, especially at the beginning. The end felt a little too purple/black and just wasn’t very impressive. The sewers came about 1/4 of the way though, I think. It was a very short section. Crates are everywhere but you can’t break them.

I was really hoping they would have some dreadnaughts/kanz, or to have a giant battle of 50 IG against 1000 orks, or some good bosses (there’s 1 “real” boss, the other 2 are you shooting down a ship and a 3 minute QTE). Like I said, they were playing it safe and really just stuck to the GoW example.

One thing I noticed is that when you’re doing the execution moves to get back health, enemies can still hurt/kill you. It does feel better than “OK time out while he kills our friend”, but it usually leaves you with the same amount of health or less if you got a long animation. You get an armor upgrade later in the game that helps a ton (all upgrades are automatic. You just find them in drop pods as the game goes on). The fury mode also gives you health, but if you use it when you’re at 50% and falling you’re pretty much dead.

Multiplayer is a hot mess. If you ever played Dead Space 2’s multi then you know exactly what to expect here. It’s not nearly as blatant and unfair to level 1 players, but the same problems are there. Everyone keeps trying to use the MW2 model without realizing that there’s a difference between earning a rifle that shoots slightly faster and more accurately and earning the demoman’s sticky launcher. Team balancing is non-existent as far as I can tell and there are only 2 modes and no last stand mode (I give it 5 months before they release it as DLC for $10). I’m also playing from Vietnam so my connection is horrible and I’ll still get shot well after I’ve turned a corner. It works both ways though so that’s not too much of a deal breaker. Plus the assault marine/raptor works fine even with terrible lag.

Overall I don’t regret my purchase and I had a pretty good time with it. Rocket jumping all over the place with a thunder hammer feels awesome. The game fails when it tries to play the battles and mechanics safely and succeeds when everything goes batshit insane. Plus it came with Darksiders so yay. I’ll probably have more fun with the Binding of Isaac though.

*It actually doesn’t happen that often but when it does you’ll hate it…

Lurker 56498