Skip To...
The 40k franchise is a wretched, pulsing entity you might mistake for a Nurgling in bad lighting. Its awesomeness shivers in the shadow of mediocre projects, but now and then, a different Warhammer appears. It cuts through you like a chainsword through an Ork’s twitching spine. It speaks with the voice of the Imperium and commands your attention. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is one of the best 40k games ever made. With more akin to a Bosch or Goya painting than your average third-person shooter, Space Marine 2 is all blood and desperation.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Review
You are Demetrian Titus, an Ultramarine. As a proud warrior of the Adeptus Astartes, you are a walking tank, bred and trained for superiority over every lifeform on the battlefield. Standing against you and your battle brothers are the endless Tyranid, an insectoid, world-devouring swarm scarier than any Bile Titan. You are the shield against which that swarm breaks. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a squad-based, third-person shooter, featuring a sizable campaign, near infinite end-game, and combat bloodier than most Fatalities.
Story: The Gathering Swarm
Space Marine 2 picks up almost 200 years after the events of the first game. The Orkish threat on Graia has been contained, but that didn’t spare Lieutenant Titus from his arrest by the Inquisition. Now cleared of the charge of heresy, Titus is reinstated and returned to the field against a new Xenos threat: the Tyranid. It’s the beginning of the invasion of Kadaku, and the frontline soldiers of the Astra Militarum are falling beneath waves of teeth and claws. It’s time for the Astartes to push back.
You don’t need to have played the first game to enjoy the second. Even if you can’t tell Deathwatch from The Death Guard, the campaign’s story of impossible odds, chaos magick, and twisted secrets is easy to fall for. As fans of the novels know, the best 40k writing is both tongue-in-cheek and insurmountably grim, which is the bull’s-eye Space Marine 2 hits. I’ve never so badly wanted to describe a group of fictional super soldiers as “cigar-chomping,” though there’s nary a smoke in sight.
Mechanics: Chainsword vs. Swarm
Calling Space Marines “walking tanks” undersells their actual lethality by a hilarious amount. You and your squadmates are three Kratos, wreaking godly havoc on a legion of horrifying alien bugs. You’ll weave gunshots and sword swipes together like a one-ton Dante, heavier than the Arkham series’s Batman but with much of the Caped Crusader’s fluidity (and far more strength). I wouldn’t call Space Marine 2‘s combat a ballet. It’s more akin to rugby with chainsaws and grenades. You’re never just punched; you’re pummeled.
The main campaign delivers a tight dozen hours of action, and it’s one of the few FPS campaigns I’d consider replaying more than once. The mission variety is good, but it’s the mob variety that sells it. Swarms of Hormagaunt and Termagant demand crowd control lest you get overrun. Stealthy Lictors require constant vigilance and quick reflexes. Zoanthropes require constant fire to breach their shields before the deadly Psykers kill you. Space Marine 2 mixes and matches enemies and arenas as satisfyingly as Doom.
You wield one melee weapon, one primary, and one sidearm, chosen from a decent selection. The campaign gives you a taste of everything, but for end-game co-op you’ll specialize. There are six classes (Tactical, Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark, Sniper, and Heavy), each armed with unique abilities and equipment. Every class feels good, but I fell hard for the Sniper. The ability to one or two-shot most foes, combined with active camouflage, lets me focus on popping Lictor skulls instead of dodging claws.
You don’t just chain together combos and Perfect Parries; you counterfire your Bolt Pistol at point-blank range before literally pulling a Tyranid’s face off with your gauntlet. Grunts explode like wine-filled balloons, drenching your armor in blood, as hundreds of enemies fill the screen. At lower difficulties, it’s sloppy, accessible fun: the perfect 40k power fantasy of the ultimate soldier slicing through endless chaff. On Veteran and Angel of Death, your super soldier will super die without good skills and better teamwork.
As great as it is, the campaign is just the prelude to co-op and PvP. Eternal War is a 6v6 PvP mode featuring Quick Match and three game types: Annihilation, Seize Ground, and Capture & Control. Adopting the World Eaters’ red and brass, picking up a Heavy Bolter, and taking my place in a (canonically muddled) fireteam is the best Warhammer experience I’ve had outside the tabletop game. I might not have a chainsaw welded to my stump like a proper cultist, but I can extract a blood tithe for Khorne one oversized bullet at a time.
The post-launch roadmap looks great. New missions, weapons, enemies, and Lethal difficulty will all be included in free updates, while the Premium Pass will bring the Dark Angels and other faction cosmetics. There are no pay-to-win worries, no getting locked out of missions or weapons because you can’t pay. There’s just you, the teeth of your saw, and several trillion angry Tyranid. Though you can’t custom paint your Space Marine, you can mix and match a wide variety of official chapter (and Traitor Marine) looks, so let your Night Lord flag fly.
Graphics & Audio: Suffering Meat
Melta in hand, you burn your way through the Adeptus Mechanicus facility alongside your battle brothers. Rats fill the bleak cathedral, seething between the machines by the tens of thousands. Fireballs punch out from your flamethrowers, warping the air with their heat as they incinerate the vermin. Behind the heat haze, a Lictor materializes, mantis claws quivering to strike. Too late. The bullet leaves your Bolter almost before you realize you’ve aimed, punching through the Lictor’s facial carapace like a brick through an aquarium.
40k‘s gothic architecture and ambiance are almost as iconic as the Astartes armor, and Saber Interactive nailed them. Space Marine 2 doesn’t just understand the Astartes, Mechanicus, and Militarum styles. It embodies their vibe. Ultramarines don’t just have spaceships. They have flying cathedrals, as if a giant got fed up with The Cathedral of Strasbourg and hucked the whole thing into space. Warhammer has one of the best-looking and deepest sci-fi settings, and few 40k games invite us in like Space Marine 2.
The soundtrack is good, not great, but the sound effects are exceptional. Chainswords, Combat Knives, Bolters, Meltas, and other weapons pack an Imperium-approved wallop. Space Marines are the universe’s unsubtlest boys, falling to the right of Marcus Fenix on the Grunting and General Stompiness spectrum. I do not feel graceful; I feel like a wrecking ball swinging through the suburbs. I am fire, and I am war, a 3,000-point Onslaught army squeezed into one World Eater suit. As a 40k fan, I can’t say how good that feels.
Space Marine 2 is polished, with only minor clipping and texture issues disrupting my experience. Considering the number of units and particle effects in play (blood, so much blood), I expected dropped frames. I didn’t get them. Server stability can always change, but my initial experiences with the game have all been positive. Saber Interactive dreamed big and then put every nose to every grindstone, polishing Space Marine 2 into the black diamond it is today. If the devs maintain this level of quality and reasonable approach to DLC, Titus’s adventures will live in legend.
Conclusion: The God-Emperor’s Favorite Child
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a god-tier 40k game. If you put it in a cage against Nurgle and Slaanesh, I’d bet on SM2. It’s an exceptional piece of art, a deliciously silly shooter, and a genuine thrill for fans of the franchise. It’s the kind of game that may win you over through sheer quality, even if you aren’t charmed by squad shooters like Left 4 Dead and Helldivers 2. The God-Emperor has been kind, and any game that lets you treat a Carnifex like a blood piñata is good by me.
Review copy provided by Publisher.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (PC Reviewed)
A gory third-person squad shooter that embraces the grim dark action in ways no other Warhammer 40k game has.
Pros
- Endlessly satisfying combat
- Deep character customization
- High replayability
Cons
- Perk selection is somewhat limited
- Occasional clipping and other minor graphical issues
