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For somebody who has never ever played the table top version of Warhammer 40K, I love it. I love the lore, I love the races (Necrons and Tyranids for the win!) and I absolutely adore the nihilistic nature of the whole thing. So grimdark, so sexy. Weirdly enough, despite having Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine in my Steam collection, I never did get around to playing it. Well…I still haven’t played it…and yet, here I am playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II.
It’s not like I was avoiding playing the original. I’ve heard great things about it. Hell, I even played the Xbox 360 demo and enjoyed it immensely! So why didn’t I play the damn game if I already had it and was interested in it? Time. I had none free to play it.
I do have time for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II fortunately!
What is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II?
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II is a single and multiplayer (PVE and PVP) third person shooter set in the grimdark future of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It is developed by Saber Interactive and published by Focus Entertainment. It’s available right now on the PC, and consoles other than the Nintendo Switch.
Our review copy was provided by the awesome folks at Focus Entertainment! Thanks so much for giving us some codes!
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine came out in 2011. It’s now 2024. That means it took the game 13 years to get a sequel. What a wait, huh? An entire generation of gamers was born in that span of time. Gamers who’ve never even heard of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.
Thankfully, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II doesn’t really require you to know the events of the first game to enjoy it. Sure, it’s still featuring Captain Titus (now Lieutenant) and his missions to eliminate enemies of the Imperium but foreknowledge of the first game’s events are largely unneeded.
You catch up to Titus as he’s serving in the Deathwatch, where he soon dies (seriously) and is remade into a Primaris Space Marine. If you thought Titus was tough before, he’s even tougher now. A Primaris Space Marine is what the Spartan IIIs are to normal humans in the Halo universe…except much, much more stronger and violent. If the Master Chief ever had the bad luck to tangle with one of these guys, I doubt we’d even be able to recover any identifiable remains of the Chief.
Titus is brought back into the Ultramarines fold and immediately put to work retaking overrun gun emplacements that are required to push back the invading Tyrannid swarm. Yup, the Tyrannids (think the Zerg but much deadlier, like all things in Warhammer 40,000) are finally in a Warhammer 40,000 game that isn’t a turn-based affair (like Battlesector) or RTS (like Dawn of War II).
Sure, the Genestealers from Space Hulk: Deathwing are Tyrannids, but they only represent a small slice of the faction. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II brings in everything (well, almost everything) the Tyrannids have.
Like the Zerg, the Tyrannids are biological savages under the control of a hive mind. If you’re unfamiliar with the lore, they basically roam the stars and consume everything they come across, using the biological material from their conquests to expand their race so that they can conquer more stuff. A vicious circle of murderous life.
You’ll encounter that firsthand in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, as Titus and his crew comes face to face with them in multiple campaigns across multiple planets. The Tyranids are a nigh unstoppable plague, and Saber Interactive deftly makes that clear from the get go by throwing swarms of them at you at once.
If you’ve played World War Z (another of Saber Interactive’s titles), you’ll be familiar with what’s in store. Hundreds of Tyranid hormagaunts swarm as one towards your position, clambering up walls using each other’s bodies. Just like the zombies in World War Z, yeah? You can unload your weaponry and hit everything that’s coming dead on and it still wouldn’t make a difference.
The sheer scale of the Tyranid assault is overwhelming at times and that’s where the fun comes in. There’s nothing like fighting back against insurmountable odds and triumphing. Titus and his company are almost always outnumbered and outgunned. Getting hurt in the game isn’t just a given, it’s a gameplay mechanic.
Of course, the Tyranids aren’t the only enemies in the game that want to eat your brains…but I’ll leave it at that.
Speaking of brains, I just wish that Titus’ squadmates had more brains in combat.
They’re quite passive in taking out targets on their own. They have questionable priorities too, sometimes taking on the small fries when they should be focusing on bigger threats. The biggest irk I have though is that they don’t execute vulnerable enemies, at least on Veteran. These enemies get back into the fray once they recover from the stunned state, so it’s not like they’re out the fight for good.
I do understand it’s probably a conscious effort by the devs to let them be, so that you can execute them yourself and replenish your armor in the process. Still, it doesn’t make sense to not execute enemies that are too far away from you since you’re never going to reach them in the first place to do any good. What I’m saying is the AI could certainly use more time to iron out their kinks.
It also definitely could use a ton of balancing between difficulties. Normal is fine and dandy, but jump one notch up to Veteran and things get nuts. Your AI squadmates become dunces, the Tyranid shrug off your attacks and you get hurt a ton due to unavoidable damage. The game just feels cheap and artificially hard, instead of testing your skills and challenging you to fight smarter. I really hope Saber Interactive takes a good hard look at the harder difficulties and adjust things with patches.
Thankfully, the game supports crossplay between all versions of the game. Joining up with your compadres on other platforms is as simple as entering a code on the main menu to invite them to your game.
It works just like in World War Z, so if you have experience in that, you’ll be familiar with the process.
Unlike most games, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II and its combat spends time equally between melee and ranged. You have your usual Warhammer 40,000 arsenal of boltguns and rifles and the like, and also melee weapons like chainswords and combat knives to keep things fresh when you need to handle things up close.
Gunplay is weighty and bombastic, with ferocious sounding reports from the weapons. I personally love the sound the Heavy Boltgun makes. A deep and booming ‘choom choom choom’ as you unleash it on incoming Tyranids. I play with 11.1.4 Dolby Atmos setup on my desktop and the sounds are amazing!
Melee combat is akin to a Dark Souls game (sans the stamina requirement). Titus can block, parry (a perfect parry gives you an opportunity to do a weapon strike that does massive damage), dodge roll and do melee combos and guard breaks.
The combat’s a bit awkward and ponderous, but that’s the charm for me.
It really drives home the point that the Space Marines’ armour are as cumbersome as they look. Titus isn’t a ninja in heavy armor, he’s a juggernaut, with the lumbering gait and speed to match. The hits are weighty and delicious.
Melee combat has its place too, as it’s the only way to recover your depleted armour in combat. Executing an enemy refills a bit of your armour gauge AND kills nearby weak enemies, so it’s always in your best interest to execute whenever you can. It also looks really cool (with several different animations for each enemy type) and super gory! Excellent.
Co-op is just as awesome as you’d expect. The campaign can be played with two other friends (if you’re solo, AI will help you) but it’s the Operations mode where you’ll be spending most of your time. The Operations mode are special missions that take place concurrently to the ones Titus does. That means each of them has a story that ties in to the main plot and offers a look at events from another perspective.
Lore implications aside, the Operations mode is also class based! You can choose from 6 different classes (Assault, Tactical, Heavy, Vanguard, Sniper and Bulwark), each with different class loadouts and skills. You gain XP in this mode from playing and level up your class, unlocking new gear, cosmetics and even skills as you get stronger.
This is where the longevity of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II is.
It’s a damn fun time to be had too, as you can also play the mode solo, just like the regular campaign. Unfortunately, the 6 maps currently available aren’t nearly enough to hold your attention for too long without getting boring. The objectives remain the same every time, so there’s really nothing new (other than the drive of getting XP to level up) to keep you playing after awhile.
Hopefully Saber Interactive adds more missions in the upcoming months, or I’m afraid the mode’s going to be a ghost town before long. Being able to play single player is great but quantity is still a quality of its own.
Like in the single player campaign, the friendly AI in the mode isn’t really a good substitute for real human players. They’re capable enough, but rarely take the initiative, instead opting to be reactive to threats rather than going off to take care of potential issues on their own.
There’s no way to command them (another flaw), so they always hover around you like overprotective den mothers when they could’ve done more good elsewhere.
There’s also the option of Eternal War, which holds the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II PvP modes. Here you’ll face off against other human opponents. The class based gameplay from the Operations mode carries over here as well, and class composition can make or break a team.
You’re also much weaker in the PvP modes, so teamplay is much more important than solo capability. The modes are fun (you have your standard deathmatch, king of the hill and variants of them) but the limited maps mean the same thing for Eternal War as it does for the Operations mode; it can get old fast.
I tried the game both on a desktop with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080Ti with 64GB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 with 32GB RAM. 4K with DLSS set to Balanced and all settings maxed out was perfectly stable on the desktop. No stuttering, no hitches for data loads or noticeable drops in framerate. It played as smooth as butter, even when the Tyranids were swarming.
On my notebook, I ran the game on 1080p. DLSS was also set to Balanced, with everything maxed and a FPS cap of 60. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II ran great on it too, akin to the desktop performance. My notebook did get heated (I usually play with a controller so I don’t notice the heat most times) but this game ran it hot enough that I could feel the warmth!
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II falters a bit on the ROG Ally X.
Even plugged in and on the 30W Turbo mode, I had to drop down the resolution to 720p and use FSR set to Performance to get the game running around 50 – 60fps with all settings maxed (save for cloth simulation).
Enabling adaptive resolution does make the game playable, but on the flipside, it makes the game look like you’re looking through lenses smeared with vaseline. Environmental and character details get blurry, especially when you’re moving around, which in turn can make ranged combat tricky at times.
If you can bear it, I really suggest running the game with a 30fps limit. That way the adaptive resolution won’t need to work so hard, so the game won’t look like such a blurry mess. The downside is this makes the game less responsive in general so it might not be everybody’s cup of tea.
The Bottom Line.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II is a glorious sequel to a bona fide classic.
It ramps up everything that makes the original great with some nifty new additions. The boring Orks from the original give way to the much more interesting Tyranids, making combat much more hectic and chaotic.
The extra multiplayer modes give the game longetivy too, though the lack of maps means that you’ll soon get bored after awhile. Hopefully more maps are incoming for free (so that there’s no splintering the player base). The game being crossplay from Day One means that there’s a ton of people playing, so that should hopefully stall gamers from abandoning the game if Saber Interactive drags its feet with new maps and modes.
Thankfully, the game doesn’t really need human players for most of its content. Yes it’s true the AI needs improving, but kudos to Saber Interactive for taking the time to implement them in the alternate PvE modes as well.
TLDR:
Awesome game but multiplayer might be an issue in the future if the number of maps doesn’t increase.
The Good:
- The gameplay.
- The Tyranids.
- Decent amount of content for single player gamers.
- Sounds effects are great!
- Crossplay makes co-op with friends super easy.
The Bad:
- AI can be rather dumb.
- Lacking maps for Operations and Eternal War modes.
- Difficulty jump from Normal to Veteran is too steep.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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