Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review: "Raises the bar for all Warhammer adaptations"

There are just eight bullets in a heavy bolt pistol. In the grand scheme of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, that's not a lot. You'll regularly fight hordes of aliens and Chaos-fueled demons numbering 10 times that, but for most foes, just one rocket-propelled shot is enough to burst them into gloopy red chunks. Truth be told, they're the lucky ones – the grisliest fates are reserved for anyone within touching distance of supersoldier protagonist Titus, who seems to take great pleasure in ripping off heads, arms, and jaws and using them to kill their previous owner.

Space Marine 2 relishes in this excess – every second is spent in shuddering violence and vast, gorgeous battlefields. Developer Saber Interactive has crafted an outrageously over-the-top hack 'n' slash shooter, and while Warhammer fans would expect nothing less, newcomers to this grimdark universe couldn't ask for a better (or bloodier) introduction. 

Go big or go home

Though it's been 13 years since the original Space Marine launched, over 100 years have passed for returning hero Demetrian Titus. After being accused of heresy at the end of the first game – which you don't need to have played for this – he's spent the last century banished from his own Chapter of space marines, and fights in the elite xeno-hunting Deathwatch. When a hive-mind of insectoid, scythe-armed Tyranids descend upon a system of planets housing a secretive Imperium research project, Titus is tasked with re-joining his Chapter to save the day. 

However, hulking squadmates Gadriel and Chairon are distrustful of Titus' long absence, while Titus himself is frustratingly standoffish. This translates to a lot of catty snark – space marines are many things, but emotionally literate they are not – but we don't get to explore these tensions in any real depth, which leaves the story a little shallow. Dialogue can be boiled down to 10 hours of the word "brother," while the straightforward yet serviceable story rarely reaches beyond carrying players from one desperate shootout to the next.

Luckily, those fights are what we're really here for – and by the Emperor, they're phenomenal. Saber Interactive is the developer behind 2019's World War Z game, and its experience with horde-based combat shows. Watching hundreds of Tyranids crest over a hill toward you, or form squirming pyramids to climb over each other and reach your high ground, is dangerously mesmerizing. But you've only got a small window of time to take as many as you can out from afar – whether that's thinning out chaff with fully-automatic bolter fire, lobbing grenades, or whittling down bigger foes with charged plasma rounds and careful lasrifle shots – before the real chaos kicks off. Once you're in the thick of things, combat devolves into vicious hand-to-hand fighting, where you'll often struggle to win enough room to start shooting once again. There's no cover system, so your only means of staying alive is to be aggressive – dealing damage restores health, while killing weakened targets with gory execution animations regenerate your armor plating. 

It's a thrill – every fight feels like you're constantly fighting just to avoid drowning, but Titus still feels like the strongest soldier in nearly any given battle. A single swing of his chainsword can tear through entire rows of baddies, and parrying is supremely satisfying as in most cases, it allows you to kill your attacker in a single gory animation. One of my favorite executions remains grabbing a bestial demon by the throat and squeezing, which produces an effect I can only compare to squishing a banana so hard its insides fly out of the peel. Tougher enemies, such as Tyranid Warriors (picture a Xenomorph with a sword) and Chaos Space Marines, can take a bit more back-and-forth before they'll drop their guard, but parry enough of their blows and you'll get an opportunity to execute them with a point-blank pistol shot to the head or grisly bisection. 

It's incredibly fluid, although the formula takes a wobble toward the end of the adventure. You start coming up against more of these special enemies at the cost of fewer giant hordes, and fights start getting a little bit longer range as more baddies get guns – which is a shame, as shooting by itself isn't as interesting. But when Space Marine 2 gets that balance of gunplay and melee right, there's nothing quite like it – it's like watching an exceptionally well-choreographed fight scene, except you're the one ripping Chaos Space Marines' heads off with your bare hands while turning their puny cultist pals to juice with a single bullet. It flows so naturally that you really do feel like the centuries-old death machine Titus is meant to be – you're a formidable soldier facing overwhelming odds, a power fantasy I haven't felt so strongly since the Xbox 360 days of Halo and Gears of War.

A large part of what brings that feeling to life is the scope of Space Marine 2. Whether you're in the overgrown jungles of Kadaku, larger than life gothic city on Avarax, or Demerium's Chaos-warped hellscape, Saber's bigger-is-better approach makes it feel like you really are fighting in a planet-spanning war. I lost count of the times I'd stop to admire laser batteries firing into clouds of flying Gargoyle Tyranids, or Space Marines duking it out with their evil cousins across Demerium's vast purple battlefield. There are some brilliantly claustrophobic setpieces – one Alien-inspired segment starts with Tyranids stalking you through dingy service tunnels, and culminates with a frantic shootout in complete darkness – but Space Marine 2 thrives when it makes you seem very, very small.

Shore leave

These planets are also the setting of Space Marine 2's Operations, six missions that take place alongside the campaign's events. Operations can be played with three players, but unlike the campaign, co-op feels mandatory for getting the most out of this game mode. While the two AI squadmates are serviceable on easy and normal difficulty, they don't pull their weight above that. As if to emphasize the importance of playing with friends, Operations can't be paused, even if you're playing with AI. This is particularly frustrating as missions tend to be quite long – at one point I was kicked out of my own game for inactivity, which meant losing around 20 minutes of progress. But when playing with other people, Operations are a blast. The six missions currently available are closer to Left 4 Dead than what's on offer through the core campaign, as ammunition and healing items are scarcer, while enemies attack in more choreographed waves. Your gear is also restricted, as here it's broken up into classes. This adds an interesting layer of strategy – you might opt for the Assault class, which gets a Thunder Hammer and jetpack to wade into the thick of things, while someone else uses the Sniper class to take out priority targets from afar.

While Operations are significantly harder than Space Marine 2's campaign, they also offer more incentive to keep coming back, as currency and XP rewards can be spent on armor customization, gun upgrades, and class perks. Tweaking your armor feels a little padded for replayability – rather than buying your favorite Chapter's armor set, for example, you need to buy each piece of it individually – but on the upside, this part-by-part approach means there's enough depth to make the mish-mashed space marine of your dreams.

The only part of Space Marine 2 I didn't get to play ahead of launch due to matchmaking restrictions is Eternal War, a set of three 6v6 PvP modes with Warhammer twists on team deathmatch, domination, and king of the hill. But from the 17 hours I've had with everything else, it's hard to imagine anything outshining Space Marine 2's PvE offerings. This adventure is a monument to excess, but it's hard to imagine it working any other way. If anyone tells you that a game doesn't need motorized swords and eight-foot tall supersoldiers who can throw around heretics like ragdolls, consider what else they may be lying about – Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is pure, ridiculous fun, and the best third-person shooter I've played in years.