"Is this really happening?" cries an Imperial Guardsman, fighting for his life as a wave of mantis-like Tyranid aliens tear through his pals like soggy paper. It's a random snippet of background dialogue, but it catches me by surprise because I was just thinking the same thing. But while he's wondering if this is a nightmare he'll wake up from, I'm grinning from ear to ear – because Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 feels too good to be true.
When we're talking about battles involving trillions of soldiers and planet-sized cities, it's hard for anything tangible to live up to our imagination. But in Space Marine 2, it feels like I've fallen right into one of Games Workshop's old 40K novels – which is great news for me, but not so much for anyone without the luxury of power armor to hide behind.
Blood, sweat, and more blood
My time in Space Marine 2's campaign opens in a ruined city, brought low by an invasion of Tyranids. There's not quite a calm before the storm, as deserters are being executed en-masse by a firing squad while columns of tanks roll through cobbled streets, but it's as close as you can hope for in the Warhammer universe.
There's just enough time to appreciate how developer Saber Interactive grasps the scope of 40K – grandiose bell towers and gothic spires dwarf any skyscraper in the real world, and Space Marine protagonist Titus towers over regular Guardsmen – but not enough to prepare me for how well that translates to combat, which kicks off when hundreds of Tyranids launch a surprise attack from the rubble. I get a couple of seconds to rake them with Bolt Gun fire, which satisfyingly turns most targets it hits into red mist, but they quickly overrun the Guardsmen and I'm left fighting to survive within the Tyranid flood.
It's easy to compare Space Marine 2's horde-based battles to Left 4 Dead, but the similarities are mostly skin-deep as there's a greater emphasis on melee combat. Titus is incredibly powerful, and feels it – he can cut through several enemies at once with a single swing of his Chainsword – but it's easy to get overwhelmed through sheer numbers, which makes every fight feel like you're trying to keep your head above water. But rather than turning battles into desperate button-mashing contests, it forces you to pay attention. A brilliant parrying system gives you room to react to attackers, and at one point I catch a leaping Hormagaunt – insect-like aliens that leap onto Titus and latch onto his armor – by the tail and slam it into the ground, splattering its pals in chunky Xeno bolognese.
Tougher enemies aren't killed as easily, and you sometimes need to break through their guard to open them up for an execution. Take towering Tyranid Warriors: you can fill them with bullets until they burst, but it's flashier and more effective to get up close and parry their sword-arms until an opening appears, at which point you can rip off said sword-arm and shove it down their chittering windpipe. Besides the scope of Warhammer, that's another thing Saber Interactive understands – death in this universe is a deeply unserious business, and if something can't be bisected in 16 different ways, you just aren't trying hard enough.
The way in which you move from shooting to melee and back is exceptionally fluid, and there were several fights where I felt like a force of nature, which is exactly what playing a Space Marine should feel like. Even when I was up against Chaos Space Marines and hordes of demons, who crept into the preview level to fight Tyranids and Imperium alike, I was outnumbered but always felt like the strongest person on the battlefield. The only exceptions were two boss fights – the first against a massive Carnifex, which felt like brawling with a sentient blender, and the other was a Chaos Sorcerer of Tzeentch, who I had to fight while the ground beneath us rippled like water and magical attacks sizzled from the sky.
40,000 reasons to play
Though my campaign preview ends after sending the Chaos Sorcerer packing, I also get to try out two Operations – standalone missions that can be played alone or with pals. These aren't as tightly scripted as the campaign, so they lose some of the cinematic feel – there's nothing as jaw-dropping as that first wave of Tyranids crashing into me, but I get the feeling these are designed as more replayable co-op levels. The first is set in the heart of a humid jungle, while the second takes me back to the campaign's gothic supercity to blow up a bridge as a Tyranid horde crosses it.
Operations, I suspect, are where Space Marine 2 will get really nasty. There's no checkpoint system, so dying sends you back to the start – and even on normal difficulty, it takes me several tries to complete either level. They remind me of earlier Halo campaigns on Legendary mode, as here you're also forced to hunker down and weather constant attacks before inching forward. I'm keen to see how Operations play with pals, as I'll probably sink far more time into perfecting co-op strategies rather than battering other Marines in PvP (which wasn't available to play here).
In the hours I've spent in Titus' boots, I've killed thousands – if not tens of thousands – of Xeno baddies in ways that have defied everything I thought I knew about biology. I was already excited for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, but until now, I didn't realize how badly I've been craving a shooter like this in my life. I adore the scope that's in play here, and lost count of the times I stopped to watch thousands of Tyranids swarm up distant streets, or gigantic laser batteries blast clouds of their winged siblings. If the rest of the game feels as tight as this hands-on, I'm going to be a very happy little Space Marine when it launches on September 9.
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