Review: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 brings the Warhammer 40K universe to life in glorious, blood-soaked detail. This game puts you into the heart of the action in a major conflict with a story that has all the twists and turns of any good galactic incursion in humanity’s Imperium. While there are a few issues here and there, it’s a triumph of a translation of the miniatures tabletop game into a video game that feels like it has something for everyone.

In Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, you shoot, rip, and shred your way through a chunky 10-12 hour solo campaign that’s a rush or ridiculously meaty combat and iconic encounters from start to end. It also packs in PvE and PvP multiplayer modes that, together, do a great job of easing you into the core mechanics before asking you to go out and master them for what you’ll undoubtedly end up calling “glory for the Emperor.”

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 (PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 [reviewed])
Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Released: September 9, 2024
MSRP: $59.99

Give me a worthy adversary

The campaign in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 goes hard. You play as Titus, a disgraced Space Marine who rejoins the Ultramarines to help defend a system from a Tyranid invasion. This nasty foe descends on a world using sports and evolves quickly to defend itself from whatever strategies its enemies are using, before liquifying all organic matter and moving onto the next world.

Saber Interactive and Focus Entertainment have done a great job of taking what they learned from the swarms of zombies in World War Z and using it to make the Tyranids a formidable threat. The smaller Xenos among the Tyranid ranks rush toward you and explode in satisfying bursts of blood, while the larger warriors among their ranks work their way through the gore and provide a real challenge.

This is where Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 feels very different from World War Z, which surprised me a lot, but it suits the source material much better. You can only gun your way through so many enemies before you’ve got to pull out whatever melee weapon you have equipped, preferably a Chainsword, and cut through them and fight until you wear the stronger foes down to a weakened state. From there, you can trigger an execution for a grotesque and glorious finisher, of which there are dozens to discover.

Executions reward armor recharges and health, and by the end of the campaign, you’ll have mastered the careful dance between staying back and hammering enemies with gunfire, and getting stuck into the hordes with nothing but a Power Sword.

Your melee weapon is also important for parrying those pesky enemies who leap the crowd and dig into your armor. Parrying is an essential skill you must learn to deal with bosses and minor enemies alike, ensuring that on higher difficulties, you don’t get mauled before you’re even at the tricky part.

I have to say, I didn’t expect this level of complexity from the game’s combat, but it fits really well. If the game was all big guns and the occasional execution, it would be dull. The combination and refined combat that’s been developed here both feels and looks so good that I could play for hours without ever feeling fatigued.

Missions have great checkpointing, which always means you’ll have enough ammo and grenades, but you never feel safe because you have too much. Bosses stretch you to your limits, especially the Lictor Tyranid early on, but you’ll grow to understand exactly how to defeat them with the game’s unique blend of gun and swordplay before too long.

When I say the story goes hard, I really do mean it. At one point, you’re in the belly of a Forge World when the power goes out, and your character can hear Tyranids in the walls. Later in the campaign, you hoist a flag high and stand your ground among other Ultramarines against impossible odds, making for the most Warhammer 40K scene I think I’ve ever come across in a game.

Between missions, you’ll return to a Battle Barge to get new intel and refit Titus with weapons you’ve unlocked. The thing that stuck out for me here, and in other quieter moments on the three major worlds you play across, is the chatter between NPCs. Listening to characters discuss topics such as a human toolbox recalibrating their eyes or watching a sermon to the Emperor, to which mighty Space Marines kneel and listen, felt amazing. It’s as if I was transported into the world of Warhammer 40K, something I’ve been trying to achieve since I first started painting a Necron army when I was ten years old.

Even something as simple as walking feels brought to life with the weight an Ultramarine should be, sparks flying from his boots on metal and small objects shattering as he walks through them with the arrogance a space warrior should have. The dialogue feels like several people polished it because it feels like it’s been pulled from the universe. Every line is deliberate, with no embellishment or over-explanation. You understand more from these words than you do in some entire paragraphs from other games, and I think that helps gel every other element together to make newcomers feel at home in this far-flung futuristic version of our galaxy.

I don’t want to spoil the game’s midway twist here, but suffice it to say that it feels like it was ripped right out of the pages of White Dwarf or the Black Library. You begin the game knowing nothing and having only one objective, and end it doing something else entirely with a set of revelations weighing heavily on your shoulders. It’s incredible to experience as a fan of the universe, and it’s thrilling even for those who aren’t because of the regularly occurring epic moments that are impossible not to be pulled in by.

The other side of the story

The second of Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2‘s three game modes is a multiplayer companion to the campaign. In Operations mode, you’ll tackle missions that fill out parts of the story you see in the campaign, but don’t get to play through. This is where you understand how a Hive Tyrant took so long to kill, or what was going on when the vox blackout occurred.

The missions themselves are short and very replayable. I couldn’t put the game mode down once I’d started, thanks to the balanced rewards you get for every mission and the exhilarating risk of hopping into a mission you know so well on a slightly tougher difficulty level.

There are a few new mechanics in Operations missions that make them stand out, such as regular enemies who can now call in reinforcements and puzzles that you need to solve while also fighting back against the hordes of enemies every mission throws at you. For the most part, though, they’re designed to be pure multiplayer fun, and that’s exactly what they are.

While yes, there’s definitely some point to seeing the other side of these stories, the real reason to play is to experiment with different Space Marine classes, weapons, abilities, and earn XP. This mode is where I saw all the multiplayer elements from World War Z bleed through, and that’s an extremely good thing for any game to have.

Each class offers a unique experience in-game, with various special abilities such as healing and an overpowered melee attack for a short time, a Jump Pack, or even a shield that can protect you and your allies. Each class has a huge skill tree that you’ll earn perks in and can purchase to unlock their benefits over time to craft the best builds for the toughest missions on the highest difficulties.

Every weapon also has levels to grind, unlocking more perks and making you a more efficient killing machine with every hour you sink into Operations. Of course, the biggest draw of multiplayer in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 is unlocking new cosmetics. You can’t craft your own Chapter (a company of Space Marines) without first gaining access to every color and part to customize, and then you can go nuts making the most obscene or beautiful warriors the galaxy has ever gazed upon.

Stem corruption

The final part of Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2‘s offerings is a PvP mode called Eternal War. It plays into all the same progression systems as Operations mode, but is solely focused on PVP. I didn’t know what to expect going into this mode, part of me really thought it wouldn’t work, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable and fits well within the universe.

One team plays Space Marines, generally seen as the forces of (relative) good, and the other is Chaos Space Marines, who are bad by all accounts. There are only a few modes to play around with, but it’s the combat that saves this game mode. Player health has been tweaked to meet weapons in the middle, so you’re not obliterating one team with a single class.

Just like in Operations and the campaign, you need to use melee, grenades, and long-ranged weapons to win. However, I noticed a spawn camping issue while I was playing. For some reason, the game took too long to shift where my team was spawning from, so we lost a lot of points to two Heavy Space Marines who simply fired at roughly where we’d appear for a minute or so.

Eternal War is definitely the weakest mode in a game that sets the bar incredibly high. There’s something to love here, and it’s a nice distraction from all the PvE missions you’ll be grinding, giving you something else to master and a reason to mess around with your builds and cosmetic styles in the Battle Barge before returning to a harder mode in the campaign.

In both Eternal War and Operations, I experienced server issues in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2. These came and went, and might just have been down to the player base being limited to those who have an early access edition of the game. I did see the developer reaching out to fans explaining that it’s working on the server issues, so I feel that these are likely more prevalent but are something that could be fixed with time.

I’ve seen Saber Interactive take World War Z and foster an amazing community around its PvE missions, with new content added regularly based on player feedback. Based on what I’ve seen from the developer so far, I have no doubt that it plans to do the same with this game but kick things up a notch. We already have a roadmap for season 1 that includes things like new enemies and a horde mode, which I can’t wait to see, as well as even more fancy cosmetics to unlock.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 is a great game in its own right, and it will only get better with ongoing support. But you can get a lot out of the title without ever engaging with the online elements. The story and lore on show in the campaign are a great reason to get this game alone, and everything else is just a giant, Battle Barge-sized cherry on top.

I can’t praise this game enough. It’s as if the Emperor himself oversaw its development, pulling on the threads of time and space to bring the right people together at the right time to make it. There are flaws, sure, but it’s a damn good game and a flipping fantastic Warhammer 40K game. If you even remotely enjoy the universe, this will blow your mind. As I mentioned at the top, though, you can go into this game with no prior knowledge and still have the best time with it because the experience is solid, the world is completely realized, and the gameplay is highly engaging.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}