Law Reviews: Szafraniec Reviews Space Marine for the XBox 360

Ah, Space Marine. Outside of the Dawn of War games, this was easily one of the most-anticipated game releases for me in the past few years.  Let’s hope it will tide me over at least until Dark Milennium!  GK and I dove in on day one, thrashed our way through the single-player campaigns, and pounded plenty of opponents into submission in multiplayer.  Did the game live up to its expectations?  Find out as we bring you the Rules Lawyers Review of Space Marine for the XBox 360

Justicar Szafraniec’s Review of Kill Team

Platform: Xbox 360

Options: 1 player Campaign mode, Multiplayer vs. mode, Coop Survival Mode DLC

Cut to the Chase:

It’s not a AAA title, but its a satisfying 40k blastfest. Pick up a chainsword and a bolt pistol and tear into some orks. No amazing narrative, no revolutionary gameplay, but a solid title that will scratch a 40k fan’s itch for carnage in the name of the Emperor.

Overview:

Space Marine is a 3rd person over-the-shoulder style shooter/brawler, with a lot of similarities to the Gears of War games. However, instead of pitched battles centering around the cover mechanic, Space Marine gets a lot more in your face with dedicated melee weapons, melee combo mechanics, and run-and-gun gameplay.  Players assume the role of Captain Titus of the Ultramarines, who along with his small squad of space marines is sent to secure a Titan on an Ork-besieged forgeworld. You’ll blast and chop through hordes of enemies with a number of different melee and ranged weapons, all in an atmosphere that’s definitely bathed in the grim-dark style we’ve come to know and love from the 40k universe.

Gameplay/Controls/Graphics:

There is nothing revolutionary about Space Marine’s controls.  If you are familiar with console shooters, you know how to play space marine. The triggers act as your aim/shoot, with the buttons dedicated to grenades and reloading. The buttons are for your usual “interact” mechanics, with two buttons dedicated to melee attacks and stuns. Simple is good, and this effective control scheme makes the game easy to pick up. By the time you’re through the first level, you’ll have combat down. The guns are fun and effective representations of their tabletop equivalents, but you’ll find yourself wading into melee combat fairly often, both to save ammo and because the Orks will rarely leave you much choice!

Outside of some camera angle issues, the game plays smoothly. Given the amount of enemies on the screen at one time, slowdown/choppiness was a worry, but I didn’t encounter any significant slowdown at any time through the game. The blend of melee and shooting gameplay is pretty seamless, allowing you to fluidly transition between combat styles as you battle.

Most of the game is checkpoint to checkpoint, facing waves of enemies. The game does a good job of varying up the encounters, causing you to change up your style and battle-plan. Adding to the variety is a decent weapon selection that caters to your playstyle. For most of the game, you can carry up to four weapons; a pistol, a melee weapon, and two guns. Few choices are downright “better” than another…the chainsword is not as powerful as a thunder hammer, for instance, but attacks significantly faster; and while the lascannon is the go-to for one-shot, long distance kills, the stalker boltgun carries a greater ammo capacity, letting you snipe for longer periods of time.

Much like Halo, Space Marine has your character with a set amount of health, with a regenerating shield. Spend a little time out of battle, and your shield will replenish. To replenish health, however, your Space Marine channels his inner Khorne Berzerker, allowing your character to regenerate health by performing one of the many brutal execution moves on your enemies. While draining life from foes sounds like it would make your character nearly invincible, the catch is you still take damage while performing an execution, causing you to make split-second in-battle cost/benefit analyses on whether decaptitating your foe is worth it or not. I found these to be an immensely satisfying aspect of the game, after being brought to near death by a mob of orks, finishing the last one with an execution, regaining some health, and marching into the next confrontation ready to do it again. Each melee weapon has different executions, and these vary by enemy type as well. Some are as simple as a good chainsaw to the chest, while others (especially against large enemies) are more detailed, and even more impressive.

GK Note: Is gore-riffic a word?  If not, it should be, because it’s the perfect way to describe Space Marine’s execution mechanic.  Many of these finishing moves are fantastically brutal. Combined with some great bone-crunching sounds, they really give players a taste of the excessive violence of the 41st millennium.

On the easier gameplay levels there isn’t much of a challenge, allowing you wade through enemy hordes like an original Movie Marine. For those of you looking for your super soldier fix, this is the way to go, letting you feel like a true Space Marine Captain. For those of you more dedicated to table-top purity, the harder difficulty levels will leave you with a begrudging respect for a mob of boyz after the second or third time they beat you into submission. Later enemies pack firepower equal to yours, making you approach your encounters with some of those Combat Tactics you’ve heard so much about in your codex. While some of the enemies on harder levels can be pretty brutal, they don’t feel cheap… you’ve just got to step up your game.

Moving on to the graphics, as I mentioned at the outset, this isn’t an AAA game.  Put Space Marine next to Gears of War 3, and its not that impressive. Then again, we’re here to kill orks, not to go sight seeing! The graphics won’t win any awards, but they do their job.  The environments are decent, and you’ll spend most of your time in sandy wastes, habitation compounds, and vast mechanical factories.  Nothing especially impressive, but not bad by any means, and it effectively conveys the feel of the 40k universe from a space marine perspective.

Replayability/Customization:

Like most shooters, Space Marine is hurting in this department. There’s only one ending.  Without any sort of leveling system, once you’ve beaten the game, you’ve beaten it. The game does have the usual achievements, which for many is enough to justify replaying some levels.  In addition, the audio recordings are worth collecting as many are genuinely interesting and they certainly add to the atmosphere of the game.  Outside that, however, there’s not much reason to go back.

Multiplayer:

Space Marine has a pretty decent multiplayer mode. Each team is either Space Marines or Chaos Space Marines, and each side has three classes; tactical, assault, and heavy support. These play a lot like their table-top counterparts in terms of wargear and role on the battlefield. The assault/raptor classes have jump-packs which allow them to boost jump around the battle-field, capturing points and rushing the heavy guns on the other side. The Heavy Support class brings the devastator/havoc weapons to the battlefield, laying down some serious firepower at the cost of mobility. The tactical marines find the middle ground, carrying a wide range of guns and lending themselves well to the run-and-gun playstyle. All of this plays out as both sides fight to control points located throughout the board in a mission style similar to Call of Duty’s “Domination” mode.  All the classes have various perks to choose from, and as you level up your class, you gain access to more perks and more weapons. All in all, the multiplayer felt pretty balanced and I had a lot of fun with it.

One of the biggest draws of the multiplayer experience is the available customization of the classes. In addition to customizing weapons and wargear, both sides can customize their Imperial/Heretical armor with a huge selection of colors and designs. In addition, players unlock new types of armor for completing various challenges. The game comes pre-loaded with a large selection of Chapters and Legions ready to pop onto your character, or you can design your own. Want your Havoc to be all nurgle-green? Go for it.  I spotted some really impressive custom-made color combos, and it lets you play as your favorite chapter or legion, though you will inevitably run into someone that takes the Rainbow Warriors Chapter name all too seriously.

Since its launch, Space Marine has also released a free DLC survival mode, allowing some coop with friends to fight off hordes of enemies. This is a welcome addition, as Horde-mode style gameplay is getting more and more popular.

However, this seems like a small consolation for the lack of coop in the main game. For the majority of the game, Captain Titus fights alongside his team mates. Given the success of popular coop campaigns like Gears of War and Halo, allowing someone else to play as a teammate seems like it would have been an auto-include. While I enjoyed this game, I would have enjoyed it a lot more blasting through the carnage with a friend.

40k Sauce:

Dripping. Space Marine delivers on the 40k feel from the beginning to the end. While canon purists will find several “Harumph, that would never happen!” moments, they are easily ignored for a great 40k experience. The Space Marines feel truly superhuman, with you and your small team being a turning point for the battle at large. As your warrior strides through the Imperial Guard bunker, you’ll hear the soldiers mutter their respect and whisper superstitions. The weapons feel sufficiently powerful and play like you would expect them to. Orks act like orks, and they even talk ‘propa orkish. While the story is fairly predictable, I think that is a testament to how well the writers followed the 40k feel. All in all, when you step into the power-armored boots of a Space marine, you get the feeling that all around you is the 41st millenium, and there is only war.

The customization options in the multiplayer were a welcome addition as well, and sometimes I spent just as much time playing with the army painter as I did fighting in the battles. The game also included the schemes for a surprising number of Chapters. I found myself fighting hard to complete in-game challenges to unlock some of the pre-heresy armor just to better represent my Carcharodons paint scheme!

Conclusion:

I had a lot of fun with Space Marine, and I think I owe a lot of that to knowing what my expectations were. If you’re looking for revolutionary gameplay and graphics, look elsewhere. Space Marine features solid gameplay and pleasing graphics, but breaks no ground in either area.

However, for those of you tired of controlling squads of marines from the top down and looking for some intense 40k-related action, this is your game. Many times you’ll feel like a zoomed-in-on unit from Dawn of War, hacking and blasting your way through scores of enemies.

I would definitely recommend the game to any 40k player, as it does an outstanding job of giving the 40k world we all build in our imagination a new life.  And, as expected, it just so happens to be a life that’s grim, bloody, and brutal!