This third-person fantasy shooter/hack-and-slash melee hybrid serves as an unmerciful excuse to slaughter brainless orks
Contains: Frequent Strong Bloody Fantasy Violence
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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a sci-fi third-person action game that is a hybrid mix of fantasy shooting and melee combat.
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STORY - 2/5
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It is the 41st millennium, and there is only war. The enemies of man, including the savage and bloodthirsty Orks and other dark and dangerous forces, wage constant war against the descendants of Earth, seeking to end their very existence. But there exists a single force that holds back these grim alien hordes. The enemies of mankind fear many things, but the one thing they fear above all else is the wrath of the Space Marines - the Angels of Death. Formed into chapters of a thousand Space Marines each, they are all that prevents humanity's total annihilation. Now, a millions-strong Ork horde has invaded an Imperial Forge World, one of the planet-sized factories that produces the war machines for humanity's never-ending battle for survival. Losing this planet is not an option, but a darker and far more evil threat is lurking in the shadows of this world. With an Imperial liberation fleet en-route, the Ultramarines are sent in to hold key locations until reinforcements arrive. Captain Titus and a squad of Ultramarines veterans must use the weapons of the Imperium to recapture the forge world from the invading forces, and they must win.
You obviously have to be fan of the Warhammer universe to appreciate the story, as for newcomers like myself, it proves dull, and far from captivating even under the circumstances that defeat means humanity lost, and Ork armies rule.
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CHARACTERS - 2/5
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In Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, you play as Captain Titus of the Ultramarines, who is humanity's last hope for survival in a war-ridden future. His squad are an unmoving bunch that fail to give you reason to care for them, and so when drama runs high in the thickest of battles, you would unlikely feel any regret or emotion for a fallen comrade, and ultimately the characters are dull just like the futuristic, fantasy plot.
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GAMEPLAY - 3/5
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The gameplay focuses on a hybrid shooting and melee combat model, giving you lots of equally entertaining opportunities to blast foes at range and unleash hell on anything that wanders too close. Chunks of viscera fly in every direction, blood spurts from critical wounds, and yet the hordes of orks still keep coming with heaps of confidence, charging towards you in another wave much the same to the last with nothing but an axe of some kind or a gun of their own in the hopes of bringing you down. But the result gets familiar, sometimes a little too familiar, and this predictability carries on throughout the game, giving you hundreds of orks to slay ferociously in one sequence and only to find out another group of green-skinned hostiles have been dropped into battle around the next, awaiting the same fate you delivered to their brethren mere minutes ago. But having the enjoyable combination of third-person shooting and hack and slash melee is something of a rare mix in games, and so delivering vengeance in an assortment of ways up close and from a distance makes the experience constantly fun, even though it drifts into repetition early on into the story.
The shooting is fairly straightforward, and you are given a number of fantasy-inspired creations that unleash bullets, lasers and what have you, on the hordes of orks that pile out of the environments or dropships. Shooting is satisfying, even from your trusty submachine gun that feels like any other modern firearm, largely due to the gush of blood that erupts from an exploded ork skull (a frequent and delightful sight). Other powerful weapons include a Stalker Bolter, which is a semi automatic-bolter (similar to a sniper rifle) that is deadly at medium to long range and pops heads with ease; a Melta gun, that is a lethal short-range weapon that fires an area effect cone of superheated concussive force, capable of vaporising small enemies when directly facing the blast; and a Lascannon which unleashes a high-energy laser-like beam with the potential to instantly kill even the most armoured of enemies, and proving a very effective, destructive weapon for sniping purposes. You are given ample chances to mix up your 4 weapon slots with what to carry around with you, with many weapon caches being implemented at frequent intervals to restock, reequip, and reload.
If groups of hostiles aren't equipped with a ranged weapon, then they'll be armed with a strong piece of gear that almost resembles the powerful tool you carry around for when the time is right. And when enemies are advancing towards you like this, then the time is right to start smashing away, breaking bones and decimating entire orks with controlled swings. There are a few types of damaging melee weapons to choose from, and each has it's own set of combos, moves and finishing takedown attacks. Whether you want to saw through enemies with the chainsword which is the standard melee weapon for Assault Marines and capable of slicing through armour, flesh and bone, or sacrifice speed for extreme damage with the cumbersome, but awesome, thunder hammer that kills most normal ork types with a single blow, you get the idea that gory spectacles will occur very often. The hack and slash action is not only a primary way to move through the ranks of orks, but also a vital way to get health back. You have a metre on the top of the screen, and when hit your armour will diminish away from the red bar. Once your armour has gone, your health becomes vulnerable, and if you don't seek cover quickly you'll die. Outside of combat your armour regenerates around the metre, however health doesn't. The only way to regain important health back is to perform an execution kill on an enemy, and to be able to get this opportunity you must force an opening to initiate it. By stunning an enemy with one of your melee weapons or causing enough damage to cause them to momentarily lose focus, you can approach a foe and perform a brutal execution kill which revives your health metre by a substantial amount. The violent takedowns look and feel tremendously brutal, crushing or slicing your foe in a fantastic spectacle that showcases a lot of blood and guts, and definitely captures the brutality of the Warhammer universe fans will recognise and take sadistic pleasure in. It also is an element of the game that warrants sacrifice to proceed, since while performing this kill move, you are still completely vulnerable to all manner of attacks around you, and therefore isolating a certain enemy or waiting for the right opportunity is certainly crucial to avoid certain death during the uninterruptible finishing blow.
Overall there isn't much to detail about the gameplay as each scenario plays out in similar, bloody fashion to the last, allowing you to pick enemies off from a distance or end their suffering up-close-and-personal style, and despite proving repetitive, it's still entertaining towards the end when things get increasingly difficult and when confronted by loads of resilient aggressors of all sizes. But it's disappointing there is a lack of combat variety and especially a letdown that memorable moments are very few and far between, because the rare moments to don a jetpack and stomp on orks from the sky is an aspect of an enjoyment factor short-lived, while boss fights hardly happen.
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GRAPHICS - 2/5
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Blood is a common colour throughout Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, and gallons of it will inevitably coat your armour and splatter your screen during your brutal experience within the fantasy universe. Headshots cause gory eruptions, and grenades decimate anything caught within the radius, usually sending limbs and other viscera everywhere, covering their green allies without them even contemplating backing down despite the fact they'll likely be severed and spread around the immediate environment soon enough, left to rot on a planet that promises bloodshed every second that goes by. Corpses will litter the floor and surfaces will be soaked and stained with the soggy red fluid, and its impressive to see that most of the dead bodies remain where they fall and don't disappear shortly after dying like in most games, though unfortunately the blood disperses pretty quickly from the screen to short-live your bloodthirsty appetite and violent desires at noticing Ork blood. Though massacring creates visual delights for those of us with bloodlust, little can be acknowledged about the graphics and level design. Environments continually showcase a lack of detail with nothing positive to really express the setting you find yourself battling in, and level design confines you on a very linear path that doesn't give the Ork-perishing battles scale to emulate the popular universe. Bland corridors and empty rooms funnel you on to the next violent exhibit, but nothing artistic is here to be seen, and it's a trip that hosts nothing memorable. And it's only exacerbated by the unimpressive graphics that portrait multiple gory deaths well but little else, though the framerate does a tremendous job at holding up well even when the amount of characters on screen borders on insane at times.
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SOUND - 4/5
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Orks heads squidge open with convincing delight when penetrated to a certain degree with bullets, while your melee weapon of choice (maybe a chainsword or power axe) will shred enemies into multiple parts, spilling their blood effortlessly onto the ground. The music score fit's the style of setting, and injects some energy into the fierce fights you'll get into, reflecting the grit and determination of a war that requires winning, and not defeat, spurring you on if you care to notice it behind the shooting and slashing. There's a hefty amount of dialogue to carry the weight of the story around with you through sections when action falls silent temporarily, and most of it is spoken through voices that are gruff and believable for soldiers in bulky armour, but not much of the voice acting is actually immersive, nor does it have any emotion evident within the lines spoken. Saying that, the Ork voice acting is very good, with suitable tones that are convincing and often funny as they charge at you bravely yelling "waaagh!" before presenting themselves for a quick, nasty death.
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CONTROLS - 3/5
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The controls are something of an issue, occasionally, in this bloody action game, and getting to grips with the control scheme is something that will definitely take time because of some configurations, but it isn't overly negative to criticise as you'll soon dismiss any troubles possible through time. When combat gets into hack-and-slash you'll need to require on careful timing to dodge as opposed to solid cover. The adequate evade works well, but doesn't necessarily prevent you from becoming damaged due to the slight delay when trying to execute it again immediately after performing the animation, and certain enemies that are the same speed as you can punish you harshly when you try and regenerate your armour back after successfully dodging their deadly attacks. Sprint animation looks a little clunky too, or perhaps it's just your bulky armour and the shake of the camera as you initiate the sprint move, but either way it doesn't feel smooth.
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ATMOSPHERE - 2/5
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The battles are frequent, bloody, and at times repetitive, and unfortunately there isn't an atmosphere generated around your conflicts that cause your heart to get involved in much the same way that you fantasy melee tools get stuck in to the action. As you gaze onto the oncoming hordes of orks, small figures that slowly fill your screen, the music score does its best to instil substance to upgrade the atmosphere to within epic proportion distance, but this intention cannot be fulfilled even close, thanks to the bland and confined environments which sentence this idea behind bars, and leave you imagining what could have been, and what the Warhammer universe battles possibly deserve under life threatening scenarios. They are no doubt fun fights to the death between two sides with history between them, but the scale of the warfare doesn't climb above average heights, ultimately not quenching your full appetite for intense, bloody mayhem on formidable adversaries.
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ENEMY AI - 2/5
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You'll get completely outnumbered in frequently staged set piece battles, and every time you kill an ork it feels like a dozen take its place, just as savage, intent, and brainless as the last group you brutally slaughtered. And what the standard Ork soldiers thrown in by their superiors lack in brainpower, they most certainly make up for it in large quantities, sometimes infinitely spawning until you complete an objective. There are a decent variety of enemy types that serve to make you tactically engage them, aswell as giving you a chance to see a new brutal finisher, and they add a bit of tension to the tough challenges you face towards the end. On some missions you are aided in battle by a few buddies of your own. Your space marine allies that accompany on most missions never feel like liabilities. They are capable at fending for themselves, and are good fighters aswell, getting their fair share of kills if you aren't quick enough to dispatch the hostiles around you.
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LENGTH - 2/5
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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is comprised of 18 short chapters split into 5 parts, and its relatively easy to get through stages without too much effort or frustration, and possibly even to complete the game in a single sitting due to the length of the game hitting around the 7 hour mark.
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REPLAY VALUE - 2/5
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Diehard fans of Warhammer may see this as something worth playing through again to see the outcome of the Ultramarines arduous efforts, but casual gamers uncaring for the fantasy universe and the big battle at the centre of it all will unlikely find reason to step into Captain Titus' boots again. There are collectible servo skulls to be found scattered around the environments that are hidden from view, give you something to search for outside of combat, and provide some interesting audio logs that add back-story to the events unfolding, but apart from this, there isn't much to do except massacre thousands of Orks when they present themselves down the sights of your weapon. And this is where this hybrid of fantasy third-person shooting and hack and slash melee combat excels above everything else, giving you countless opportunities to slaughter waves and waves of similar green skinned enemies in any way you want, shedding blood in the process and undeniably giving a sense of satisfaction when Ork blood does spill out of wounds. With dull characters, lacklustre environments and unimpressive visuals, slaughtering enemies throughout gameplay and enjoying the aftermath visual is the strongest highlight to address with conviction in a war worth fighting in. War never changes, and in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war…
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OVERALL SUMMARY - 7.5/10
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Good Points: Brutal mix of third-person shooting and hack-and-slash melee combat, Orks are suitably voiced, Constant gory fun with vicious execution moves and exploding body parts, Variety of fantasy weapons to use.
Bad Points: Gets repetitive, Lacks memorable gameplay moments, Lacklustre environmental detail and level design.