I was fairly certain that Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 would end up being a 6 or 7 out of 10 after playing the single player campaign, but after several hours spent in its Operations multiplayer mode, I'm giving it higher marks. This is a game designed around cooperative play, and although the AI isn't terrible, you really need another human player to make it interesting. For the campaign, you play as Titus, an Ultramarine serving penance for the events of the first game, which I didn't play. Titus is called out of obscurity to help fight against a Tyrannid invasion, and the plot soon centers around a Mcguffin that Chaos forces are bent on acquiring. The only semi-interesting beat is Titus's distrust of his squadmates, who also view him with suspicion, but they all come-around in the spirit of manly fascism. Space Marine 2's bulky boys don't have any criticisms of their imperial techno-hell; they're all too-ready to sacrifice themselves for the Imperium. There's none of the underlining criticism of totalitarianism that powered Gears of War--this is a straight up power fantasy about giant space marines squashing xenomophs and demons. And that's fine, really. I don't need a whole lot in a video game story. But something a little stronger thematically might have saved Space Marine 2's campaign from being as boring as it is.
Operations mode is a cooperative gametype where you play with two other players and accomplish objectives parallel to Titus's squad from the single player. This basically boils down to holding a point for a while while a timer ticks, although there are several boss fights that require player coordination. The Tyrannids are nasty aliens that'll swarm you, while Chaos forces have turned Space Marines as well as demonic hordes to deal with. You'll have a decent collection of bolt rifles and melee weapons to wield. The multiplayer is class-based, and the two classes I've spent time with are the Vanguard, which has a grapple hook as their special ability, allowing you to grapple onto enemies and pull yourself toward them, and the Assault marine, who specializes in melee combat utilizing jetpack-powered ground pounds. The shooting feels similar to Gears of War, whereas the melee combat is more hack and slash. Enemies can be countered, which results in either an execution or a temporarily stunned alien, lined up for an auto-aimed pistol shot. Heavier enemies like Tyrannid warriors and Chaos Space Marines will have to be countered to be killed swiftly, and the game quickly becomes complicated, with your character struggling to manage the horde while dueling with bigger threats. Average difficulty was appropriately challenging with my low-level characters. You can be revived three times before you have to wait for a respawn. You gain experience with every game, allowing to your unlock more perks for your character, as well as armor customization. It's a pretty entertaining multiplayer game, and although I don't think it'll have as much legs as Helldivers 2, developers Saber Interactive have already released a new Operations mission, bringing the total number of multiplayer maps up to seven. There's also a player-versus-player mode that I haven't tried. The single player campaign took me about ten hours to beat on Hard difficulty.
If you're looking for a good hack and slash horde shooter, you can't go wrong with Space Marine 2. Just don't expect a compelling single-player experience. One other note: this is a pretty demanding game. With settings maxed out and DLSS set to dynamic with my frame rate target being 60, Space Marine 2 keeps right around the 60 to 70 mark, with maybe a few drops into the high 50s at 1440p. I'm not sure if there's a lot of scalability, since it seems to be CPU-bound. I played at 4k a couple times and had about the same frame rate, so depending on your CPU, you probably won't get ultra-high frame times unless you're sporting a top end processor.
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