Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 is a 3rd-Person Shooter was released in 2024 for PS5, XSX/S, and PC.
It was developed by Saber Interactive and published by Focus Entertainment, and it is a sequel to 2011's title such as Warhammer 40k: Space Marine for PS3, X360, and PC which was developed by Relic Entertainment.
Before I begin reviewing the game, I wanted to share history of the Warhammer 40k franchise that was started back in the 80s.
The Warhammer 40k is a miniature wargame created by Games Workshop, a table-top game set in the distant future where the players takes control of miniature models across the playing field comprising models of terrain features and simulate a battle between the miniature models are determined by a combination of dice rolls and simple arithmetic.
It became hugely popular among with the table-top fans and communities especially in places like UK has spawned numerous of spin-off media including graphic novels, board games, animated TV series such as Hammer and Bolter and Animated film such as Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40k movie, and of course the video games.
I never actually tried out with these Warhammer 40k games which I heard it had a shares of decent amount of titles such as Space Hulk, Chaos Gate, Fire Warrior, Dawn of War, and Shootas-Blood & Thief.
(but I did recently played Warhammer 40k: Boltgun which is a fun retro-style FPS plays similar to classic shooter like Doom).
Until I've discovered the 3rd-person shooter title called Space Marine is one of the game that caught my attention.
I remember back in my days of 2010s when I've used my brother-in-law's PSN account on my PS3 system to use a PS Plus subscription which is a online services that offers you a monthly free games that are free to download and play it on your system, so that's when I've first discovered the Warhammer 40k: Space Marine which is a ultra-violence 3rd-person shooter where you take control of super soldiers goes on war fighting their lives to protect their home planet from the invasion of evil alien empire.
My initial impression on the first game is somewhat positive in terms of combat system which is a combination of 3rd-person shooter and Action Hack N Slash type of style just really fits it together well for the franchise and I'm pretty sure the single-player campaign action is also fun to play by blasting, slashing, and ripping the hordes of enemies in pieces throughout the stages just never got old is the reason why the first game is quite decent to play.
In around year 2021 when the sequel just finally got announced with the cinematic trailer at The Game Awards 2021, I was really hyped to see the Space Marine made the return with the second title for the PC and 9th-gen console, so the game just got released in Autumn 2024 and it gained much better reception than the 2011's first title at the launch release which is why I've bought the copy of Space Marine 2 for my PS5 console to cover my review of this title, so I'm proud to say is that this game is surprisingly outstanding which I did not expect the developers team is doing something incredibly well on this sequel, so I will discuss the pros and cons further on my review to analyse what makes the game so great to play and how this title actually compares with the first original game in terms of solo or co-op campaign missions, combat system, visuals and performances, and story presentation.
So without go further do, let's start the review.
Presentation
The game sets after the event of the first game where Captain Demetrian Titus's dishonorable charges of heresy and had disgraced his chapter that led him being taken into the inquisition as an punishment for his corruption.
While he's being imprisoned, he was then rescued by other members of inquisition who offered him to join the Deathwatch group as the Blackshield.
It began with the opening prologue scenes of Deathwatch group travels to Kadaku to hunt down the alien threats, then after the prologue had finished you are greeted with the next scene with the Titus was fully recovered by the ultra-marines after his brutal injury he had from the previous mission, so he met a guy with mysterious mask named Chaplain Quintus has told Titus that he has been reinstated into the ultra-marines as a Lieutenant.
He then joins up with the new squadmates such as Sgt. Gadriel and Brother Chairon, as Titus and his squadmates went on their mission to defend their home planet and fight against the invasion of the alien race known as the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan.
I say the opening sequence is excellent which I really liked the beginning of the prologue mission with the Titus as a Blacksheld of Deathwatch group fighting with the hordes of aliens and then after the recovery in the next scene where he's been returning back in action with the ultra-marines as a Lieutenant to continue his fighting in the war on aliens.
As the game does have a great start, the character such as Captain Demetrian Titus, which you may know him as the primary protagonist from the first game, is tremendously a badass space marine carries with ultra heavy blue-armor and his gritty chainsword, and has stronger tone of his strengthy power which makes him very likable throughout the story campaign.
He also has supportive characters like Sgt. Gadriel and Brother Chairon are also join forces with Titus to fight against the hordes of the aliens.
There are multiples of enemies which I find them extremely awesome in terms of design overall and aggressiveness, so stuff like you have Carnifex, Hive Tyrant, Neurothrope, Helbrute, Heldrake, Imurah, Lictor, Ravener, Zoanthrope, Lesser Sorcerer, Scarab Occult Terminator, Spore Mine, Tyranid Warrior, Rubric Marine, Gargoyles, Hormagaunt, Termagant, Cultists, and Tzaangor.
I say the presentation is fantastic because I'm really into with the futuristic medieval Sci-Fi which really made the tone of game look gritty and dark, shares with great locations such as gloomy old jungle from the outside, completely wrecked structures of abandoned areas, has research facilities, dark cathedral palace environments, some industrials areas, and the heavy vibrant of dark world is just looking marvellous which I consider the game has the best looking campaign stages they ever designed for Warhammer 40k series.
Overall, it has excellent story and characters, and has fantastic presentation settings.
Gameplay
The game has 6 campaign missions, one is a prologue while other 5 are mains, whether you play it on offline single-player solo or 3-player online co-op, so you're playing as one of the ultra-marines in 3rd-person perspective, as your main mission is to complete the whole objectives while battling against the hordes of the enemies throughout the stages.
You move around the player by pushing the left-stick around and using the right-stick to rotate around which has the crosshair symbol on the centre of the screen shows where to point and aim at things.
You can sprint and run by pressing the left thumbstick button, as well as dashing and rolling by tapping with the cross button which are used for evading the enemy's projectiles.
For combat controls, press the right trigger button to shoot at the enemies, but you can also hold the left trigger button for over-the-shoulder perspective view while aiming around with the right-stick control giving a much steady aiming and firing at the same time.
You can reload your weapon by pressing the square button, and you can cycle your weapons with the d-pad down button, and you can also swap your weapons that lays on the ground by holding the square button which you can only carry two weapons at the time such as your pistols and rifles.
You can also use grenade as a throwable explosive weapon by pressing the circle button to throw at the enemies till it explode them with the heavy impact damage.
You can also perform the close-range combat by tapping the right shoulder button for quick melee attack, and holding the same button again to perform a fierce melee attack deals a significant damage on the enemies.
When the targeting blue-symbol appears on the enemy indicating their incoming attack, you can perform the parry system by pressing the left shoulder button at the right time, so when successfully parrying on enemies which leads you to do counter-attack on them or deflecting them away from your distance, but if the targeting symbol goes amber which means you had to dodge and avoid their incoming attack rather than parrying.
If you successfully staggering your enemies, the red-crosshair symbol appears on the enemy's head which allows you to do one-shot firing damage by pressing the right trigger button, and also if you see enemy being fully highlighted with the red color while they being temporary stunned then this will allow you to finish them off by pressing the right thumbstick button to perform a deadly kills on enemies such as ripping and crushing them into pieces with the melee weapons.
When the gold shaped icon appears on the screen meaning that you can activate the rage mode by pressing the triangle button temporary allowing you to perform a much heaver damage attack works effectively on against the large and tough enemies and bosses in short time.
You can press the d-pad right button to use medstems to increase your health bar, so you can only carry two medstems which I can only say is just use it when it necessary, so don't try to waste it too much otherwise you get an ass-handed by the enemies in some places.
I say the combat control is working smoothly because I find the responsiveness of melee combat is quite balanced depending on what melee weapons you're using, so stuff like the chain-sword which I find this melee weapon doing quite decent amount of damage attack on enemies with a moderate-speed slashing, and I also liked the power sword which is like the standard looking blade but provide a great amount of damage attack making it a versatile melee weapon, and you have combat knife which deals a weaker attack but provides a high-speed duelling, and there are a power fist that deals far-reaching wave damage attack, and finally my favourite of them all is got to be a thunder hammer which is slow but deals a powerful area-of-effect damage.
While I really liked the choice of these melee weapons, I wanted to say that these melee combat responsiveness are actually worked mostly on close-range battle thanks to parrying system which feels very natural when I see the blue targeting symbol being appeared on enemies and I did hit the left shoulder button at the same time as the enemies are being close to my distance before they successfully made an attack, and I also wanted to praise the speed of the swinging motion such as when I'm using the chain-sword which is quicker and faster does a fair damage on the smaller or medium sized enemies where as the thunder hammer moves really slow which really shows how hard can you swing and pound at them just feels very realistic to play which I really liked how it plays.
It also has a amazing selection of gun weapons that the game has to offer such as bolt rifle which is a standard auto-fire gun that launches self-propelled explosive rounds, Auto bolt rifle has a rapid ammo loader with more rate of fire at close range, heavy bolt rifle provides a better armor piercing power and higher rate of fire and range, stalker bolt rifle has scoped aim which fires in single shot, bolt carbine has a foregrip that are quicker to aim and fires incredibly fast at short range, marksman bolt carbine provides rapid continuous fire and is extremely accurate when aimed, instigator bolt carbine offers a good accuracy and little recoil which fires in 3-bullet bursts, oculus bolt carbine has low-damage but provides targeting assistance from its multiple specialised lenses, heavy bolter is a fully automatic version of bolt rifle which fires even larger explosive shells, plasma incinerator which shoots a projectile are capable of melting through armor, heavy plasma incinerator has larger charging coil and provides slower to fire but even more powerful, melta rifle are short-range anti-tank weapons that use concentrated bursts of microwave radiation to melt them down at very close range, multi-melta has twin-barrelled being attached with even more power, pyreblaster is a flamethrower used as the close range flame attack to clear out the flesh, bolt sniper rifle has a superior sights which packs a punch and does extreme headshot damage, las fusil is a long-range laser powered weapon which fires a charged laser beam, bolt pistol are semi-auto weapon which fire a weak self-propelled rounds, heavy bolt pistol fires a large calibre rounds with more stopping power, plasma pistol uses a magnetic chamber to heat gas which it can fire as a projectile, so holy shit that is a hell-a-lot of the gun-weapons to chose from because I really liked these choices that you can use any of these weapons such as the light ones are suited for taking out on those regular enemies where as these heavy and bulky ones are effectively works better against those large and tough enemies which I got to say that I am really happy with the choices of firepower, accuracy, and fire-rate that keeps the flows of the combat system a very balanced and precised to play.
I got to say the story campaign is little bit short, but also an enjoyable shooter experience packed with many epic action going on like you're facing with the hordes of alien enemies are scattered across the rooms and there are bunch of armored enemies carries with their arsenals in whole single room is just insane to fight which keeps me playing the single-player campaign or you can also enjoy the entire campaign with the 3-player online co-op where you'll be teaming up with your friends through online lobby to join forces with you to complete with the 5 campaign missions to play just makes the game even fun to play.
If that is not enough for you to experience the game, you can also enjoy other game mode called the operations which is a solo or co-op PvE game mode where you or your friends must complete 6 or 8 operation missions with multiple objectives, but I've mostly preferred to play it on the offline single-solo.
What I've loved about this mode is that it has 6 playable classes to chose from such as tactical which is a versatile all-rounder with adaptive combat skills, assault is a high-mobility melee specialist with aerial prowess, vanguard is a resilient close-combat fighter able to close in on enemies fast, bulwark is a defensive anchor with powerful area control abilities, sniper is a precise marksman with stealth and support capabilities, and of course heavy is a durable firepower expert with squad-buffing abilities, so each of them will have their own beneficial perks and loadout options effecting on combat play. Completing an operation mission will reward you with experience points for your player's weapon and classes, so the more you level up your XP the more you unlock the amounts of perks which you can able to customise your stuff such as your weapon and class appearance, upgrading your stats level of your weapons, and of course unlocking the new abilities on each classes which enhances your strength and power which is why I really liked the game modes where you can able to keep playing the same mission to gain enough XP level and unlocking perks and abilities feels really rewarding to play.
I say those operation missions is insanely chaotic fun with tons of action filled with great mission objectives, well challenging difficulty with tons of trials and errors to learn, and of course working with the team together while fighting on the warzone filled with hundreds of thousands enemies and bosses to fight with is what I considered as the best part of the game to play Warhammer 40k games.
You can also participate the online multiplayer battle called eternal war which has competitive PvP modes such as seize ground which consists of two opposing teams fighting over a number of control points on the map, capture and control has 3 specific zones in the arena and each team fights to control them so gaining and keeping control of a zone grants your team points, and lastly annihilation is essentially team deathmatch where two teams must complete against each other.
Sadly to tell you the truth, I never had a chance to play the eternal war is due to the requirements of PS plus subscription to play online matches which is why I rarely played these online modes, but I do heard many good things from the users comments said that they did managed to enjoy playing the competitive online matches which is really good to hear the positive things from them, so if you're one of those people who really get into with the online multiplayer games then just give it go.
I wish the game could have had a offline split-screen would have made the game quite fun to play which sadly it's not been featured in the game, so hopefully the game developers will considering add it to the game in the future with patch update if they had a time to work on these things.
So far, the game itself is fantastic in many ways which I had fun playing the single-player solo on both the campaign and operation mode which is why I liked this title.
Overall, it has solid combat gameplay, and has great campaign and operation mode.
Graphics
The graphics is stunningly outstanding for its visual perspective felt very rich and detailed is what the 9th-gen gaming is all about providing a best visual experience that you may never seen anything quite impressive.
The level of crispiness with no signs of blurred textures and slow pop-ins really shows that the game is being optimised really well on the system, and I got to say this is the cleanest textures in many areas which you can see how nice and sharp on the surfaces.
I got to love the structures of the level design is actually wide open with great space to explore around the area proving how great the level environment being designed in the game.
The game does have a gruesome amount of gores and blood where all the particles and guts of enemy's blood being scattered around the floor, and you got to love a finishing kill where those enemy being shredded and pounded to death by ripping, toning, stabbing, and crushing them in pieces is quite entertaining to watch.
The character's animation is by far the best looking I've seen in any of Warhammer 40k games thanks to in-depth detail of facial and body figure just seems to be realistic in many cutscenes and in-game action.
The game's performance is quite important for both PS5 and XSX/S is because this game has two graphical option such as the image quality mode which runs on 1440p resolution with locked 30fps which I got to say it runs pretty well on both the PS5 and XSX/S with no signs of slowdown sounds like a good news for those who are looking for a best visual quality with stable frame-rate may going to have no issue with the game, where as the performance mode which runs on 1080p resolution with 60fps does seems to have a frame-drops in some areas such as multiples of swarming aliens gathers around on the single screen does make the frame goes down a bit which mostly it may occur on PS5 version drops to between 35 to 60fps as opposed to XSX/S are drops to between 50 to 60.
I say please set it to image quality mode which I finding it more responsive to play.
Overall, it has outstanding visual design, best performance on image quality mode, and gruesome amount of gorefest level.
Music and Sounds
This game does have a wicked soundtrack that made your heart go pumping for action with epic orchestra sounds really fits the game's atmospheres and it was composed by Nima Fakhrara and Steve Molitz did a spectacular job on their score.
The sound effects is quite amazing in the game which I really liked the audio surrounding where you can able to hear the environmental sounds coming from the left to right, and I also liked the weapon's sound effects which is gritty and loud just made the speakers thumping noises which I really liked how its sounds.
The voice acting in the game is amazing which they did a good job for their performance on character's role providing a epic and powerful use of dialogue.
Overall, it has wicked soundtrack, amazing sound design, and very good voice-role performance.
Special Features
The game does have a collectables stuffs such as the audio logs which can be found in each missions, and has unlockable skins and perks which can be unlocked by gaining more player's skills level or DLCs if you want to purchase a season pass which comes with armor, weapons, and some cosmetics from the mission chapters, but unfortunately the price for season pass is dead expensive which is not worth for £35.
The good news is that you will receive a great free update content meaning that you will get these stuff for free that's been included on the roadmap such as new PvE mission, PvP game mode, PvP arenas, horde mode, new enemy, and new weapon will be added to your game via patch update, so thank god it's not absolute mess at all.
Overall, it has horrible season pass's cost, but saved by great free update content.
Advantages
Fantastic overall presentation.
Solid combat gameplay.
Has great campaign and operation mode.
Outstanding visual design.
Wicked soundtrack and amazing sound design.
Disadvantages
Missing offline split-screen mode.
Ridiculous cost for season pass.
Performance mode aren't quite stable as image quality mode.
Final Verdict
Presentation 9/10 - excellent story and characters, and has fantastic presentation settings.
Gameplay 9/10 - solid combat gameplay, and has great campaign and operation mode.
Graphics 9/10 - outstanding visual design, best performance on image quality mode, and gruesome amount of gorefest level.
Music and Sounds 8.5/10 - wicked soundtrack, amazing sound design, and very good voice-role performance.
Special Features 8/10 - horrible season pass's cost, but saved by great free update content.
Overall 9/10 - Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 is a strong shooting action that the sequel we all wanted after 13 years of wait since the 2011's first original title.
It a solid improvements over the 2011's original game thanks to story campaign action, epic operation missions, smooth combat and levelling progression, and rich graphical design is what makes it a worthy 3rd-person shooter game for both PCs and 9th-gen consoles.
I am really happy to say that the Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 is the major example of how to create a true shooter experience that are exciting to play, full of action-packed, and tons of epicness is the reason why I enjoyed it, as much as the Warhammer 40k community had loved the game.
The physical copy of the game cost around between £35 to £40 is easy to pick-up, where as the digital release for PS Store, Xbox Store, and Steam are the expensive side which has three bundles to purchase such as the standard edition cost £45 to £60, the gold edition cost £60 to £85 comes with season pass, and lastly the ultra edition cost between £70 to £90 comes with season pass and ultramarines champion pack.
Is it a recommended to play title? yes...for those who are into with Warhammer 40k series or 3rd-person shooter in general, this game is a definite must play in all available platforms for both PCs and Consoles.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Skip it
Rent it
Buy it
If you like my recent blog, please hit like and comment below for further questions.
This is Zeeshan Mirza's Blog and I'll see you next time, happy blogging everyone. FOR THE EMPEROR!!!
