Space Marine 2 - Before You Buy

hey and we're back with another episode of before you buy that show we give you some straight up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games releasing as usual it's me Jake baldino and today I'm excited to be talking about Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 now this is the followup to the 2011 Space Marine game as well as just the next entry in a slew of games set in the Warhammer 40K Universe there's a lot of them there's like a cart racer now they have everything uh full transpar though I am not a Warhammer guy or a Warhammer 40K person I know very little about it but I was a big fan of the previous game like the original Space Marine game and what I'll say now after playing this game is that I am all in now and I I want to be a Warhammer fan this game is a blast Space Marine 2 is what video games should be it's like the complete package here you just buy it and it's good clean simple fun with action and spectacle with a side helping of some good multiplayer too just so you know uh I've been playing a review copy and this footage was captured running on PC and it's also spoiler-free so you're good now starting with the campaign Space Marine 2 picks up many many years after the events of the first game now without spoiling anything really uh demetrian Titus is once again brought into action to now help fight against the tyranid alien threat although conspiracy looms its head pretty early on and there there's much bigger things a foot you are a Space Marine this big brutish armored fighter just bred for war and you're you're a big chunky boy you stomp your way through levels you're smashing enemies in the face with your chainsaw sword or gunning them down with like heavy bolt guns so think of kind of like the heavy weighty chunky bro of Gears of War but without a cover system because you're a walking tank you're a brute you kill [ __ ] and it's pretty awesome but there is some level of uh thinking to the combat you know you have armor that deteriorates first before your health meter so to get armor back you have to do finishing moves on enemies now melee is good for hacking away at the Swarms and swarms of these smaller enemies around you but ranged weapons and grenades are your friend for dealing with bigger enemies or tougher threats so there's like a Dodge roll you can dodge roll do all that there's a Parry the Parry window is pretty gener and it's good for making a bigger enemy vulnerable uh sometimes open to a very stylish very cool instant quick pistol shot or the Parry will just instantly kill a smaller enemy and the clever thought behind little moments in the game go a long way here and like where I think the game is really cool so like say a smaller enemy jumps at you and you are free to then Parry this attack but because you're a Space Marine like this is a Space Marine we're dealing with here you just catch the Enemy by the throat midair and smash it into the ground it's these little Integrations and bits of charm added into a straightforward third person shooting action game that make it feel unique you know it really goes for the big sci-fi power armor fantasy movement is slower than your average third person character you know Titus is no Nathan Drake but movement isn't slow in an annoying way controls are still tight and you feel in control and efficient every melee weapon is a little bit different you know from a faster big knife to a mass hammer and they all have little Combos and things you can pull off ranged weapons have a really good distinct heavy like feel to them and the further into the campaign the more you get exposed to different weapons that have a different feel to them or different variation or use case that shakes things up pretty well also although I played this on PC I did play a lot of it with a dual sense controller and uh the Dual sense integration here is pretty good and the campaign is able to be played Solo or cooperatively and because of this you always have two Squad members by your side whether they're your friends or AI controlled this gives the game again like a distinctly Gears of warish feel where you have your war buddies with you at all times you get to know them and the game often hits you uh with like checkpoints where you need to regroup and then hit a button to open a door to the next area so structurally that does get a little predictable after a while but what is fresh and surprising is just the level of Chaos and creativity that goes down here you're often in like staggeringly massive looking areas watching hordes of enemies swarm their way towards you uh if you've played the developers previous game World War Z which I actually thought was a little underrated it had some good ideas or maybe you played uh that third person alien shooter Alien fire Team Elite from like 2 3 years ago you know what to expect here ready clear proceed got reloading weap uh the game equips you and empowers you to just blow away these endless hordes of enemies and it can be thrilling and challenging when you get overwhelmed to thankfully there are multiple difficulty modes as well so enemies are exploding as they like Pile in like waves Blood and Guts and particle effects are everywhere but I'll be frank here with one of my few negatives of the game about halfway through the campaign the gameplay Loop of shoot Dodge Parry explode finisher that gets a little bit repetitive it feels a bit rinse and repeat thankfully structurally the gamees campaign is paced really well with like I said good new weapon placement throughout the game as well as creative scenario change UPS you know one second you're creeping through a pitch black hallway filled with monsters and blood seconds later you're on a massive Battlefield watching multiple enemy forces duking it out in real time buildings falling down ships in the sky Tracer fire there's just absolutely incredible video game magic here so while you're often doing the same simple killing there's sometimes like a boss to mix things up or a push up Hill or you get a jetpack for a bit or there's like a whole longrange sniper sequence or scary sequence it is paced very well I just wanted to give you guys a heads up about a little bit of that like you know base level gameplay Loop repetition now I just want more uh like a longer campaign more enemy types more sequences more to-do still I did feel like this was a decently full meal of a campaign you know the story is a bit hard to follow but I'd say you don't need to be a war Hammer expert at all like I said I'm not but just be sure to make yourself familiar with the events of the previous game because a lot of key moments connect and are important you can play it in a bubble here and get by and understand what happened in the last game just through playing it's kind of told to you but it's much much better if you played the original or at least watched a YouTube recap or something trust me on this now the campaign took me just about almost 10 hours which I know doesn't sound like a lot in its defense it doesn't overstay its welcome and like I had said before it's paced really well so if you loved big bombastic goofy single player campaigns from the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 ERA this is the game for you and the 10 hours in my opinion didn't really hurt my experience because the game also offers multiplayer that like I actually wanted to play instead of a shoehorned multiplayer mode like the Vel opers here offer a really good experience that feels primed for way more in the future but like not in a cynical way at any time during your campaign like back at your Hub ship you can walk over to a computer terminal and switch over to two multiplayer modes there's operations which is PVE and eternal War which is PVP the Eternal War PVP I wasn't able to access because servers weren't live now personally I'm not the most competitive person so I may not be the best judge on it anyway but still the jury is still out on this mode and how it will shake out over time as of right now uh there are three different game types I was able to see at least how it all works though like character classes progression stuff like that uh which also works similarly for the PVE stuff operations these as of right now offer six big lengthy missions that you jump into with quick matchmaking or with friends with an invite high ranking eliminated and there's also going to be crossplay which is impressive and very nice good thinking here uh now these operations are actually connected to the main campaign stories so you're often like the B Team on the same Battlefield tasked with a different objective you hear about it quite a bit throughout the campaign I've jumped into quite a few of these operations bits with friends and had a good time running and gunning placing bombs and completing missions more of these are apparently in the works to be added over time for free allegedly which is something I really appreciate it's good fun semi- mindless shooting and Blasting with friends and it can just be a really really good fun Co-op time now what really helps it out are the different classes available for most modes this helps really shake up what I talked about in the single player with kind of like that a little bit repetitive gameplay Loop here you can choose a standard guy a kind of Recon guy a sniper like a tactician a shield guy a super heavy they all offer a lot more variability with their own special ultimate attacks and just a bit of a different feel I often went for the heavy gunner a lot of the time because it's a good change of pace he's even chunkier and slower with a big powerful Minun and and just really really cool looking armor and that's where the progression stuff comes in you can Rank and level up and there's like a full Suite of customization for your armor you know think colors uh paldrons Graves chest pieces helmets uh icons you can put on things we're just full sets that really Flex the fashion and design of the ultramarines like holy crap they they look insane this player expression is good and a lot of it is tied to a kind of progression tree for unlocks there's also weapon Mastery to level through as well just a lot of stuff to check and keep busy for multiplayer completionists a surprising amount really considering like I said just like three PVP game modes right now and you know six operations style Co-op missions it's a lot and it's where I hope the game continues to grow over time it feels like the foundation is in place you know the unlock the progression the customization and now I just want more to play through and I'm happy to wait as of right now there's also no in-game shop or microtransactions Switching gears a bit uh the game also looks absolutely fantastic like on the one hand yes they're Graphics are very good the tech on display here you know the amount of enemies on screen the particle effects the lighting the colors all of it looks great now later on in the game The Campaign really goes like cuckoo bananas mode with the amount of crazy e things going on screen at once and your game might struggle a bit with that otherwise I had a really smooth experience with only one crash when I was changing settings it it was pretty good character faces are a little bit lifeless sometimes but uh otherwise that's really my only complaint it's the art Department like the the visual style and design and music that really comes together and crushes here this game is a gateway drug to the wide world of Warhammer like I said at the start after this game I am fully all in the glimpses of wider lore in the game the alien races the different factions of men the Imperium and the emperor and all of it is just really really interesting and even more so when it's steeped in like this absolutely gorgeous creative I don't know Grim dark design you know skulls candles Cathedrals and religious imagery mixed with authoritarian space Empire Capital ships and robots and wires and fuzzy old school computer screens and lasers it's all just really like unlike anything I've experienced before and the game again left me curious and really hungry for more so if you can't tell in my opinion this is a fantastic package of a video game multiplayer I actually am interested in with no pay to win or convoluted microtransactions or weird currencies or anything like that and with it it feels kind of humble and it's got room to grow out with more content along with that an absolutely fantastic if a bit short campaign fun sci-fi violence a compelling main character a fascinating world man Space Marine 2 just really scratched that itch for me but of course this is a before you buy you know how this goes by now I give you some pros some cons and some personal opinion and now I want to hear yours down in the comments let me know your experience with Warhammer let me know if you have any tips for me uh to get into Warhammer 40K of course if you want to shoot me any more information about that find me on my other YouTube YouTu Channel or Twitter and Instagram my username everywhere is @ Jake baldino but thank you guys for coming around and watching before you buy videos they're my favorite videos to make here on game ranks if you get what we're trying to do here and maybe this video informed you or you appreciated the gameplay clicking the like button does help us out thank you but otherwise we put out videos every single day I'll catch you on the Friday news show and these before you bu thanks for watching and we'll see you next time they never learn Lieutenant navigating through this facility will take time