Space Marine 2 REVIEW (NO SPOILERS) - Full game review after completion

Gameplay or Space Marine 2 offers one of the most epic campaigns I've played in a long time it reminds me of the best Gears of War games and it put a huge smile on my face this week hello everybody Johnny here and today we're reviewing Space Marine 2 after completing it big thanks to the Developers for providing a code through the ACG platform for me to experience the game nice and early be able to discuss it with you today look out for our podcast for a more indepth discussion let's set some expectations for the game it runs on the same engine from World War Z and you can tell that by how reminiscent the hordes of bad guys are when you see a giant wave of monsters running it down on a hill just heading directly to you it really never gets old it sets the scene for some spectacular action set pieces where you face Godless enemies in a way that can only be described as heroic and that's the main feeling this game tries to evoke taking pride in your sacrifice and heroism as Titus you get to lead a squad of ultramarines into combat against overwhelming odds seriously when you put the odds on paper you would be more likely to win the lottery 10 times in a row than to actually beat the number of enemies thrown at you at any point in time and yet the game has a way to dish out solid cutscenes and event F between the sections of chaotic combat that makes it feel very well paced and keep it fresh every time you gear up for the next Story Mission you get access to some new weapon you can try out at times you will also get access to a jetpack which completely changes the way you play giving you access to Aerial combat plus a badass stomp move that destroys everything in the general area you land on all that goes a long way to provide variation throughout the campaign the first time you get access to the big hammer for example there's a new level of dopamine when it connects onto a group of enemies the smaller ones get smashed like flies and really builds up the fiction of being this Mega augmented giant dude at the same time hordes do offer a challenge if you don't manage to thin out their numbers before they fully descend upon you and yes at times it does feel like the Wrath of the heavens have descended upon you bringing to Bear every single mob that ever crawled out of a hole even the smaller guys can overwhelm you and stagger you into Oblivion if they have enough numbers what that means is that you can't get away with just swinging your Hammer happily in the midst of a giant wave because you will get staggered and die by a Thousand Cuts literally instead you have to play this dance of thinning out waves with your weapons and grenades using Dodge a lot to reposition so you can get attacks off every so often activating your special ability that allows you to heal over time and based on some melee hitss you land another great way to navigate the chaos is being attentive to the blue circles that means you're about to get whacked if you parry in this window you will enter an animation that makes you invulnerable and gives you some armor similarly if you execute any enemies once they're very low you also enter a similar animation with those benefits so you can see how keeping your armor up is a key piece of the combat and using these ways to get it back can be the difference between surviving or getting Whitted down but we haven't talked yet about a really important mechanic and this is the bloodborne hidden enemy to get your health back yes it's back the health you lose can be recovered if you land hits in a short window of time allowing you to effectively trade hits with enemies This Ti for Tat is a central part of the combat and it is fully intended for you to take damage and fights will get messy but you always have ways to regain your health or your armor I would say that is the main lever lever GIF GIF anyway that is the main thing for skill expression in the game as the bread and butter of combat is quite simple having light attacks that can be followed by heavy attacks some providing big AOE damage a lot of your mental stack will be dedicated then to balancing your health and finding ways to regain it or your armor back and that is the combat in the nutshell sounds simple right and it is but honestly it works really well with the combined large variety of ranged weapons you can throw throw in I do wish there were more melee weapons to experiment with but of course more can be added in future funny how Brits say in future instead of in the future anyway I just felt like doing that but my favorite melee weapon was the hammer because of the sheer blunt force applied to the unfortunate enemies in the general area around you the melee weapons have a variety of range AOE and attack speed so you can really find the one that suits your play style best for ranged weapons I absolutely loved the lapis laser gun at least I think that's what it was called this thing packs a massive punch and absolutely carried me in some tough spots due to how easy it is to land shots and how much damage it deals the drawback is that it has very small ammo amount so you continually have to look for more ammo to keep using it hopefully that gives you a good idea about the combat in the game if you're interested so far strap up because it's only going to get better as we start talking about the presentation the game Presentation looks fantastic and has some absolutely epic action set pieces before I compared it to Gears of War because that's the best comparison I can think of but expect a solidly epic campaign here and not just a glorified tutorial to get to the multiplayer Parts the best part is that it follows a crescendo in epicness culminating at the Peak at the very end just focusing on the campaign and normal difficulty it took me around over 10 hours to complete it and it was packed with cool moments and visuals the plot focuses a lot on the ultramarines but we get a Splurge of mechanicus dudes other zealots and different enemy factions that I won't talk about here I would say there's enough to get you interested in that whole universe without overwhelming you with tons of lore about anything or requiring you to know anything in advance I've picked up a few audiobooks to peruse as a result of playing this because I wanted to learn more about the different factions cultures and motivations for example why do the mechanicus people worship the omnissiah but doing so seems to be frowned upon by the Marines yet interestingly they work together just like that you'll find lots of cool details that spark your curiosity and get you engaged in the universe more as an ultramarine you are always called brother by your fellow Squad members and it's a nice feeling of belonging that everyone deserves respect regardless of station even though there is huge respect for ranks you also get a feeling that you matter as a member of the order Titus the protagonist has been through some utter [ __ ] and got to the other side of it getting a second chance with his new Squad he will have to earn the trust of these guys throughout the campaign and prove his Devotion to the order as a whole the Inquisition is always on top of you casting suspicion and keeping a close eye on your decisions and actions the result of all of that is a cool mix of belonging to a group but always being kept accountable for your actions which I found really compelling there are a good number of cinematics that also help showcase the magnitude of events going on I was really impressed with some of these specifically towards the end of the story but you also have a lot of scenes that run in engine and the character models there have amazing detail I was pretty blown away at the level of detail they can keep having while also having so many enemies on screen playing with my 390 and the 7800 x3d I had a solid 60fps locked in 4k using the LSS the only technical issue I experienced was that the game sometimes wouldn't quit properly and I had to kill the process myself outside of that I had zero crashes and a super stable FPS when you bring that all together this was a really fun campaign to play through and just for that I would happily pay full price but that's not all the game has to offer you also have a PVE and PVP mode Multiplayer I'm not that much into PVP so I've only experienced the PVE these are operations you run with friends or randoms where you go through different stages and you're able to unlock awesome customizations for your character like different colors decorations emblems for your suit this system is not phoned in you have six classes each of them with its own unique ability for example the one I used the most had a jetpack and another one had an awesome grapple to Gap close onto enemies each class has a perk tree which you progress through the more operations you play if you want to learn more about what each class does stay tuned to the channel for that video the customization is pretty nuts you unlock different colors patterns and emblems for your suit through the heraldy trees you can then select any combination of these things in any part of the suit as well as choosing different variants for each part with different decorations as you progress The Herald re trees are four different trees where you can spend points to unlock stuff you don't have to even follow the node sequentially but you do for each node have to unlock each part in sequence to get to the end of it in practice you will see either an armor suit or a cool collar at the end of each node so you do have to be very picky with each node that you decide to spend points into there is currently no way to Respec your spent points on these nodes but it gets trickier than that even the same points currency is also used to unlock skill tree perks weapon perks and even weapon appearances that makes it so every point you get from missions matters a great deal and you have to balance getting cosmetic unlocks versus actually leveling up your class or weapons this tension is made worse by the fact that the currency is shared across all classes so if you're trying to level up more than one class you will also be spend spending more points since you have to unlock skill and weapon perks for two classes now you can see how this gets out of control very quickly therefore I recommend focusing on one class so you're able to access higher difficulties and higher rewards which will carry you in leveling up another class for you later on currently the only way to earn these points is to actually beat operations if you fail an operation you still get some XP but you won't get a single currency point this then creates a risk and reward Dynamic do I go for an easier operation that I know I can complete to secure a smaller amount of points or do I risk it for the biscuit and go for a higher difficulty for a chance to earn many more points as much as there is a tension there and a bottleneck with the main currency being used for everything I really think this will be the main drive for people to get into operations more and generate the one more run phenomena that keeps folks coming back but all that is outside of the combat so you might be thinking what about the gameplay in those operations well the combat flow is quite similar to the story missions except you can have friends or randoms take over the bots in your squad the big difference being that each class plays very differently with its own unique skill perks and weapons and everyone has to use a different class class so you can't have repeats this means you will always get an interesting mix of abilities and synergies depending on which classes are being used Bots are able to Res you and do an okay job at defending you but they can't do objectives like activating a terminal or picking up bombs to deploy it's definitely a much more enjoyable experience with people for that reason plus it's much more fun to see each person with their unique look play style and configuration a lot of these operations fit right in with the story too sometimes you'll hear about a second unit doing something on the side during the campaign well now you are that unit and the operations fill some interesting gaps in the story that left you wondering what was B Squad up to I Verdict really feel like the PVE has some solid bones and pulls many elements from other games like dark tide Vermin tide and World War Z bringing it all together in an enjoyable mishmash of gameplay that strikes a competent balance between butt clenching and casual fun I highly recommend you spend your time on this one and I hope to see lots of people enjoying the multiplayer as soon as this releases in my scoring scale of 1 to 10 one being do not spend a single second on this game and 10 being stop what you're doing and put time into this I give this game a nine out of 10 and with that I wish you happy slaying the emperor protects