Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40k setting needs no introduction. Surprisingly Relic’s Space Marine is the first action videogame allows player to control the most famous soldiers of that setting (well, apart from the 1993 Space Hulk which isn’t a shooter). It’s also Relic’s first action game, which likely explains why it isn’t as polished as you might expect a game as high-profile as this to be.
- This is a third-person shooter. In most such games, the third-person view is needed to facilitate cover. But Space Marines don’t take cover so in this game, the third-person view is used to allow for melee combat. Both shooting and melee are required in the game. Most of them you’ll find yourself shooting at enemies to soften them up or thin their ranks before shifting to melee to finish the job. Since the shooty parts of the game are bog standard, only the melee combat helps the game to stand out some.
- The health regeneration system in this game is pretty cool. Armor is first lost when you incur damage but automatically regenerates after a while. Lost health is never automatically regenerated. In order to regain health, you need to perform an execution animation on stunned opponents. Unusually, you still continue to take damage while performing executions so you usually want to wait until you’re down to the last enemy of a wave to do it. Pretty neat and balanced system.
- There are some simple melee combos but nothing really sophisticated. Without the ability to block melee attacks, you’re reduced to just mashing the attack button or withdrawing from melee when you’re surrounded. You’re allowed to use jump jets during a few sections of the game and you’re plainly supposed to pair that with the thunder hammer. That’s always a hoot because diving down to perform an aerial attack is a guaranteed stun on all enemies.
- Relic’s inexperience with action games shows in a lot of ways. There are many occasions during which you see enemies running by in an inaccessible location, obviously to make the battlefield look busier, so it’s such a trite technique now. Your squadmates are completely invulnerable to damage so letting them tank for you in single-player is a totally viable tactic. The final sequence is a totally cheesy QTE. Even the graphics, level design and writing are workmanlike rather than stellar. In one extended sequence, you need to power up an Imperial Titan. Time to kick ass, right? Nope, because the Titan fires one shot and then it’s down for the count. Talk about anti-climactic.
- One pet peeve is that all the named Space Marines never wear their helmets, ever. Obviously it’s so that we can tell them apart, but it does look silly. In one scene your player character even hands a squadmate a helmet. But does he put it on? Nope. I also dislike how the in-game cutscenes always return your character to the default. So you may be rocking a Power Axe, when it’s time to have a story-conversation with someone, you’re magically holding a chainsword again. This is an example of the general lack of polish that surprised me.
Overall I found this to be a fairly run of the mill action game. It makes no major mistakes but it’s doesn’t have any kind of wow factor either. Apparently the original design called for more RPG elements and some degree of actual squad management, which would have been a lot more interesting. But all of these were cut to pare it down to just another corridor shooter. The Warhammer 40k setting simply deserves better.
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