Space Marine 2 Review - Squashing Bugs For The Emperor

You'll love it if:

You are an Emperor loving citizen.
You liked Space Marine (2011).
You want a short-ish campaign and optional multiplayer content to dive into with friends.
You have recently completed the correct rites for the machine spirit of your Xbox Series X.

Not for you if:

You are a vile Heretic.
You do not like the Emperor or his children.
You cannot play online and thus miss out on two modes Space Marine 2 offers.
Heresy is your bedtime reading literature. Please report to the nearest Arbites station.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is finally here and we are so excited to share this Space Marine 2 review with you. AVE Greece and Focus Entertainment blessed us with the holy relic of an early access key for the Xbox Series X to deliver the message of the Emperor, praised be his name, to you. Space Marine 2 turned out to be everything we expected from it with more content to be added in the future with their live-service lite model. Sabre Interactive did their ultra best to deliver a worthy successor to the 2011 Space Marine game. We can say the Emperor is proud of them.

TL;DR

Space Marine 2 is a spectacle to behold in all its gory glory. Quality mode is simply astonishing to behold but stutters frequently. Performance mode has textures that go from detailed to bland frequently to preserve the frame rate but overall it’s the better way to play. The campaign is short and straightforward but Space Marine 2 offers more content in PvE and PvP missions where you can level your classes and weapons.

Working your way through the alien jungle of Kadaku, strange plants on each side of the muddy road. — Lets go, purge the Xenos!

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 – For the Emperor, for Ultramar!

After spending the early-access period with Space Marine 2 in full swing towards release. We came to the conclusion that change doesn’t always have to happen radically. Simply because it leads to heresy. And a sequel to Space Marine being heretical would cause our planet to be marked for Exterminatus. What we mean is that there is not true innovation or new mechanics being thrown in the mix here. Space Marine 2 brings the tried and tested formula from Space Marine and throws it in a high fidelity environment with literal hordes of enemies to throw at you.

The Chaplain clad in black with his skull helmet offering prayer in the small chapel in the barge. Ultramarines kneel in front of him as a cherub floats to the right.

Brothers! War calls you. Will you Answer?

Space Marine 2 is a continuation of the Ultramarine Titus. Having nearly died, accused of heresy, taint and corruption in the last game. Titus now serves the Deathwatch chapter of the Inquisition. Stripped of his rank, insignia and colours he serves until death fighting the enemies of the Imperium. You start off with Titus in his Deathwatch armor, crash landing on the planet Kadaku to disperse a virus bomb into the stratosphere to slow the Tyranid advance.

After a thrilling boss-battle with a Carnifex, limited ammo and waves upon waves of smaller Tyranids approaching. Titus falls, as his vision darkens he sees the remaining Tyranids being mowed down by bolter fire. Upon awakening he is greeted by the Chaplain Quintus, in order to save Titus they turn him into a Primaris. A stronger, bigger and faster Space Marine; undergoing these surgeries is a risky move often killing the person undergoing them.

Titus still wants to redeem himself and the Chaplain reminds him that the best way to do this is to return to the Ultramarines. Proving himself to his brothers in arms and rightfully earning his place again by helping them destroy the attacking Hive fleet.

View from the barge on the planet, through huge gothic windows, another barge slightly off in the distance, the planet filled with smoke.

A damaged Thunderhwak has landed, engine aflame as tech priest hurry towards it to start their calming rites.

Slay the Beast and the Horde will die!

Thus begins Titus’ redemption arc by diving head first into the crawling mass of Tyranids. The story follows a known cadence and familiar plot, similar to the first Space Marine game where you fought off the Orc forces. There is a very familiar plot twist and the levels are all linear with some very apparent shooting arena’s and sudden increase in explosive barrels give hint of an oncoming push.

Yet this familiarity in level design, story and gameplay made it feel like coming home when we played the campaign for this Space Marine 2 review. The graphical upgrade and insanely busy backdrops made it feel so much more immersive when playing. Scenes where the Imperial Guard is rushing over a bridge with Leman Russ tanks firing into an oncoming horde; while you are on your own battlefield fighting Tyranid Warriors and blasting holes in the fodder accompanying them.

The technology behind Space Marine 2 allows for the hordes of Tyranids, which you see in the background, to be actual hordes of enemies. Sometimes bearing down towards your position at full speed and allowing you to start punching holes in the tide with a Heavy Bolter firing on full auto. It truly shows the horror of a swarm of insects controlled by a hive-mind with singular purpose. The war torn landscape can turn into a writhing mass of Tyranids in mere seconds and the realization that they are coming for you, that is truly something else.

Visceral finisher on a tyranid warrior. Tyranid corpses litter the floor, blood splatters out of the big tyranid as it is torn apart. the whole image is mainly dark as the area was darkened by power failure, the only thing illuminating the scene is the blue light of the powersword finishing the enemy.

Space Marine 2 finishers are gory, a lictor is a bloody mess as Titus his chainsword bits through the chitin armor and comes out the back, a huge claw hangs limp next to its body.

Like a Guardsman’s life, short.

The Campaign will take you about 10 hours on normal and playing solo. The whole campaign can be played with up to three friends, which would make you blast through it. Certain encounters have you multitasking several ‘roles’ that would make the encounter easy if you had two friends. Basically making them almost trivial, the AI does not do a lot of damage to bosses and some of them pin you to the ground. Creating a DPS time window for your friends to empty their magazines into the boss doing considerable damage.

While there is some discourse that for a full priced triple A game the campaign is short. We really didn’t mind a shorter game to dive in and actually finish. Longer games can get stale or have slow points that become a low for the narrative and hard to push through. Space Marine 2 keeps the story going and bullets flying from start to finish in its campaign. It doesn’t slow down and keeps you stomping towards the next big enemy to slay for the Emperor.

Deserter guardsmen being judged by firing squad, a wall stands aflame in the back, a red laser crosses the air and hits the head of one of the deserters in a shower of red sparks.

Fear not, for the faithful their work is never done.

Now after beating the epic cinematic campaign Space Marine 2 offers. You have two separate game-modes to dive into. Both feature six classes for you to level up and weapons to improve and unlock along the way. But both modes are online only modes, you will need an internet connection to play these.

Operations

The Operations missions are six optional missions you can play solo or with friends. In order to gain any progression for your classes or weapons you will need an internet connection. While six repeatable missions is not much, they do offer some randomisation when it comes to enemy and item spawns. Think Darktide but instead of Chaos cultist and abominations you clash with hordes of Tyranids.

The neat part of these Operations is that they play side-by-side with the campaign. These Operations are other Ultramarine squads also fighting the fight against the Tyranids and other enemies. Though we and Sabre recommend playing this mode after you finished the main campaign to avoid spoilers. It’s still nice to know you are playing a side of the main story you have heard about in the comms and conversations along the way.

Eternal War

The PvP side of Space Marine 2. Where two sides face in three different game modes to see who comes out victorious. All modes are 6v6 competitive and you can choose between Annihilation (Team Deathmatch), Seize Ground (Domination), Capture and Control (King of the Hill). If you aren’t a fan of purely PvP centered gameplay, this mode is not for you.

Servitors await idly next to the corpse of their tech priest master. Space Marine 2 is filled with such little scenes and details.

No Task that is easy is ever worthwhile – Performance

We had several minor issues when doing this Space Marine 2 review. Our biggest annoyance was that the screenshot button stopped working on the Xbox Series X after taking several screenshots. A quick reboot solved this issue but something was going on in the background.

Sadly we don’t have any hardware monitoring tools at our disposal to read out gpu and cpu loads of the console. But it sure felt like Space Marine 2 was pushing the boundaries. Even in performance mode you could clearly see FSR doing its work by adjusting the detail of textures and backgrounds to maintain the frame rate.

While on Quality mode Space Marine 2 looks simply astonishing, but it runs on 30fps with several frame rate drops when things get heated or a lot starts going on. Having the Imperial Guard and Tyranids fighting each other while we were in the thick of that fight, unplayable for our critical need of frames. Performance mode runs so much smoother and still looks amazing.

A small group of enemies fallout out of the vents in the wall. The blue light of the plasma rifle is eager to spew its heat liquid into the horde. Chairon our fellow brother stands stoic at the top of the nearby stairs, awaiting the mass of claw and teeth.

Space Marine 2 Conclusion

If you are a fan of Space Marine (2011) then this is simply a must-buy for you. While we do miss the Orks as enemies, the hordes of Tyranids are fun to fight against and truly terrorizing when you see their wave coming in. There is a ton of extra content on the way like new PvE missions, weapons and difficulty. In 2025 there will be new enemies, horde mode, arenas and so on. And everything will be added for free, the only thing a paid season pass offers is cosmetic items and colours for the Ultramarines, Dark Angels and more chapters that will be announced later.

Sabre Interactive is really looking to give everything they have to keep us players enjoying Space Marine 2 foe as long as possible. Supporting and innovating upon a solid basis that lets you live out your Space Marine fantasy.