Space Marine

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Third person shooter; Sub-genre: Beat-'em-up
ESRB: M (gore... slightly cartoony, but still a bit of gore)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 10/6
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Wiki page

Don't worry, I know that Warhammer 40K existed before Starcraft, Halo, and Gears of War. I know that. However, that doesn't mean this game isn't derivative. For starters, "Space Marine" is a very generic title. And all the non-Warhammer fans knew this. It doesn't matter that that is what they are called, that's just "marketing", man. This would be like if the original Call of Duty was called "World War II: The Video Game"; it just sounds too obvious. Furthermore, as far as THIS game is concerned, why are they called Space Marines? Approximately zero percent of the levels are in space. Furthermore, are there specific regimens of marines? Like... non-Space Marines? Why don't they just call them "Marines"? Isn't space travel just part of normal life in this universe? What if they were called "Future Marines"? It sounds just as stupid as that.

Launchpad McQuack knows what I'm talking about: "Duh, this is the future?"

But maybe there are specific regimens of the Marines. I have no idea, because this game never bothers to explain its setting. It seems the developers freely assumed that only people familiar with the franchise would play the game, and anyone else would just not care about story at all. One complaint I've heard is that the voice acting is too matter-of-fact and lacks emotion. I think I heard that the reason is because Space Marines have their emotions removed... or something. Who fucking knows! The game certainly doesn't care to explain it. And if that's even true, then why are the other characters so bland? There's an obligatory female character who pops in from time to time who seems pretty laissez-faire about everything, even when the Space Marines make decisions that potentially turn her troops into cannon fodder. What's her deal?

Maybe she's so traumatized by war that she doesn't know how to feel?

"Whatever. It's a hack-n-slash/third person shooter. Just kill shit, yo. Don't ask questions." I might be able to see that, but unfortunately since I know this is a well-loved and well-developed franchise I can't escape the feeling that everything should be more flushed out. One of the main things contributing to the Dynasty Warriors mentality is the enemy: the Orks. They run at you in large numbers and you mash X at them. Which... makes me bring up another question! Son of a bitch! Yeah, I started thinking that the Ultra Marines (Oh, right these are Ultra... Space Marines. Something.) were the bad guys. Why? Well, the Orks generally just have cloth armor and crappy little axes to use against your bio-engineered-soldier-encased-in-super-armor. They bravely throw their lives away against an invincible super enemy. And they're also kinda dumb. In some stories, a stupid person makes a good underdog for the audience to root for. It just depends on if their idiocy is a result of willful ignorance or just lower IQ. More importantly, it matters what their motives are. And the motives of the Orks aren't explained. When I Google'd my question, the answer seems to be that there are "no definitive bad guys" in Warhammer. But if I were to just go off of this game, what would make me think that? Because the Space Marines constantly spout off crap about being honorable? How about all the times when they mock their enemies, relishing in wanton violence? Or when they come across a super weapon to use on the Orks, not only do they agree- without hesitation- to wipe out all the Orks, but when told the weapon could destroy the whole planet their attitude is something like, "Yeah, that's fine." Plus they refer to Orks as "green skins". Uh, racist? I don't know. Should I want to beat up the stupid Orks?

Do audiences want to see dumb characters get beat up?

I'll talk about the combat, and take the chance to return to how I described this as "derivative". It could be considered a bold move to make this game a hack-n-slash/third person shooter as that is a departure from the usual genres that Warhammer games use. The thing is, "Space Marines" are very popular in video games right now as are both hack-n-slash (like God of War) and third-person shooters (Mass Effect). So this seems little more than saying, "Oh, yeah? We got that, too!" To say Warhammer did these things first would only be correct for one of those three things. I do give credit that they tried to merge both of them together into a new genre. Tried. I spent the whole game using guns because melee weapons are fucking stupid. Titus, the main character, is a big oaf. His dodge move doesn't help too much and his regenerating shields are beefy... just not beefy enough to withstand getting swarmed (as well as taking too long to regenerate). At best, this can encourage the player to weave melee and ranged combat together. But engaging in melee combat usually means throwing away any work you've done to get some space from your opponent. Avoiding damage also assists in avoiding taking health damage (which occurs when shields are depleted, of course). And taking health damage means you have to perform an "execute" move on a stunned enemy to ...uh, Dracula out his blood? I don't understand why it heals you (again, not explained). Anyway, the execute itself is very slow and leaves the player open to damage and actually stunning an enemy feels oddly random. Naturally, I tried to avoid needing healing as much as Goddamn possible.

YOU PRESSED THE EXECUTE BUTTON LOOK HOW AWESOME YOU ARE

I found myself thinking nit-picky things about this game, too. Not nearly as bad as Witcher 2, but there are still several things I wanted changed. It's short and doesn't require spoilers, so I'll list them here:

-Execute can fail to target when only one stunned enemy directly in front of you. WHY?
-Enemies move forward when attacking and stagger Titus. I can't help but feel this means they are better at melee combat than him, yet he is better trained and stronger.
-Friendlies have collision. Considering Ultra Marines are roughly the same size as a small apartment, this is annoying.
-Explosive barrels! Why are these still in video games! AGH!
-Mega buster too effective, Assault Rifle too ineffective. Considering how crappy the AR is, it feels like it would be the "backup with infinite ammo". If not given a damage buff, it should reload faster or instantly or have a bigger magazine...SOMETHING.
-At some point the game gives you a new Assault Rifle. Instead of being a gun you can swap around, like switching the sniper rifle for a grenade launcher, it's just a flat out upgrade. Kinda cheap. Probably should have made the AR that powerful to begin with...
-Zoom levels of Lascannon feel inappropriate. There's "far enough for everything in the game" and "way too far". Might be nice for a lower zoom to use the thing at closer range instead of that second one? It's accurate when fired from the hip so.... yeah.
-The "Turret level" is stupid and boring. Just a bunch of turrets... one at a time.
-The levels with big indoor battles have obvious aggro triggers. Basically I'd be walking around in a quiet hall, and then once I turned a corner there'd suddenly be this big battle that instantly starts up. Probably could have used some ambient sound effects while walking through those halls.

Maybe that was more than I thought, but the Witcher list was 60 items. So this is fine by comparison. For my personal design tastes I found myself wishing there were more RPG elements. The game has none as it is all action. I also didn't care for the level design/settings. Every level was some kind of destroyed building or city; just a bunch of slabs of orange concrete sticking out of the ground with big, open hallways. Boring! I guess I'm a sucker for pretty forests, waterfalls, cyberpunk, snow levels, etc.

Pretty much the whole game right here.

Multiplayer:
I did get a chance to take on the multiplayer! I tried to play the "versus" mode, but it looks like nobody plays that any more. I gave up trying to find a game after a few minutes. It's just as well. With instant-killing sniper rifles and wacky jetpacks, I pretty much assumed it would be a horribly imbalanced mess.

Exterminatus, on the other hand, still had plenty of players. Which is probably because this mode is fun. Basically this is another Horde mode (like Gears of War of Mass Effect 3). Four players can choose from 3 basic classes and can further customize those classes with different weapons: regular guy, heavy weapons guy, and jetpack guy. While I do feel the choices are a bit imbalanced again (not sure what the regular guy is really for), this mode offers very quick matches with a shitload of wanton violence. Personally, I had a bit of trouble getting into it since I enjoy Mass Effect 3's MP so much. That's sort of funny, since ME3's MP is sloppily put together and has a painful amount of load screens. The big things for me were match duration and the "lives" system. In ME3, matches last from 15 minutes to 25 minutes depending on difficulty, size of the level, and player competence. In Space Marine, they last 45+ minutes. Every time. This might be fine, but with people coming and going and the decreasing player base, you'll find yourself on teams with less than 4 people quite often. In ME3, when you die you start to bleed out. You can use a consumable to revive yourself, or a teammate can use *nothing* and revive you (unless a Banshee is corpse camping you or something). In Space Marine, you have 5 lives. If you die, you lose a life and respawn. If you die 5 times, the whole team loses. This means you can lose a match even if the rest of the team is great. That just sucks.

I didn't even try capture the flag or whatever else because objective games with randoms is just masochism. I'm not that big on masochism, man.

Customization: just like painting the figurines... right? Nah, probably not.

Conclusion:
While a fairly competent game that blends hack-n-slash with shooting into a somewhat unique game, it simply does not try to please non-Warhammer fans at all. This is a weaker two star rating, but might be higher for Warhammer fans.