Space Marine

[grazr]

With Space Marine 50% off in the steam sale i'm finally motivated to splash out with my limited funds onto another current gen' game i always wanted but couldn't justify the expense.

Since it's a relatively large title that got quite a bit of advertising (way more than Relic's RTS franchise) i'm guessing a number of people already know of this game, though i know quite a few aren't particularly WH 40K fans.

Anyone got/getting this? I had hoped to bring this up earlier, the deal (50% off) only lasts for 40 more mins, apparently.

[LeSwordfish]

I might get it some time, but not now. I'm a big w40k fan, but i never liked the space marines. seriously, this franchise has:

-Communist aliens with vastly advanced technology, total combat doctrine, and religious fanatical obedience to their rulers.

-Aliens that eat a planet down to the bedrock for the biomass.

-A religious inquisition with the power to kill billions on a whim. And they do. And they're the good guys.

-The necrons. These are robots that literally cannot be destroyed, rising up from underground to kill every living thing. If they are sighted on a planet, that planet is purged.

-A race of old-dying-race aliens and their cousins. These cousins are physically excited by others pain. They caused the god of lust to come into being by having so many orgies.

-The dog troops of the main race are considered more expendable than artillery shells.


And what gets the attention?

Men in power armour.

[grazr]

I appreciate what you're saying, but everyone knows what a space marine is, even if they've never heard of War Hammer 40K, they still make the reference. Plus it's the easiest thing in 40K for people to relate to in a universe they probably have never heard of, it's like the bait on the fish hook for casual gamers.

Plus it makes sense to me that they'd focus on the SM as the primary/initial interest since it's also the most played race on the board game. The mechanics also cater to that casual play element as SM's aren't particularly specialised and are very durable. Guess what race you play as first in StarCraft, Terran. You don't get handed the fiddly, micro intensive zerg right off the bat.

Games Workshop did release Fire Warrior way before SM's were highlighted in a non-RTS fashion, though i would rather forget about that FPS game to be quite honest.

The WH 40k universe is massive and i love the lore, i've read most of the lexicanum and the necrons are probably my fav race story wise. But they do have to appeal to a wider audience to survive as a franchise.

If 40K:SM is the start of a new series, like Dawn of War, i'm happy to play SM's for a while until they bring out an Ork (etc) campaign.

[hydragorgon]

I'm a big fan of games workshop in general. I think that my problem with the space marine game is that its third person. It reminds me of gears of war. that's probably also influenced the decisions to go ultramarine. ultramarines have been the defunct poster boys for 40k since I was a kid. I like dark angels better.

40k is awesome but I think it works better on the tabletop. I thought the dawn of war games were a little weak. I wish the would do a total war style take on warhammer fantasy battle. or a fps version of necromunda with gang support and persistent campaign options.

hydragorgon

[TheKieranator]

I bought Space Marine before it came out *hipster*
(Translation: I pre-ordered)

Space Marines were my first 40k army, and are still my main one, and since the game looked awesome, I made the decision that I was definitely going to get it.

First things first: if you don't like slaughtering hordes of orks, alone, with a chainsword, then this game isn't for you. If, however, you do enjoy beating the giblets out of fungus-apes who are too stupid to run, then great!

I''m not going to lie: this game is pretty. I had to lower all the settings so that it would actually be playable on my laptop. It still looked like this:

You play as the guy in the middle. Not the bald dude on the left, or the old dude on the right. The middle one. He's the captain. Captain Titus.



He's also tall. Really tall. And covered in ork blood. Don't worry, that gets disintegrated by the shielding after a while, so that you can bloody your armour again. And again.

The story isn't too bad. There's an Ork Waaagh! (invasion force for those that don't speak 40k) attacking Forge World Graia. Forge Worlds are important strategic assets, considering they're covered in immense factories that build all the weapons, ammunition and vehicles that mankind needs to just hold off alien threats across the galaxy.



There are also big cranes carrying big guns for bigger war machines. The Orks want these weapons of mass destruction so that they can massively destructify all who stand in their path. This is one of them: a Warlord-class Battle Titan. It's bigger than Titus.



Multiplayer is reasonably balanced, unless the teams get stacked. In which case, one side gets raped, but that's pretty much what happens in any multiplayer game with stacked teams. Speaking of teams, both of them are Space Marines. One side is the good, normal Space Marines, and the other is the spiky, Chaos Space Marines.



The customizer is pretty cool too. Check out a video by THQ about it here.

I've probably said enough now.

[grazr]

After playing it for 3 hours i am enjoying it, certainly when you have more of the weapon content unlocked after you progress through the campaign, but the game is clearly a console port and this is disappointing.

The combo system seems really temporamental and in order to heal you have to sit through a sync kill where you then lose half your health again if it's on anything other than the last enemy, since they'll bash your head in as you "stand over your kill and look badass" for 1 extruciating second. I'll probably move the alt-attack hotkeys to C/F/V because T is a little out of the way when you're in a cluster fuck. I always end up accidently reloading a gun in the middle of a knife fight because i accidently hit R instead of T to heal.

The game also has a habbit of dropping suicide bombers on you from the sky/ceiling which you can do nothing about other than tank the damage and hope you have your shield fully regenerated when it happens.

I'm looking forward to what the rest of the game has to offer, i know the PS guys are big WH40K fans and they have an event thread for multiplayer where they gate crash a server together