 |
| SPACE MARINE |
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine is the best description that I could offer somebody SPACE MARINE on how not to introduce a popular franchise to a new generation of potential players. This sounds harsh
, I know, but Relic / THQ does little to introduce this extremely vast and richly detailed universe inside of the game.
I have a background in table top gaming. I was a a national champion in Mage Knight, and a Press Ganger for Privateer Press. I actually have a set of Warhammer 40k sitting in my closet right this moment, but I've never played it, and I think this is the problem. They expect the people who are playing this game SPACE MARINE to already know this universe, and for somebody like me, I didn't know why I was doing anything. The game tells me to live my life for the Emperor. Who's the
Emperor? The game tells me for an achievement I have to duke it out with 10 'Ard Boyz. What the hell is an "'Ard Boy?" The game doesn't make any effort to teach you anything about its universe, and was a big miss for me.
 |
| I looked him up on a Wiki and apparently this is the Emperor, but I still don't care |
So if the game isn't teaching us anything about it's universe, we have to
devolve SPACE MARINE the game into a 3rd person hack and slash / run and gun game. As that, it still fails. Well, let me elaborate on that, after an hour of that, it fails.
 |
| This is pretty much the entire game. |
SPACE MARINE starts off very promising, it teaches you how to regenerate health by using brutal finisher moves, gives you some neat weapon upgrades, and even a jet pack for a little while. Once you're finished with the jet pack, you have played everything that this game has to offer. To call every combat a minor variation of the last combat encounter you experienced 2 minutes before would be an insult to the words "minor variation". It's the same Orks coming at you over and over. Sometimes there's a sniper, sometimes there's a couple guys with rockets, but it's the same fight and there's very little you have to be worried about while playing.
So why am I saying SPACE MARINE
over and over in my review? Besides being the title of the game, it's by far the most common phrase I heard the entire game. You see, every time you run into a pack of enemies, one of them inevitably shouts "SPACE MARINE" in a British accent, and comes charging at you. The first few times you don't notice, but it gets annoying not only fighting the same enemies, but hearing the same things.
From a non Warhammer 40k fan, the story is awful and the ending is worse. To be fair, I checked with a 40k fan who also played the game, and he loved the ending to it. This really goes to show you how much they needed to bring players into their universe. This is a fun hour long romp squeezed into a 10 hour package, and there's little to keep you going if you're not a fan. You should probably keep clear of this one, there's better ways to spend your free time.
Space Marine.
