by Jeff Francis on Sep 13, 2011
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I have been a fan of the world of
style="font-style: italic;">Warhammer 40,000
since it was created back in the mid 1980s. I still remember diving
into the dark and gothic universe of
style="font-style: italic;">WH40K
back when they released the first rulebook,
style="font-style: italic;">Rogue Trader.
Since then, I have seen how the
style="font-style: italic;">WH40K
universe expanded and changed over the years and, to top it off, I
actually owned a hobby shop selling all manner of Games Workshop
products. (My chosen army was Imperial Guard though.)
Other WH40K
games came and went, but I never got too excited. I’m not a
RTS player, preferring RPGs and shooters. Finally, though, Relic and
THQ announced
style="font-style: italic;">Warhammer 40,000: Space
Marine, and I was instantly
hooked, going almost insane waiting for its release. So now that the
game is here, how does it stack up as a FPS and how true does it stay
to the lore of
style="font-style: italic;">WH40K?
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You are the instrument of the
Emperor's justice!
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Pardon me, but was that your
head?
The central tenet of
style="font-style: italic;">Space Marine
is action. You will fight hordes and hordes of enemies. Your armor can
regenerate but you can regain health by only two options. The first is
that you can build up Fury as you fight, and when you activate it, your
health is replenished and you become a veritable dervish of death. The
second option is to do an execution move upon an enemy, which is a
favorite of mine. After you stun a foe, you can then perform a bad-ass
looking execution move on them. The downside is that you do this in
slow motion and you are still vulnerable to attacks, so it’s
not good to do this while fighting in a crowd.
Space
Marine actually feels kind of
like a throwback to simpler times for FPS games. Your overall goal is
just to kill hordes of enemies and looking like a badass while you do
it.
There are a couple of negatives to the gameplay in
style="font-style: italic;">Space Marine.
First, the levels are designed in a linear fashion, which is something
that I’m not a fan of. It’s a testament to the game
that it didn’t bug me as much as it normally does, but it
still bothered me a little. You’ll follow a clear path of
carnage from beginning to end.
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Chaos Space Marines are one of
humanity's deadliest foes.
The campaign (single-player) mode is not that long. You should be able
to complete it at a little less than ten hours. While multiplayer is
fun (more on that on page two of the review), I wished that the
campaign took longer to complete. I sense that there will be a lot of
DLC coming our way in the future.
The last negative is that the game is still buggy. Players have been
gnashing their teeth on various forums over bugs such as disappearing
floors, not being able to activate an item, and not being able to load
into multiplayer matches. It seems that many of those afflicted have
older video cards, and while THQ has stated that they are working on a
patch, you might want to hold off a few weeks until those problems are
cleared up.
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The world of WH40K is a dark
place.
Blood does flow rather freely in the game, but it’s not
stomach churning. Does it say anything bad about me that when I shoot a
bad guy in the head and his head explodes, I laugh hysterically?
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Customizing my space marine
armor.
Another interesting feature of PvP is that you can customize your
armor. Certain looks have to be unlocked, but you can pick a specific
chapter to use or create one of your own. You can even have your armor
weathered to show that you’re a grizzled veteran. (Remember,
each forehead stud represents five years of service.)
On the negative side, there are only a limited number of maps for PvP
and they aren’t the most earth-shattering. Hopefully, more
maps will become available. In addition, matchmaking is pretty bad. A
newbie will most likely be thrown into a group of level 20 players,
which can make for some frustrating gameplay. My sloth-like reflexes
made sure that I died many a time.
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Fun fact: Orks reproduce
through spores.
Cons
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I failed the Emperor by dying
many times in PvP.