Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a third person shooter/action game from Relic Entertainment. It has a linear and predictable storyline, though that is to be expected from a Wh40k title; no plot twist should surprise you in this game. Just sit back, smash them up, and enjoy the blood splatter and shiny particles spraying everywhere.

Wh40k:SM utilizes melee combat quite a bit more than Mass Effect, and fortunately does it quite much better as well, even though the camera is similarly very close to the back of your character, Captain Titus of the Ultramarines chapter. Combo attacks are pleasantly simple to get off and the game is a pretty smooth ride without being too easy -- Normal difficulty challenged me often enough.

I noticed that there were no or very few invincibility frames during the attack animations. Though it hardly mattered except when doing an execute attack to regenerate health; nearby enemies sometimes brought me down before the health gain kicked in. There are a handful of different execute animations for different weapons and enemies, and some of them are quite brutal; Guardsmen get a fist to the face (causing a satisfying explosion of gore) and some Orks Titus reduces into a mangled heap using their own tower shields.

Throughout the game you find various familiar weapons from the 40k universe, and even one completely new. The Vengeance Launcher is much like the Scorpion in Mass Effect with the exception that you have to manually detonate the projectiles. Also, using Lascannon as a sniper rifle (no vehicles to shoot) is bit odd and the gun didn't quite feel as powerful as it should.

The game ends in a QTE fest that seemed copied from Kratos's fight against Icarus in God of War 2. Not exactly how I expected the final boss fight to be. And the prologue after it kind of makes you feel bad for Titus -- no happy endings allowed in the grim darkness of the far future! I liked the cameo Blood Ravens from the Dawn of War games make, though.

The game uses its own engine, called Phoenix, although at first I thought it was the Unreal Engine due to the sky textures being grainy like in ME. Which you probably won't notice if you play the game on a console, away from the tv screen. Otherwise, SM is sharper in details and more plentiful in effects than any UE game I've played thus far. I wonder why there were so many empty areas to jog through, though. Why not just fill every area with more and more Orks.

The game also has a multiplayer component, which might in fact offer more entertainment than the singleplayer campaign. However, Relic/THQ made the mistake of making map packs cost money, which -- like TotalBiscuit likes to remind people -- always divides the player base. I think I like more of the model Mass Effect 3 uses.

To summarize; Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is an entertaining game that stays faithful to its franchise, occassionally giving you much joy through its flowing combat, but overall staying maybe just slightly over average experience. It's bit dull but the gameplay is rewarding.