My personal relationship with Warhammer, and more specifically 40k, is a cliche tale. Almost generic. I played back in the late 90s, probably like 98 or somewhere around there, when the game was in its second edition and I have no idea what fantasy was like. There's a legion of people out there like me, who played a year or two, had some fun with the game then moved on with their life. In the same way there's no end of thirty something Transformers fans like me - manchildren who reconnected with the franchise at some point - there's no end of late twenties to late thirties dudes who remember the good times with Warhammer.
40k is patently ridiculous, and ridiculous with patents (look up the stuff about Games Workshop vs Chapterhouse, it's absurdity in action) but that is a big part of its charm. When done well, it carries itself with just enough of a smirk that the insanity doesn't register as the capricious nihilism and you can still, well, have fun with it. It's sort of like a crazy heavy metal van. Done well, and it's ridiculously cool, done poorly and much like the van it just feels ... Like bad things are coming.
Relic on the most part had a pretty good, but not great, handle on 40k. There were a lot of points where it largely felt in Dawn of War like they wanted to put their own spin on things but couldn't quite get there. Relic might still have the GW license now, I don't really know, given their wikipedia article is out of date and who largely cares. Games Workshop itself is now something of a joke, coasting on that positive energy but making no further gains as a company. I'm sure in 15 years whoever is building the best "formative years" brand will be coasting by as they are. Maybe that's privateer press, maybe not.
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| ya I noticed |
As an old man thinking about getting back into painting miniatures, I can tell you Games Workshop is priced to the point of absurdity, but anyway, back to vidya games.
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is Relic's attempt to branch out into other genres than just endless rehashes of RTS scenarios that, I think, sort of fell out of favor with the rise of the crippling might that is f2p MOBA games. You can sort of respect the attempt, innately, but you can also seriously begin to wonder how it's going to go.
Going into a game and knowing it is largely considered a middle of the pack, sort of generic level entry into the genre is in many ways a more interesting experience, intellectually, than going into a good or bad game. With a bad game it is almost instantly obvious as to why the game is bad. Either you play it and it feels like a throbbing headache, or it's just something like Dark where it has so many mechanical and tonal mismatches it doesn't really feel like any one thing. Good games are the inverse, you're too busy actually enjoying the game to really notice why it is considered good, unless you step back and consider it. But you don't really want to, so you're often left with a positive glow and little else.
But in the middle, you wonder. You wonder as you fire it up and you wonder as you learn the basics why the game is regarded as it is. Sometimes it's like FF8, where it slowly dawns on you how disjointed and weird the production is, like walking into a house and hearing disco throb through the floor when you're in the bathroom. And only the bathroom. Sometimes it's like Shadowrun Returns, where it is pretty obvious where the game went wrong and what it isn't doing quite right. You're still enjoying yourself either way, but you pause here and there as something goes weird.
Space Marine falls into the latter category; the game has a solid set of ideas that immediately slip and fall when actual level design hits.
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| don't crane your neck to see what he's talking about |
Again though, do you want to play a game for teenage boys? This stuff has less depth than Naruto. The end. I thought individual bits of dialogue were good, but everything is either a trope, a 40k archetype or Relic twisting 40k for no real reason to try to ... Something.
On the positive side, because it is actually a good not great game albeit on the lower end of the good spectrum, Space Marine's engine is really pleasing to watch in action. It isn't perfect, sure, but it's got the right amount of detail for converting 40k to an up close and personal game, with an excellent feeling of weight to it. Stuff smashes around and explodes in a very satisfying way that is really important for a game centred on being a big smashy man in a big ridiculous metal outfit. Power armor of this sort looks weird anywhere else, but here it is very clearly not anachronistic, since the entire design spectrum in 40k is piles of anachronisms rolling into, over and through each other.
When you get into melee, and you will get into melee, things thrash around and stomp into each other before blood sprays everywhere. It is a weighty, powerful feeling tug that makes you smile. The execute moves are absolutely ridiculous, poor Orkz having at best no idea the trouble they're in as they perish. The shooting also feels solid, although enemies soak up a bit too much damage. I find myself missing Shadow Warrior's limb system so very much, because if a bolter shell - yes, shell, your gun fires stuff closer to tank rounds than bullets - hits you, parts should come off. It does look to me like enemies limp and show being wounded, but they should pour on the Orkz and then the shells should blow them to messy bits. I don't really understand how game designers just don't understand this.
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| you only get to axe once |
The level design is also really good, sort of. It feels somewhat more natural than an FPS game that there are battle arenas, since you essentially a high end soldier used to sweep out and obliterate the enemy. You're not there to "find the magic sword" or "get to the choppa", you are there to kill a whole heck of a lot of unfriendlies while accomplishing your other objectives. But the levels look like some cool giant Warhammer 40k Imperium of Man stuff, without being too muddlingly complex or too simplistic. I like how big and epic the scale feels, though, just huge ridiculous skull adorned nonsense. Generally cover feels a bit more natural as well, there's just debris and shattered plazas covered in more broken stone to hide behind.
The audio side of the game is really solid. Maybe I just have low standards for voice acting, but other than the fact they do the thing everyone does where enemies quip and don't have enough quips, stuff sounds good to me. The actors are mostly accented, sounding a little bit British, but Games Workshop is one of the big british exports into the nerd hobby world so I can get behind that. I really enjoyed the space marine VAs, and Mira (the lone female voice in this entire game, other than a doctor in generic audio logs who says generic things) did really good work. Much of the music doesn't stand out, but the later discord themes as everything goes more toward Hell were well done and reflected the imagery better than most games manage.
Also as an odd little thing, I like how this game will have moments where you see the enemy running through the city or sewers near you but not really at or ahead of you. It's just a nice little touch that gives you the feeling there's lots of them around, but they don't necessarily know how to find their way to you. Sometimes the game has a bit of a mental issue with enemies just appearing everywhere and not breaking up the enemy variety as well as it should, but it feels a little more natural, if absolutely ridiculous in the 40k style.
On the negative side, for one, Space Marine is a game made by people who have absolutely no idea what they want out of the game or the experience. This is not to say that the game's shooting and melee are not as I said they are. They're good and solid. The problem is that the game is something of a mess in getting to those elements and acting on them.
You want to go into melee. You are actively encouraged by the game mechanics to go into melee. Melee looks good, and when the flow is going, it feels fantastic. For one thing, the game's absolutely bizarre health system is predicated on two completely contradictory mechanics. The first bar, your shield, heals up when you don't take damage. The second, your life total only heals when you perform melee executes or when you use "fury", your rage bar timer whatever cooldown. And here is where the game goes from "great" to "mediocre" in an instant that redefines the entire way you look at any encounter.If you end an encounter low on health, you can't heal. You can not. Flatly. You can only heal when you execute if your rage bar isn't full. This is absolutely asinine, and feels so completely screwed up backwards. You will sometimes end a fight low on health with your fury bar not at full and then be escorted into a battle with a bunch of melee enemies, and your first instinct is - go into melee, stun, execute, heal up.
Except for whatever bizarre reason you do not get invulnerability frames, or at least not reliably, during an execute. Enemy damage still slips through. So if you're low on health, even with your shield at full, you can end up getting wiped out during an execute, as they take a looooooooong time. Again: This is the only way to heal, other than fury, which isn't always topped off. You won't even heal if you go through a cutscene! So instead of enjoying the game as this sort of rush forward melee game as it pushes you to do, you're honestly better off playing an extremely coy and patient game. In a normal shooter this would be fine, but you're supposed to be this massive bad-ass, a one man army who just wades in and kicks ass. But you can't, because it's very hard to keep from getting hit by shooters while going into melee. There's also an issue in that it can be weirdly disconnected, when trying to heal. Enemies do not only die via executes, and some enemies are very hard to stun into an execute, which can lead to weird moments.
Also melee doesn't lock on once you begin a chain, and enemies do sidestep out of the way like nimble little ballerinas, at which point Titus just whirls off into the distance, executing combos on thin air. It's easy to play the game competently and patiently, but it completely destroys the appeal of the setting. It's also easy to get lost or muddled, since visually the game can turn into a mess.
The other problem, which I referenced back at the start, is it really doesn't feel right fighting Orkz and playing a very traditional 'stop and pop' gun game with them. The idea of these hulking savages who are born only to fight hiding behind a corner and playing the usual cover shooter chest high walls shit is just awful. Between being encouraged to be extremely reluctant to go into melee and playing stop pop gunslinger, Space Marine just honestly does not feel right at all.
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| great googly eyes |
I mean, generally speaking, these elements do add challenge. The problem is that they take away from the joy of the game, the visceral pleasure of stomping into melee. Overcoming challenges is, indeed, one of the means by which a designer can make a game enjoyable - and Space Marine isn't going for the unnecessary ARPG dopamine bullshit, either. But, the game has perfectly wonderful melee combat that, for whatever reason, the design is often to snatch away from you. I don't super mind, since the shooting is good and satisfying (especially as you get upgrades in the late game) but sometimes you want to stomp an Ork so bad and you're not allowed to.
To be more negative about the story - there's several elements that the game simply didn't need. It's weird to me how 40k offers you this huge breadth of possible materials and people tend to waste energy meandering around. Why bother with the entire Inquisition "thing" when they could have added more models and enemies for the Orkz or Chaos forces? All you need from these games is the big world you're in, and then show up to punchify dudes. The best characterization moments were quiet comments from Mira, not the bombastic epic nonsense.
One thing I should note, as we linger on the doors of an actual conclusion, is Space Marine is a little unique in that the second half of the game is far better at knowing what it wants to do and wants to be than the first half. The pacing and gunplay get stronger, and the level design improves as the music gets really good. The story is goofy as all goofy is, but it pulls away from the juvenile Orkz thing to actually be a little bit scary, before whirling on its boot to go into full derpderp.
Anyway, the story is as I said largely hooked on whether or not you like 40k, or basically if you like the idea of hardcore man-nun warriors who stomp around fighting other man-nun warriors who breed by budding spores in the grim dark future wherein therein lies only war. But the actual game, mind you, is generally quite solid and a decent good time, especially during the jump pack sections or when the pacing goes right. It is probably middle of the pack as behind the back shooters go, but I haven't played that many of those in a while.
So, low end of good. A couple high points and hey, who doesn't want to play a man-nun?
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