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dkirschner's Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (PS5)

[August 17, 2026 09:44:49 AM]

I don’t have too much to say about this one. It was big, dumb fun, more or less what I remember from the first one. This one is multiplayer focused though. The single-player campaign basically trains you in combat, core mechanics, and game modes, then says, “Hey, now go play online!” The campaign’s narrative was about as easy as one can be to follow for a Warhammer game. Lots of Warhammer lore and jargon, confusing at times what in the world characters were referring to, but general enough to make sense of. You play as Titus, an Ultramarine pulled out of banishment to lead a squad on some important missions for the human empire. Important missions culminate in defeating a Chaos bad guy who wants to…I don’t know…destroy / re-make / purge the world. He had a giant crystal and was doing Bad Things. His boss fights were fun to play, but he talked throughout all of them, and I couldn’t hear him over the noise of combat, so I don’t really know what he was ranting about the entire time. Like, the ENTIRE time. If there were 15 minutes of fights against him, this guy yelled for 15 minutes.

Combat is the game’s highlight, brutal and crunchy, though it is simple, even by FFXVI standards. It’s a third-person action game with shooting and melee. Guns and melee weapons are super basic. Guns either shoot bullets or plasma (which can overheat). You either have a pistol, a machine gun, a sniper rifle, or a flamethrower. Melee weapons are like four versions of the same thing, all with the same move set, which boils down to weak attack and strong attack. They vary in whether they are better against a solo enemy or groups. Really doesn’t matter what you choose. Just change your weapon in combat to suit the situation. There are a few types of grenades. You can carry two health packs.

They’ve added the standard parry/dodge stuff. See a blue reticle on an enemy? L1 to parry. Or, this is Warhammer, so it’s more like a violent counter. See an orange reticle? Dodge. If you pull off a perfect parry or dodge, or sometimes if you smash through a group of enemies, you’ll see a little red target on an enemy. You can pull R2 to fire a powerful shot at them and restore some health and armor. This was a neat move. Stronger enemies can also be weakened, readying them for an execution, which also restores some armor.

Enemies are generally basic horde-mode type enemies. Lots of small grunts. Lots of mid-sized dudes who can be dangerous if you leave them alone, especially the one who stands back and shoots purple plasma at you and the faster one with dual swords. But, they’re all easy enough. Plus, you have two squad mates with you at all times who do a good job of killing stuff. Bigger enemies and the few bosses are more fun and challenging. I liked fighting the big hulking things (forgot the name) that barrel around trying to smash you. Enemy variety is thin though, and slogging through them did become repetitive.

Though I think there is “slogging” on purpose. Your main enemies are the…swarm…guys. Whatever they’re called, I forget. There are supposed to be tons of them. Missions often occur in the context of larger battles, which you can see happening in the background. It’s visually striking to be fighting enemies, seeing hordes of others running in the background, ships flying by dropping bombs, and so on. The game does a great job of putting you in the midst of war.

Another cool thing (theoretically) is that, in some missions, you have a second squad that achieves some other objective necessary for your own progress. After those missions, you can play a special mode called Operations to see what that other squad did. I gather that Operations are objective-based missions (plant the bomb, defend the flag, survive the waves, etc.) that train you for multiplayer mode, though I was never motivated enough to try one. Just wanted to get through the campaign!

When I got to the credits, I saw that all the names appeared Russian. Looked it up. Developed by a studio in St. Petersburg. Lots of discussion online about whether said studio should be supported. Apparently they were moved to Armenia during the war. Can’t imagine developing a game during wartime (or being able to accomplish much of anything), no matter which side you’re on. Lots of people yelling back and forth calling each other political slurs. Didn’t expect that to cap my time with Space Marine 2, but such is how it ended, reading 15-year-olds online screeching about how this game was hypermasculine and not woke because it was made by Russians. Game was big dumb fun, though straightforward and with little variety; Reddit commentary just dumb. Both skippable.