Space Marine 2: Being an eight-foot tank with a chainsword is great fun
Games make you feel different things depending on the character you are playing. You can feel like a cunning assassin, a daring archaeologist, a morally-free car-obsessed gangster, or an 8-foot-tall genetically enhanced Space Marine who lives for killing and bringing glory to the Emperor.
You can probably guess what Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 mostly makes you feel like, and it does it really well.
What is Space Marine 2’s plot?
You play as Lieutenant Titus, an Ultramarine who has returned after the events of the first game and is now once again being hurled into the worst possible situations in the name of the Imperium. If you do not know much about Warhammer 40,000, the setting is basically a far-future nightmare where humanity survives through fanaticism, bureaucracy, war, skulls, candles, cathedral spaceships, and huge men in massive armor.
The intro text mirrors what you might find in the books or other materials. “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.” That pretty much sums it all up.
The story itself is entertaining, but this is not really a game you play because you are desperate to know whether the future will turn out nicely for everyone. Spoiler: it won’t. It’s not that kind of game. The story is fine and I enjoyed it. But the main point of the narrative is to get you into scenarios where you get to stomp through alien hordes while firing ludicrously large and lethal weapons.
It is all about combat, and happily, the fighting is awesome
The combat is the main reason it works. Space Marine 2 understands what a Space Marine should feel like. You are heavy, brutal and absurdly dangerous. When you fight ordinary humans, they seem almost tragically small, and it makes you realise how terrifying one of these armoured giants would be if he actually turned up in front of you. It is also strangely satisfying how easy it is to mow the poor bastards down.
I recently finished the Robocop game and there is a similar feeling of being a huge, powerful, two-legged armored tank. The similarities end there though. Improved graphics and gameplay aside, a Space Marine is a much more nimble warrior. You can dodge and parry, and shoot and slice, and have a load of different mechanics and special abilities.
The enemies are a good foe, despite you being armed to gills
The game throws entire walls of Tyranids at you and that makes the power fantasy interesting and fun. You are still enormously powerful, but you are also being attacked by swarms of alien horrors that climb over walls, pour across bridges, leap through the air and keep coming long after any reasonable creature would have had second thoughts. They also explode in a very satisfying way. But there aren’t just swarms of little things, there are some huge beasts among them.
Executing these large enemies is wonderfully satisfying, especially when Titus performs some spectacularly unpleasant finishing move that involves a bit of punching, a mechanised sword, and ludicrous levels of blood.
The setting and background mayhem are just as they should be
At its best, Space Marine 2 feels like the Starship Troopers game I always wanted, only filtered through Warhammer 40,000’s gothic misery filter. There are moments when you and your squad are pushing toward your own objective while battles rage in the distance or all around you. Human soldiers are firing desperately, aircraft are screaming overhead, and flying Tyranid swarms move through the sky like living storm clouds.
That background activity makes a huge difference. Space Marine 2 often makes you feel as if your mission is one small part of a much larger disaster. You’re an elite squad that people pretty much worship due to how awesome you are, doing special dangerous missions in the midst of a colossal war. It looks and feels great.
It helps that the game looks fantastic. After mostly knowing Warhammer 40,000 through books, it was genuinely exciting to see the worlds, ships and battlefields presented with this much scale and detail. The first Space Marine was fun, but it could feel visually monotone. This sequel has more variety, more colour and far more spectacle, while still remaining properly grimdark.
Campaign length, game modes, and general stuff
The campaign took me around 12 hours, which felt about right. It is focused, loud, action packed, without outstaying its welcome. You move from one massive problem to the next, usually solving it through a combination of gunfire, melee combat and general extreme violence. The plot does enough to keep things moving, especially if you already like the 40K universe, but the real pleasure is the physical business of fighting through it.
There are also extra modes, and this is where the game gets more life after the campaign. I didn’t try the PvP, partly because my WiFi is slow and partly because I am rubbish and have the reflexes of a middle aged man. But I did play Operations mode, which is the co-op PvE side of the game. Here, you and two other players choose classes and loadouts, then head out on separate missions that run alongside the wider campaign.
I don’t do a lot of online gaming, but I enjoyed this much more than expected. Fighting alongside other players in a squad feels right for the setting, and the missions are genuinely fun. I only played each one once or twice, but Operations mode clearly gives Space Marine 2 more longevity than it would have as a campaign-only game.
It has proved to be a popular sequel
Space Marine 2 was released in September 2024 across all the main platforms. It arrived thirteen years after the original Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, which came out in 2011, and has done rather well for a game set in one of fiction’s most relentlessly unpleasant universes. It is now being given a second lease of life as it can be found free or on sale. I played it on the PS5 for free as I pay for Plus.
Metacritic currently has the PS5 version sitting at 80, with the PC version at 82, both listed as “generally favorable.” It also attracted more than two million players on launch day, had sold 4.5 million copies by October 2024, and had passed six million players by January 2025. In addition to a sudden burst of new players, the game has also been updated and enhanced over the years, with new Operations, PvP arenas, enemies, game modes, weapons and new playable classes.
Final thoughts – should you play?
Some people have complained that Space Marine 2 is dark and humourless, even for Warhammer. That is probably fair, although I am not sure anyone gets into Warhammer 40,000 expecting a cheerful romp. If anything, the setting should make you feel better about your own life.
The other potential negative is that If the combat does not click for you, Space Marine 2 may start to feel repetitive. It is a game about shooting, hacking, stomping, executing and repeating, only with increasingly better scenery and ever larger beasts. The campaign is also fairly short by modern standards, though I would rather have 12 strong hours than 30 padded ones. Most of my life, FPS game campaigns were about 10-16 hours and if it is done well, that is plenty. The online modes add to that.
Newcomers to Warhammer 40,000 may also miss some of the lore, but the basic idea is simple enough: everything is terrible, the aliens are worse, and your job is to shoot them before they eat mankind.
Overall, I loved Space Marine 2. It is not subtle, gentle or especially interested in emotional nuance. It is a game about being a colossal armoured warrior and turning hordes of monsters into paste. But it does that so well, and with such scale and conviction, that I found it almost impossible not to enjoy.
If I replay it, it will be because shooting loads of monsters as a Space Marine is ridiculously good fun. And that is all the game set out to do.
As I mentioned, if you have PlayStation Plus, it is now free, and I think that is the same case for Xbox game pass or whatever it is called. If you don’t have them, you can still get the game for less than $30 here. (Affiliate.)