Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Previews

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Written by BuckGB on August 13th, 2010

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Space marines are designed to combine the attributes of all the great warriors of history THQ explains that they've the iron constitution of Spartans, the honour of samurai, the belief of crusaders and the tactical awareness of a Roman Centurion. They wage war with huge, smoking guns from behind near-impenetrable power armour. The nature of the space marine character itself is most of the reason why the game doesn't have a stick-to cover mechanic, or indeed a cover mechanic of any sort. Having Titus cower behind walls in all that thick armour wouldn't make all that much sense.

Instead of hiding behind walls, you can actually run right through them, smashing great chunks of masonry into anything that may be crouching behind. Space marines are supersoldiers, and you're supposed to be able to have fun with them. The standard machine gun fires exploding bullets, so everything you shoot at blows up, dies, or blows up and dies. There's an anti-bullet-sponge policy; bigger Orks in spikier armour can take more punishment than others, but the challenge comes from the number of enemies rather than their strength.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is another step in taking an old fantasy franchise and re-shaping it until it becomes palatable for the normal everyday player. It's an attempt to take the 40K world off the hands of strategy fans and feed it to the everyday gamer by making it an accessible over-the-shoulder action title.

So you're a Space Marine, or an Ultra Marine more specifically, an elite human soldier who has been modified to have superhuman abilities. And you're massive, making an American Basketball player look like he has the stature of Ben Stiller. An imperial forge world is being invaded by streams of Orks and your task is to deal with it. Along with a small team you make your way through areas infested with baddies and essentially spray bullets for a period of minutes until the waves of Orks subsist and what you're left with is a blanket of Ork limbs strewn about the ground.

The character pops in his blue armor against a canvas of broken down structures and red enemy blood. There's weight behind every step. His suit is heavy and it shows as the character lumbers through narrow alleys of debris fighting off orks with his bolt rifle. When the swarm becomes too great, Titus can lunge forward with his futuristic chainsword -- essentially a sword with the cutting ability of a chainsaw. The melee is seamless, according to Relic, it can be accessed with one button press.

Swinging the sword isn't Titus' only ability. He can grab enemies and saw through them in one of multiple devastating one-hit kill moves, another of which allows him to curb-stomp enemies into a fine red mist.

If you want to get a good understanding of the kind of game Relic's dreaming up, all you need to do is ponder its approach to two elements: snap-to cover systems and RPG upgrading. Both, while originally part of the plan, have been more or less removed: the cover because it broke up the action too much and didn't make sense in a world where the walls would be significantly flimsier than your own body armour, and the RPG stuff because the carnage-first approach to action didn't really need much in the need of finessing.

Both have left lingering traces, but even that is emblematic of the slaughterous gameplay you can expect: your enemies can still use cover ( you can bust through it with a smart shoulder charge) and your guns gain experience as you use them, leading to persistent unlocks like smarter designs and explosive secondary fire treats. Cowering behind rocks and sifting through tech trees, though? Not these Space Marines.

Space Marine appears to control just as you'd expect, with the Gears of War influence clear (though Warhammer 40k has been doing the whole gruff space warrior thing since 1987, so share and share alike). The movement is currently slow and heavy, befitting of a man wearing armour the size of a bungalow, but Relic say that with the game at least a year before completion, there is a lot of balancing to be done and decisions to be made on gameplay specifics. There's not going to be a snap-to-cover mechanic, however, with Relic stating that a genetically enhanced brute in gigantic armour hiding behind a little wall just didn't fit in with the Warhammer fiction. The orks sometimes hide behind little walls though, but you can smash them into bits with a hefty shoulder charge before cutting them in half with your chainsword, a melee weapon that is exactly what it sounds like.

Melee combat as a whole is an important consideration for Space Marine, more so than most shooters of its type. Shooting is viewed in the traditional over-the-shoulder viewpoint, but when you initiate a melee attack, the camera unhooks from your shoulder and pans out to give you a better vantage point for close combat. There will be a selection of ork-smashing weapons to get your hands on throughout the game such as giant two-handed hammers and power-gloves. Each weapon comes with gruesome, up close-and-personal executions, with detailed animations lovingly crafted for different enemy types.

Orks continue to relentlessly warp into the environment, prompting Titus to switch to a plasma gun as he races towards them, letting out a massive burst of charged energy in the process. Van Lierop cites this charged attack as one of the game's "progressive weapon abilities" -- new attacks, attributes, and ammunition types unlocked the more a player utilizes the armaments in their arsenal.

"Space Marine will take players to several key 40K locations," announces Van Lierop as the level shifts one last time. We now find Titus deployed on the back of an Ork-commandeered rail cart, speeding faster and faster towards an impending collision with an Imperial Titan Factory. Titus slashes and shoots his way through the cart, ducking behind crates of cargo as a nigh-endless supply of Ork gunships buzz overhead, lead by what appears to be the same skull-painted gunship from the demo's beginning. Titus spots another stationary turret, and, once close enough, rips the gun off its hinges, launching an all-out attack on the oncoming barrage of Orks and gunships. This scene, which brilliantly illustrates the war-fueled essence of the 40K universe, marks the demo's end.

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