Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Previews

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Written by Brother None on April 29th, 2011

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In the beginning of the game, your main enemy will be legions of Orks of varying sizes that are equipped with plenty of firepower. One of the biggest themes of Space Marine is incessant action, and the game encourages you to run headlong into firefights. There's no cover system, and most environments don't allow for backtracking, so your best bet it to forge ahead, keep your fingers steady on the fire button, and use a special ability that allows you to slow down time and get precise hits on the enemy.

Space Marine also has a killer melee system you can use which features a chainsaw saber that can clear enemies extremely quickly. Knowing when to switch between guns and melee weapons will be vital to your success, and though you won't see any of the hardcore strategy you might have come to expect from other Warhammer games, you will have to enter firefights with a plan if you want to succeed.

Secondly, the game is catering to the extremely casual gamer with its lack of combos or cover system. Combat seems to be a case of wading into battle and mashing the melee buttons, with no tactics or skill necessary to beat the various enemy types. There's none of the RPG-style upgrade system that made us so attached to our characters in DoW. Thankfully, there's still a chance that these systems will be introduced before release, as the code I saw was alpha and the developers seemed very interested in journalist feedback.

Knowing Relic's heritage, there's a very good chance they'll end up making a product that quashes all of my concerns. Whether they can do this before the August release window is another matter - I wouldn't be surprised if an extra six months are spent turning this into another Relic masterpiece, one that satiates both gamers and Warhammer veterans alike.

The weapon selection is an unsurprising arsenal of assault weapons, pistols, as well as a laser, 15 weapons in all. It was surprising to see that the grenade launcher has a very high firing rate compared to other games. Then there's the plasma gun, a firearm with an effective charged-up attack although I had to be sure to not let it overheat as it would actually injure Titus if it reached a certain temperature.

The final touch to giving this realized world a sense of character are the speaking accents. It's so refreshing that the good guys (assuming we are the good guys) for once have British accents. The guardsmen who address Titus call him 'milord' in a very Darth Vader-inspired manner. It's a lightly humorous approach and certainly adds to the world of Warhammer.

So yeah, it looks and plays a bit like Gears of War. But there are some key differences.

In Gears, you are funnelled into an area with some helpfully placed waist-high walls and you pop up and down blasting bad guys from the relative safety of cover. No such faffing about for the Space Marines. They see ten, twenty enemies and surge forward to meet them face-to-face. Or Chainsword to face, as the case may be.

What Relic are attempting to achieve is a seamless integration of ranged and melee combat, one where you swiftly swoop from kerblaming Orks in the head with a Bolter gun, to carving them in half with a Chainsword in one slick movement. That's the idea, anyway.

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