Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

It's rare that you love a franchise, you love a game or a comic book and you want a movie adaptation and you get exactly how you liked it to be. That doesn't happend very often. Given the fan base from the tabletop game, THQ and Relic have done a fantastic job taking on a project this size and capturing the essence of the 40k universe. The campaign's plot is engaging, the gameplay is superb, with a good variety of ranged weapons, a good variety of enemy types, and challenging and varied mission objectives. The camera moves smoothly during melee combat. With three distinct game types already available and more on the horizon, multiplayer is equally enjoyable. It functions flawlessly overall, and the ability to completely customize your character's armor and weapon loadouts keeps things fresh. Anticipating what DLC content will be released in the future.

THQ and Relic have really captured the feel of the 40k universe here and to take on a project as big as this given the fan base from the table top game they have done an outstanding job. Campaign storyline is involving, and gameplay is excellent with the camera moving well during melee combat and a wide selection of ranged weaponary, and a good spread of foe types, mission objectives are varied and challenging. Multiplayer is equal in it's enjoyment offering already three different game types with more coming soon, and works very well in all, and the option to totally customise your characters armour and weapon loadouts keeps it interesting. Looking forward to seeing what DLC content is coming in the future

This is the fully realised version of how I imagined the Warhammer 40K universe to look. Previously I had played Fire Warrior on the PS2, which is also an FPS game, but it looked a little bit flat. A long time ago I had also played Space Hulk (1993) which felt more like the board game and while it is a very good game it was in places dull to play.

Space Marine looks absolutely incredible, which is unsurprising given it is a late XBOX 360 title. It is arguably one of the best looking games on the system along with the two Crysis games. A lot of time, money and research has been spent in bringing the atmosphere of the game alive. The voice acting is of Hollywood standard, which also comes as no surprise given the cast involved.

The gameplay for me wasn't as fun as Bulletstorm, Crysis 2 or The Darkness. It is very good, but it was a bit repetitive and with 16 chapters often taking around an hour each it is a big game.

Overall this is a solid game, but like games like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow it just lacks the magic touch.

Once again the developers behind a conle game think its OK to convert it to PC by just allocating the different buttons to (COMPLETELY!) random buttons around the keyboard. You cannot change the setup so they make sense, and most are very hard to reach with one hand on the keyboard. I paid for this game and I'm not sure I should have...after 3 really intense missions I'm stuck at the end of the third, mostly because it's not really fun to replay, replay, replay. Clearly another console game that COULD have been great, but at some level it was chosen to make it one of those "just hit a lot of buttons quickly", that are quite hard on PC because (read above :P). The graphics are cool though...

It's a solid game that I think needed more in the story and character department.

The reason I think it needed more is, most of the gameplay is Silent, they don't really talk to each other that much, I really want some more characterization between the space marines, it just feels so hollow when plots stuff happens in the later half, because so much of the game is in silent , and when they talk it's mostly just, oh commander killed some orc we have to do the objective.

But the Architecture and the scale of it all, does feel really Warhammer like buildings that are so tall. It's hard to see the sky and the rooms that are just so big it has the Towering effect that Warhammer architecture have.

I play the game on hard, so the difficulty was a bit weird because I think the game want me to go in melee and get my health back, but because of some of the Orcs have projectile weapons and grenades its very hard to do it, without dying, so most of my gameplay was about standing in the back shooting them, because going in melee was suicide.

And the music was just there, I think I have been spoiled by the more electronic soundtracks of Warhammer games, because this one was just Symphony Orchestra stuff and load me to sleep.

I remember playing this game in 2012, thinking it was a fun and really nice experience, especially because so much of the gaming landscape was third person shooters where we will be hiding behind walls, but nowadays it just feels okay still fun still to appreciate by Warhammer fans, but it has certainly lost a lot of its punch in the years.