40k: Space Marine (09/60$)
It is not the worst thing I have ever done.
Space Marine is a game. That is all I can say about the 2011 3rd person shooter. If you are expecting a grand piece of art that moves you and changes the way you see the world, this is not it. The plot runs about 9 hours and wastes no time moving the player from challenge to challenge. Giving a large amount of ways to fight the enemy hordes. Centered in the Warhammer 40k universe, the game makes relatively good use of the lore and is a fun rump for a few hours, but this is nothing groundbreaking on any front.
So the best part about the game is how it captures the feeling of being a badass space marine. A space marine is the combination of the integrity and genetics of Captain America, the strength of the Hulk with the cunning of Bruce Banner, and all wrapped in Iron Man armour. The game sends you into combat as soon as you touch down on a completely man made and metallic planet.. You will be swinging chainsaw swords and power axes into seemingly endless swarms of greenskins that will explode into a red mist that will stain your armour in time. The weapons pack a punch that can be felt by the player. Which is important because the thesis of this game is to feel badass. The game treats you like a badass as well. The imperial guardsmen will cheer when they see you helping. The combat encourages this over the top badassery by healing the player after completing gruesome executions that feel like DOOM 2016’s glory kill system. Yet, at the end of all this badassery, you are left with a shallow game that is unable to truly differentiate itself from in the sea of beat em ups and third person shooters.
In fact, it feels like this game is simply taking parts from various other games and putting them together under the Warhammer 40,000 banner. But it is not enough. The physical environment that the character plays through is so incredibly boring that it is barely worth talking about. Throughout the 9 hours story there was no change in scenery, just grey backdrop after grey backdrop. Occasionally there would be an object of interest in the background that helped provide a sense of scale to the world, but even those were not terribly interesting. The combat is fun, but there is not enough variation to keep fights feeling fresh despite the game constantly providing new weaponry. The story is incredibly weak. Every moment that I thought was memorable had it’s concept ripped from games like Gears of War or God of War. Which is a shame, because a Gears of War meets God of War hybrid would make an incredible game. Space Marine could have been an incredible game. It has great bones to build off, but lacks substance.
There are parts of this game that I loved. The times when you get the jumpack, and the world opens up to the player vertically feels great. I think this is because a space marine game needs a massive world to explore. It does not have to be an open world. But there just needs to be more variance in the game atmosphere. The game does offer multiplayer horde modes and missions that are a ton of fun to play with friends, but will soon have you wondering the point of playing the game since there are no real goals within the multiplayer. In 2011, this game would have been everything I hated in a game. Being able to look back on it 9 years later, and buying it for 2$. I feel I got my money's worth. But if I spent anymore I’d be chived. (09/60$)
