Game Reviews
Space Marine: A Great Game at a Bad Price
- Format
- 4 / 5
- Platform
- Steam · 2 hrs
- 4 out of 5. Two hours on record when I wrote my review, enough to confirm the combat still holds up.
- Melee and shooting blend together, and executions that restore health push you to play aggressively.
- It's a great 40K game and a friendly one for newcomers to the setting.
- When I reviewed it, the price had jumped from $20 to $60 ahead of the sequel. Wait for a sale.
"In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only price hiking." That was my Steam review headline, and it sums up how I felt: the game is still great, and the pricing around it was not.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine came out in 2011. It's one of the best uses of the 40K license in a video game, and it still plays well. When I reviewed it, the Anniversary Edition had just gone from $20 to $60 in the run-up to Space Marine 2. That's a lot to ask for a twelve-year-old game, no matter how good it is.
What it is
You're Captain Titus of the Ultramarines, dropped onto a forge world overrun by orks. You have a bolter, a chainsword and a very large amount of armor. The rest of the game is about using all three at once.
What worked
The combat. This is the reason to play. Melee and ranged fighting blend together in a way that still feels good. The execution system is the clever bit: your health comes back from brutal melee kills, not from hiding behind cover, so the game keeps pushing you forward into the fight. It's a really satisfying risk-reward loop.
The atmosphere. It nails the grim, brutal feel of 40K. Bolter fire sounds like it weighs something, chainswords grind, the Ultramarines are appropriately stern, and the score leans into the scale of it all.
It's welcoming. If you know nothing about Warhammer, the story is straightforward and the action carries you. If you know a lot, the details and lore are handled with care. That's a hard balance, and it pulls it off.
Everything's in the box. The Anniversary Edition bundles all the DLC, plus the soundtrack, an artbook and wallpapers.
What didn't
The price. I'll say it once more: a jump to $60 is hard to justify for a 2011 game.
Hard isn't hard. If you've played a lot of action games, the top difficulty won't push you much.
Multiplayer is thin. There's 8v8 with progression and the Exterminatus co-op mode, but the player base has shrunk a lot, and most of the technical hiccups live there.
It shows its age. Some mechanics and visuals clearly come from the PS3 era, though it runs smoothly on modern systems.
Tip
The campaign runs about seven or eight hours, and it's the part that holds up best. Treat multiplayer as a bonus, not the reason to buy.
Worth it?
The game itself: yes, highly recommended, especially if you like action games or Warhammer. The value depends entirely on what you pay. Put it on your wishlist and grab it on sale.
If you like games where you're a walking tank, Brigador takes the same idea to an isometric city and lets you flatten the whole thing.