Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II Extended Gameplay Preview: May the Emperor Rejoice!

We're just over a month out from the release of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II at the time of writing, and at this point we've seen a lot of the game. Gory trailers, multiplayer reveals, it's all very exciting stuff, but apart from a brief session at Gamescom last year, we'd not really managed to sink our teeth into Saber Interactive's visceral action experience. That is, until now.

A Space Marine is a tricky thing to encapsulate. They are a super soldier, yes, but unlike your Spartans in Halo or Doom Guy, Space Marines are held to an incredibly high standard within their given universe. They are practically demigods compared to most of Warhammer 40,000's human population. Mightier, bigger, and near-ageless, their presence is something that has been normalised in some media, and deified in others. In Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, Saber Interactive has managed to absolutely nail the concept of a Space Marine.

Strutting through one of the rare Imperial holdouts in a level will see members of the Imperial Guard drop to one knee at the sight of you, immediately defer to you as their lord, and gain a rush of morale as they know you have come to fight at their side. It shows a great understanding of how this universe treats the rare super soldiers that Space Marines are, and yet it doesn't mean you're unstoppable on the battlefield.

The recommended difficulty for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II is hard, which we went with during our time with it, and it proved a challenging but worthwhile experience. You're not immortal, not even close, and diving headfirst into a throng of Chaos warriors or swarm of Tyranids is going to get you knocked down, but you can be sure you'll leave a mark before you hit the floor. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II's gameplay is similar to the first game. The mix of third-person shooting followed by inevitable melee as you're rushed by dozens of enemies will feel familiar to anyone who's played Space Marine, and you've once again got shields protecting your precious health from getting damaged. These core principles remain the same, and yet Saber has made some additions to the gameplay loop which feel revolutionary to the overall flow.

First off, you now can't get damaged during an execution, which is a lifesaver as in the first game if you got the wrong execution animation, you would just get hacked to death by the other orcs not willing to wait their turn. In the sequel, executions follow either just doing enough damage to a large enemy or a parry. Yes, there is a parry system in Space Marine II and it allows you to snatch and crush smaller enemies out of the air when they lunge at you, and block heavier attacks from the bigger creatures and evils you'll face. Not every attack can be blocked, and so you'll have to keep an eye out, but not just spamming dodge or attack is a great way to make Saber's sequel feel like more of a thinking man's gorefest, even if it still largely relies on you just sitting back as your plasma blaster sends daemon after daemon back to the Warp.

With such a strong focus on melee combat, it could feel as if gunplay takes a step back in this game, luckily, again Saber Interactive has trimmed the fat of the first game and focused on delivering shooting that feels impactful without being overbearing or taking away from the meat of the melee combat, where you're sure to find the most fun drenching yourself in the blood of your enemies. Unlike in the first game where you have four gun slots, you only have a primary and secondary weapon in Space Marine II, with the odd larger tertiary weapon you can pick up in a mission. It might mean you can't fill out every possible need within your loadout, like having a sniper to pick off annoying enemies plinking from far away as well as a heavy bolter to churn through the mass of Tyranids throwing themselves at you, that's where Space Marine II's focus on co-op comes into play. You and your two squad buddies should be covering each other's weaknesses, and while the AI is pretty helpful in both campaign and co-op, they're not nearly as strong as having two real players by your side.

The gameplay is punchy and incredibly fun to play, in part thanks to sound design that treats the ears to thunderous bolter fire, raucous roars as a chainsword swings through the air, and sickening squishes whenever you jam a Tyranid's claw through the top of its head, shattering the chitin of its armour all over the floor. Even the thumps of your massive boots hitting the floor has such a weight to it that makes the experience come that much more alive. For those looking to embody the spirit of one of the Emperor's finest, there's nothing that really comes closer. However, Space Marine II isn't just about you roleplaying as a Space Marine. There's a story here, too, one that essentially runs on two parallel lines. In the co-op campaign, you'll be assisting Titus, and during the gameplay sequence we played, the co-op squad actually saved the leading lad from death by a thousand Tyranids after killing a wounded Hive Tyrant, which in itself was a very fun and surprisingly detailed boss fights.

Space Marine II blows the bosses of the first game out of the water. In our time with the game, we fought a Chaos sorcerer and a Hive Tyrant, both of which proved very deadly with unique attack patterns and combos designed to get you into a more rhythmic dance of death than the usual meat grinder of the horde-based combat. They're not overly difficult bosses nor are they designed to a blow-away level, but their addition certainly doesn't go unnoticed and we can't wait to get stuck into more of these cinematic fights.

It's hard to make an early judgement on the story from what we've played so far. There's plenty of intrigue still in what happened to Titus between the first game and the second, especially after some reveals made in the section we played, but as the mission was mostly centred around showing off gameplay, there wasn't much to delve into. Clive Standen does a good job at replacing Mark Strong as Titus, and we're interested to know more about the other marines in the trio, Gadriel and Chairon. It is difficult to make an engaging character out of a Space Marine, as they are designed as power fantasies more than they are made as people, but hopefully Saber can pull it off. It feels like the key piece missing in this puzzle to truly bring Space Marine II up from a game any Warhammer fan should play and into the ranks of a top action title.

There were also a few bugs we encountered on our playthrough, and we're not talking Tyranids here. Some enemies stood still in the middle of execution animations, and a couple of other visual glitches were to be found as well. Small things that didn't detract from what remains one of our most-anticipated titles for the rest of this year, but notable inclusions for anyone teetering on the edge of pre-ordering. Otherwise, roll on September for the rest of this experience that makes me wish I was also a 10-foot-tall super soldier living in a universe where everything sucks all of the time.