Virtual 100 – Game 15
It took a lot of years, but I finally beat Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. I’ve owned this game on the Xbox 360 for almost as long as it’s been out. I bought it used at a Gamestop years ago for ten or fifteen bucks, but what was a fine experience at the time seemed to become less and less so as time went on.
I hooked up my 360 and tried to play it about a year ago and I just couldn’t get into it. It was jaggy and the framerate was inconsistent. In other words, it was a very “Xbox 360” experience. It also doesn’t help that my Xbox 360 controller is old enough to buy tobacco. The overall experience was less than enjoyable. So I decided to look up the PC version.
Holy shit this game has not had a price drop in, well, ever. It was still a solid fifty bones for a game that was well over a decade old. That’s… impressive actually. I think the fact that it has had a sequel announced, and that it’s been fairly well regarded as one of the “good” Warhammer 40k games has helped keep the price fixed. It also probably doesn’t hurt that it’s one that casual gamers can enjoy, as the lore and mechanics of most Warhammer games are usually geared toward the more hardcore crowd.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never played a Warhammer game that wasn’t action-based. I never played the board games and I never played any of the strategy or CRPG style games. The Vermintide games and Chaosbane are about as close as I’ve gotten to the franchise. Oh, and Inquisitor: Martyr. And Necromunda: Hired Gun. Oh, can’t forget Darktide. Damn, I guess I have played a few. As I said— action games.
Anyways, back to Space Marine. I began playing this off and on using the Steam Deck in between jobs and when I was on the road, but those opportunities were a bit sporadic so I eventually migrated over to playing bits and pieces on my desktop as well. It was thankfully pretty seamless since Steam Cloud supports the game.
This is gonna be a tricky one to write about, because the game is not all that complicated. You run forward and shoot or hack at anything that moves. It’s very much a game from the Gears of War generation, with the movement being very similar to those games. The main exception here is that in addition to an armory of firearms, the player also has a pretty good selection of large slashy things. And melee combat isn’t just an option, it’s a necessity. Stunning enemies can prompt an opportunity to execute them in a stunning display of violence, refilling your heath bar in the process.
It was all quite enjoyable, which is why it makes the way I had to play it all the more baffling. I played this game through in small chunks. I’d say maybe 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Part of this is due to the checkpoint system being generous enough where I could get in a quick play session and make some progress, without having to dedicate too much time. The other part is due to, well… just not being able to stay interested for very long. The gameplay loop is just not that long. It’s a fairly short process. Run down a corridor, get assaulted with a group of enemies, shoot/hack your way through them, continue running down corridor. That’s pretty much the entirety of the game.
One of the things I do like the most about the Warhammer 40k games is that they all have these self-contained stories, but very much appear to take place in a much larger universe. Unlike a lot of D&D games, which all seem to exist in a bubble, you can play a small personal stories, but still totally believe that you’re just a small skirmish in a much larger war.
This is something that always feels a bit lost in some other games. In Gears of War, there’s an entire planet, but the “save the world” fight always seems to land in Fenix’s back yard. It’s a damn good thing the Locusts didn’t decide to conquer the other side of the planet.
The story in Space Marine feels important, but small. Like it’s a small victory that may ultimately be a key victory, but without further context, just feels like a small victory. And that’s okay. I don’t need to save the universe every time. Participating in this key battle is an important piece, but just a piece nonetheless. It’s very comparable to playing a WWII game and knowing the importance of the Battle of Stalingrad, while also realizing the war was far from over.
I think its bite-sized story played a big part in its success, since people like me probably would’ve passed on it in a heartbeat if it relied too heavily on lore knowledge. All we need to know here is that Orks bad, and Ultramarines… good? I mean, yeah, they are, but they are fanatical in their devotion to their emperor— something else that plays into the story. And I don’t know about you, but I always get a little bit creeped out when I’m around someone that’s just a bit too over-zealous. Plus, we only see the battle from a military standpoint. It takes place on a planet that is the base for a weapons manufacturing facility for the Emperium. Do civilians think the Emperium is good? I don’t know about the universe enough to answer that, although it does appear that the “bad guys” are so purely evil that it doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.
Anyways, enough about all that. The story is relatively simple in the case of the game. Orks are attacking an Emperium weapons facility. Captain Titus and two other Ultramarines are sent in to lend a hand. Of course, the orks are the red herring and the real bad guy pulling the strings turns out to be someone else altogether. The macguffin in this case is a power source that an Inquisitor by the name of Drogan was using in an experimental weapon he was creating. The power source is a source of immense… um… power, and thus, the agents of Chaos want to get their hands on it. This can’t happen, of course, so Titus and the Ultramarines are off to save the day.
That’s pretty much it. There’s not a lot to say about the story. It’s simple, and that’s a good thing, because the game is relatively simple. And I’ve often found that over-complicated stories on simple games just don’t work.
One of the downsides of this is that the game takes place in pretty much the same area the entire time. This makes for a very drab and somewhat boring environment. The color Brown was very much en vogue at the time this game was released, and they took full advantage of the various shades of dirt and rust to create something truly bland. To be fair, there are splashes of color here and there, and they stand out that much more due to the earthy tones of the game, but it doesn’t do much to excite the player.
I enjoyed the game for what it was, even though I could really only play it for a few minutes at a time. There were only a few instances toward the end when the action ramps up that I got a bit irritated at the number of enemies that will happily hose you with gunfire while you’re trying to fend off a wave of Chaos demons. And those guys that shoot the lightning bolts can fuck right off. I found myself cheesing it on quite a few occasions and baiting enemies to follow me back a ways so that I could dispose of them out of sight of the snipers and turrets and floating lightning dudes and all that.
The final boss battle was also a product of its time, being pretty much a Quick Time Event sequence, requiring a few button mashes and a well-timed button press. And I was all for it. I honestly don’t know if I would’ve had the patience for a ridiculous, multi-tiered boss fight this time around.
One last note; as I mentioned above, I played the majority of this on my Steam Deck, and I can happily say that it ran like a dream. Performance was rock-solid and the controls felt great.
I’m pretty hyped for Space Marine 2. I just hope Embracer doesn’t close Saber Interactive before we get it.
Anyhow, that’s finally another notch off the Virtual 100 backlog. What will be next? Not sure, but hopefully we’ll find out in the next week. It was too long of a stretch between game completions, and while I was able to scratch off Ys Book I and Space Marine pretty close together, it’s because I was working on them simultaneously over the span of a few weeks. It seems as if I’ve had several irons in the fire and none of them are heating up. I need to start making quicker progress if I’m ever to see this thing through to the end.
