Warhammer 40.000 Space Marine

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Demo is out on steam. I've played it on my PC here at work with a mouse and keyboard and must say that they did a pretty decent job of mapping the brawler gameplay to it. It feels like a mix of Gears of War and God of War, a Gears God of War² if you would. I enjoyed the gameplay as did most of the people in the studio, but from the perspective of a Warhammer 40K fan I can say that this demo gave me some of the biggest nerdgasms ever. Their iteration of all the iconography and setting of warhammer is spot on.

I recommend any action shooter brawler fan to check out this game.

I strongly suggest playing the demo. It may seem a bit difficult at first, but you have to consider they drop you off at the start of the second stage, so you basically skip all combat tutorials and your very first fight is against a huge mob of orks that are joined by a big Nob at the end.

The Jump pack mission in the demo is a blast as well, the jump pack mechanic feels very visceral if not a bit overpowered on the level presented.

If you are still reluctant to try it out consider the fact that it at least is not another grey/brown man shooter

"This franchise has a huge fan base already, so I'm just not going to like it because I don't want to."

Try to think of it as a brand new franchise. If you read my post carefully I said that me and the folks here at the studio liked the gameplay, not any of them familiar with 40K lore but myself.

But you don't need to read my posts carefully, nor do you need to try it out or like it. You also don't need to wipe your ass, but it's just good hygiene.

If you want to elaborate on your previous topics though, I'd be very interested why its such a huge pass, or why do you think it only appeals to the 40K fans. THQ and Relic have done an incredible job with the 40K franchise, not exclusively for the 40K fans. Dawn of War set the mechanics for Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2, especially the second expansion (Chaos Rising I believe) had some very interesting campaign mechanics. I can only hope that they will do for action games what they did for strategy games in DoW. The demo at least felt very different from both God and Gears of War.

I can't judge for the entirety of the game for all I have seen is the Demo, so I don't know how long it is or how are the levels paced and how the challenge curve is.

Anyways, I'm mostly interested in the SP campaign anyway. MP might be fun though, so I'm considering it a bonus. As for Co-op, if it indeed has, it would be awesome.

Space Marines don't need cover, their armor IS the cover =P

This translates in the game by not being able at ALL to take cover in the Gears sense (wall hugging). Alec from RPS describes this perfectly:

Quote

I was as guilty as the next knee-jerker of expecting something in the vein of Gears of War. Apart from a thunderous run and big shoulders, there really isn’t much in common between the two. Your stony-faced Ultramarine doesn’t need cover, and he’d probably think that taking 30 seconds to take down one enemy is weak and monstrously inefficient. In Space Marine, attacking a swarm of Orks is the ultra-violent equivalent of jumping gleefully into a big pile of leaves. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. That’s the noise I made throughout, accompanied by the happy rattle of a chainsword ripping greenskins asunder by the half-dozen.

As he notes at the end the Demo was very satisfying but we are still unsure of how this will happen throughout the length of the game. If you want to, read the full demo impressions here, it could very well dismiss your doubts better than I could: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08 ... ne-demo-2/

Bear in mind I'm not interested in the MP part of the game, so I can't really comment on that. I'm not familiar with the game modes available. I know it's got character customization and class separation (3 classes: melee, assault and heavy weapons).

I can only speak from the demo, but it felt like a God of War with guns (for both you and your foes) and a 3rd person follow camera. Enemies are numerous and combat is quite frenetic.

Please refer to the demo videos below. I've skipped the intro, story cinematics and jump right into action.

Combat:

http://youtu.be/atWwJ8J3ciU?t=2m35s

Jump pack

http://youtu.be/c4tUdt6g38o?t=47s

Edit: I've watched Madworld gameplay videos and, from what I can tell, Madworld is slower paced with more emphasis on the killing blows and different wiimote motions. In Space marine executing enemies is just a mini cutscene with a few of them having quick time events (such as executing the Big ork with a chainsaw requiring you to press the attack button as quickly as possible). So I don't believe Madworld would be the best reference.