Gaming Warhammer 40K: The Space Marines That Never Were

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2012/01/10/warhammer-40k-the-space-marines-that-never/1

 

I've enjoyed playing space marine and over christmas had the chance to play with 3 of my friends in the same room the co-op multiplayer with people in the same room is so much more enjoyable!

 

I quite enjoyed space marine but there are some things that kind of stick out to me. The weapons for example. I know it's very hard to balance space marine weapons since they all amount to rape-sauce but i wished that Relic portrayed the damage that these weapons do on flesh more accurately.

Bolters should make the Orks explode and pop in the killing blow. Plasma guns should melt them into a puddle of gore. They got the melta right. The melee weapons should leave their respective wounds on the corpses.

What Relic did get right tho' are the large number of bodies that remain after a battle. It just adds to the satisfaction.

Not having vehicles isn't a big deal to me but i would've welcomed varied environments a bit more. Also, the "Orks invading en-masse as a cover to something sinister" storyline is getting kind of old if you ask me.

 

Nice article, enjoyed reading that.

I kinda got stuck very early on in SM (the Ork ship which you need to shoot with the mounted assault gun Plasma Cannon) and after a few attempts I got side tracked with Gears 3 which came out just after it. I still mean to go back and get stuck in though.


Edit:

Started re-playing it last night after this article reminded me. Apparently I had to rip the cannon from the rail and use it from the back of the ship

 

Just purchased this and playing through it for the first time, I would have loved a co-op campaign and a way to regen health that didn't involve close combat (unless I missed this somehow?) note I have the pc version and find the camera angles not always the best but the colour is great and plenty of nice red blood going everywhere.

 

I played it on PC on max graphics and its not a bad looking game, but it shows its console roots quite a bit. The single player was a wonderful story and one of the few games I played to finish despite a few frustrating moments.

I played the Multiplayer and frankly it was unplayable. The jumps and freezes in combat were really really bad due to the console peer to peer networking that it used. When it worked the games were satisfying but 90% of the time it didn't work at all. I can't believe companies still ship with that on PC. So I avoided trying the coop mode because the multiplayer had been such a painful experience.

So in the future Relic I'll be avoiding your console ports, especially if the multiplayer is important to me. Because frankly I like to play games not watch a frozen screen.

 

I was disappointed that so many of the reviews ignored just how good Space Marine is in multiplayer and in the co-op arenas. The co-op especially is something that I felt was really impressive, standing up very well in comparison to games like Killing Floor or CoD Zombie Mode or Left 4 Dead. The main reason being of course that it wasn't zombies, you just got to have a proper scrap with a bunch of baddies. By not relying on the frankly silly execution mechanic to regain health the co-op arenas felt more intuitive and with a good team you can that sense of what Space Marines are all about. Again, that sense is lacking from the single player where the other members of the squad are very poorly implemented.

 

Exterminatus was added as a free update after the game's release, so maybe that's why. However, multiplayer is quite fun if not for the lag thanks to p2p.

 

Ah that would explain it.

Glad I bought it on sale with Exterminatus already included then because I'd have felt royally screwed otherwise.

 

This captures the feel of Space Marines?

 

The part of this game that made space marine a bad game for me was the final boss being ripped right out of the Rancor fight from Star Wars - The Force Unleashed II. I watched my friend beat that game in an afternoon (what a sad and depressing day that was) and was deeply upset to see a boss fight recycled like that from another game. Just horrible, no good, nasty feeling of "I've seen this before. . ."

 

the last boss fight was awful, and no quicksave / checkpoint between stages :-(. The lack of non combat healing was bad in some places too. And made no sense.

I did enjoy it, the environments, lore, audio daries some of the graphics where great too :-O

exterminatos is you vs waves of orks with 3 others, and where the heavy bolter really shines the rank to unlock in mp is annoying.

but overall I do enjoy it a lot , even tempted to buy overpriced dlc :-(

 

Very will written article; i really enjoyed the insight. I'd be interested to know if this was written under the new editorial team, or the old. If it's the new; excellent start guys, keep it up. If it was the old, it's a worthy last effort.

For me, I've always had a love-hate relationship with anything games workshop. I love the lore and the astounding detail to the stories. I hate the way they rip you off for the models though. The games then are a perfect alternative; combining the detailed lore without having to pay through the nose for it.

 

Interesting article,thanks.

 

It was definitely an enjoyable game, but after finishing it I don't really look back with the same kind of wonder I do with great games. It was all just satisfactory. I doubt I will ever play it again.

The lack of depth to melee combat really killed it for me. Ranged play felt tight and solid, but the melee was seriously underwhelming. If they fixed that and added more customisation, I would buy a second one for sure.

 

very interesting article! like to see the inner working details of these games from one of my favorite developers of such an awesome IP.

I enjoyed the game, but thought Relic's DoW2 had alot more variety and depth. I still enjoy it to this day and hope they release more DLC for DoW2. Space Marine seemed a bit too.... well a run of the mill FPS. If it wasnt for the Warhammer 40K IP it would hardly stand out. Hopefully some of their DLCs will shake things up a bit! Maybe some new races, some interesting twist to the story (Space Marine was so predictable), and some RPG features to make it more interesting?