I just got my hands on the demo yesterday and sat there furiously playing through it over and over again. Once probably 2 hours went by I sat back in my chair and said "fuck Gears of War 3". And I meant it. This is for several reasons, one is that the world of Warhammer has some of the richest lore ever written. And the material has been written over the course of decades, and that lore leaves room for so much within the universe. So there is virtually no way to really mess up your story as long as you don't ignore the lore. And Relic has proven extensively that it understands and respects the source material with which it is working. But I'm starting to ramble so I'm going to get straight to the mini review of the demo for Space Marine.
The demo gives you access to two different missions out of the campaign. One of these "The Inquisitor" is what I assume to be the games standard fare. You march from place to place fighting with orks. After that mission is another mission wherein your marine dons a jump pack. Both of these brief missions do a great job of showing off what the game is capable of. First off the graphics are gorgeous. This is where you can really see how faithful Relic is to its source material. The crumbling buildings of the forge world are truly oppressive and even though I had no idea what the situation was, I felt like the situation was completely hopeless. And the character models are just so clean and sharp it's hard to complain about them. Especially when your Space Marine is coated in the blood of the orks that he cut apart (quite literally) in battle. As his armors shields are beaten down electricity crackles across its surface giving you a warning of impending danger even if you aren't paying attention to your life bar. The only graphical short coming that I saw, was in a few of the environments. Some textures looked a little bit muddy up close. But that's just nit picking, the overall look of the game is brilliant in its unrelenting bleakness.
The next thing I really want to stress is the sound design. Shitty sound effects can really kill a game. Look at Duke Nukem, yeah yeah I know, Duke didn't need bad sound effects to be a shitty game. But honestly the guns just sounded pathetic. This was also a shortcoming in the game Garshasp Monster Slayer. But in Space Marine, every bullet you fire lets loose a blast like a grenade in any other game. They did a wonderful job giving the impression that any normal human trying to fire those guns would have his arms taken off by the sheer force of it. And the melee sounds are awesome too, your chainsword revs and roars with every swing, and blood and gore spatters every time you make contact. It makes the combat audibly just as satisfying as it is visually.
And finally the combat. Think if you were playing Gears of War, but you can't take cover, because Space Marines are WAY too badass to cower behind conveniently placed cement blocks. And when you get to melee, instead of just throwing a random gun butt, or killing them with a chain saw if you get lucky, you pull out a fucking sword. But it isn't just a normal sword. It's a chainsaw, shaped like a sword. And then, all of a sudden, the game just turned into Devil May Cry. The speed and brutality with which you dispatch your enemies in melee would be disturbing if it wasn't so god damn fun and awesome. Whenever an opponent is stunned you can use an execution move on him. These both look AWESOME and serve a purpose besides taking enemies out of the fight, every time you execute an enemy it heals you. So it's not just the standard "OH EXECUTIONS THOSE LOOK BALLER LOLOLOLOL LETS PUT EM IN" they serve a strategic purpose. But, unlike most games, you aren't invulnerable while caving in an ork's head or Sparta kicking him off the end of your chain sword. So the risk sometimes outweighs the benefits.
The jump pack essentially adds another layer to the melee combat. The way it works is similar to the DOW2 assault squad. You jump up in the air, choose your extremely unfortunate target, and come crashing down on him and his friends. It puts you right into the fight and kills about half of the enemy while they are distracted shooting at your friends. My only drawback while using the jump pack was that it started to feel very repetitive. The slam attack was so lethal that it made it a waste of time to use anything else. So it just turned into, jump, slam, jump, slam, jump, slam. It was fun for a while but eventually I just ignored the fact that I had it and fought as normal.
I have extremely high hopes for this game now. I was already looking forward to it but talk about making a good first impression. It's like meeting your girlfriends parents while wearing a tuxedo and driving a brand new Mercedes that you named "Commitment". Unfortunately I won't be able to afford the game for a while but when I do a full review will be soon to follow.
Copyright Alex Jenkins 2011
