THQ NEWS: Space Marine Pre-review
You’ve been waiting a while for this one, and the buildup has been both tense and exciting. The time is now… Space Marine is on shelves!
Hey’s Bols fans — It’s AdamHarry here with my thoughts on the Space Marine Multi-player. Now as many of you have pointed out the game launched this past Tuesday (the 6th) and many people were calling foul because we didn’t post a full review — that’s because I’m not done playing it! We literally didn’t get the copy of the game until the day it was release, and because of that I (and the fact I have a real job) I haven’t got to finish the campaign in the allotted time. However, I did get some time in with the Multi-player and here are my initial thoughts. These are of course after about 6 hours of play time and I’m leaning heavily on my time when I was playing it at THQ. I’m also wanting to look at this more as a Fan of 40k, and not as a video game player — I just happen to be both.
Still with me? Good! Let’s go over the meat and potatoes!
I’m doing quite a bit of referencing to the game play video of me playing that was from last week, if you haven’t seen it check out our youtube channel!
One of the things that really worried me about playing as a Marine was the movement: How would THQ and Relic go about showing off the super-human speed and agility of a Marine, but still display the weight and force of their movement?
But they NAILED it.
You can see in the game play footage when the Marine runs, the screen shakes slightly. Just enough to show the force behind each step. Space Marines move fast and with a purpose — and that purpose is to smite the foes of the Emperor!
The movements show the weight — you feel the mass behind the Marine and yet he’s still very nimble. You’re able to dive in any direction and roll gracefully and then pop back up in a very fluid manner. The Animation will show you doing these strong and gracefully executed moves as you cut through swaths of enemies with your Close-Combat weapon of choice.
All of the animations are great as well — you have probably seen the executions the Marines do in the single-player. Those are gone in the multi-player but that’s because it would slow down the fast pace game play quite a bit. One of my personal favorite animations is how the Tactical Marine will tuck his bolter under his left arm while running — I thought that was a great touch. You can also see a lot of the other classes in the game play video. The Assault Marines’ Jump Pack is not only cool to see fly off, it’s also a weapon! If you land on an enemy you will usually kill them outright, or at least have them near death, ready for the killing blow! But that doesn’t mean the slower Devastator Marines are chop suey in close quarters fight.
The Customization options are ridiculous. I could probably write an entire article on JUST that. I even asked THQ if there were any plans on releasing just the customizer as a phone app for download ( THQ, if you’re reading thing — YES PLEASE!!!)
There are a ton of Pre-set options, and you’ll probably need them because every GW prime color was in there — sorry, no washes 🙂 The amount of Detail THQ and Relic have painstakingly put into the game is astonishing.
Now down to the nitty-gritty. The Weapons! In the video I stuck with your basic Tac Marine, because… well, He’s awesome! I was using the relic bolter and a few perks to make sure my bolter was even more deadly! Armed with an advanced targeter and Kraken Rounds, I was ready to enlighten some Chaos Marines (by enlighten, I mean kill). You might not be able to tell in the video, but when a bolt hits it’s target, there is the initial impact, and then a secondary explosion — kinda like in the fluff!
The Heavy weapons are also on display in the video — you can see lots of heavy bolter action. And there is one marine in particular who was quite deadly with the Melta-gun. We went toe-to-toe quite a few times 🙂 You might also notice that the Melta-gun is different than it was in Kill Team. This was for a balance issue as well as it fills the roll of the “shotgun” you would have in most shooter/action games. This does not make it worse. I could easily see why they chose to go with the shotgun blast style. It’s short range and cone shape — the blast quickly disperses over distance, which is why it’s such a great analog.
Jump packs are also really cool. I mentioned the death from above, but there is also a perk which lets them detonate after the user dies — something THQ added which I think was pretty neat! All of the close combat weapons are deadly, You’ll see a lot of players gravitate towards the Thunder Hammer initially just because it’s pretty much a 1-hitter, but it’s SLOW. This leaves you open for lots of attacks — they are Initiative 1 for a reason.
Keep an eye out for a few of the weapons in the video:
-Bolters (obviously)
-Power weapons and Bolt Pistols
-Thunder Hammers
-Plasma Guns
-Melta-guns
…and a few others
And that’s just it, anything they added to the game and subsequently the universe of 40k, they got Games Workshop’s permission. They really respect the universe and that comes through in the game more than anything. So watch the video already!! Sorry about those bright, white flashes — Blind Grenades: we don’t kill you, but we make your video’s look weird!
Anyways, those were my thoughts when I first got a crack at the Multi-player. Now that it’s out, go pick it up and play for yourself! Seriously, the campaign thus far feels like 40k (I’ve only had a few things that made me go “Huh?” but nothing unforgivable). Expect a full review up later this week — I’m shooting for Friday so keep your eyes peeled. Or just play it and tell me what you think!
AdamHarry, out!
