WaaaAAAaaargh! Space Marine!

 A long long time ago, I found the demo for this game and played it for a bit.  It used a bit with a jump pack and was pretty fun.  I've always wanted to give it a crack for reals and now I have.

What's it like?

Well, not too bad.  You play a Warhammer, big chunky ass space marine, which is cool and you battle hordes of orks who have invaded some planet.

It plays a lot like Transformers WFC/FOC, Gears of War and that kind of 3rd person shooter game without a cover mechanic.  It also comes form that era of games when the worlds were very 

BROWN

Man the stages in this game are not eye-inspiring.  I guess they are what one would expect from this Warhammer world, after all, the orks thing, seems to be to invade and devastate and yep, each level has been devastated.  Sadly though all the areas you walk through are forgettable and plain.

Travel through destroyed streets, destroyed building, destroyed church looking thing, maybe, more destroyed other buildings that may have been housings.  Everything is smashed to bits and just looks pretty bland really.

Gameplay wise you have 4 weapons that can be carried around and the selection is pretty limited.  Pistol type blaster, machine gun thing, explosive launcher thing, sniper rifle and shot gun thing.  Reloading takes a long time and if you're in the thick of things, it's better to either swap weapons or start melee combat.  The game wants you to melee quite a bit, as you soon lose the distance advantage and will get swamped by plebs.  They are pretty easy to take out, and you'll need to execute them to get energy back.

The executions look cool and explosive.  Your guy will be splatting heads, chain sawing guts and all sorts of shenanigans, which then (rather cooly) gets him covered in blood.  Sadly though, the animations, while cool, take quite a long time to go through the motions and while doing them, you'll still be attacked and taking damage.

  Am I supposed to wait until the last guy is left so I can do it in safety?  Or does the game want me to charge into the middle of a swarm of orks and smash like a madman, using the recharge to continue?  So far, the best I've found is to run in, blasting as you get close and then get to smacking them about.  However the biggest problem seems to be the camera for the smacking action.  It doesn't really change viewpoint from the just behind point used for shooting, so it's kind of hard to see what is behind you, leading to getting swarmed from behind as there are a bunch of dudes you can't see.

As well as that, the weapons you end up with are not all that exciting to use.  Sure some of them are ridiculously powerful, my favourite is the plasma shotgun, which while limited in ammo, absolutely wastes anything in it's way.  But the regular machine and sniper rifle etc, are just OK.

Melee weapon wise there is a knife, a chainsaw, an axe and a hammer.  Oddly the knife is replaced with the chainsaw and when you get to the axe, it states the axe is more powerful than the chainsaw, but later, you can revert to the chainsaw again.  Why?

When you have the option for the hammer, it's great.  However you are limited to using only two of your four weapons.  Fair enough, however, without swapping the hammer with another weapon at specific points, it's impossible to get rid of it.  It only shows up at specific areas too.  There has been times when I would like to drop the hammer and get to use my shot gun for an area, but you can't just drop it.

Currently though, I have come to a  point where the orks are no longer the main enemy, which makes a nice change of pace.  However, I am now fighting, er, evil space marine guys. And DAYUM boy, talk about ya bullet sponges.

To be honest, it's now at the point that I am thinking of giving it up. So far every spot that I've encountered Evil-Space-Marines has been a slow drag of wasting much ammo.  Which is very opposed to the earlier experience of generally tearing through hordes of orks in a relatively quick chop. 

This experience, to be continued...

PS also. why do orks always have corny British accents?

Most image sources:Co-Optimus - Screens - Bloody Good Warhammer: Space Marine Screens