also i played space marine 2: it’s ok.
it’s slightly too hard and much too self-serious and at no point does anyone point at the player character and shout the name of the game, so like what is even the point (wow! triple “point”).
they added a parry/counter to your moveset, which on paper i approve of (i played space marine 1 again immediately after beating 2 and was like oh yeah a counter would be nice hey) but in execution i think it’s spoiled somewhat by the encounter design; too often the game skews its encounters towards a cooperative experience (which, again, i am theoretically in favour of, but i played solo! and i suspect most players did!) which means that it’s hard to focus on a fromsoft style 1v1 encounter when the little popcorn enemies keep biting your toes, and it’s hard to pay attention to the swarm of little enemies when the big tyranid warrior as about to cut your shit up!
when it’s one or the other, it works really well and i like it a lot, and i feel like this is something that the team learned as they made the game too; the final level is very good. it looks way weirder than the previous ones, and the final boss is a really great 1v1 which uses your whole moveset in a way that the previous fights didn’t do nearly as well.
it makes me hope that they just crack out another few campaigns and build on their knowledge to make better stuff with the same tools. unfortunately their current roadmap only mentions online stuff, but the end of the game is clearly teeing up the next chapter, so who knows.
all-in-all i’m glad i played it, and it was nice to play something so concentrated like this, but i think that saber may have finally pulled space marine out of the dumpster and into the limelight.
ah well. o7
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