Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Playable
Rrp: £54.99 (Humble, Steam and Epic)
Released: 9th September 2024
Available on: Humble, Steam and Epic
Played Using: An Xbox One Control Pad
Approximate game length: 12+ hours
This is a sequel no one expected to get partially due to the original developers (Relic Entertainment) having ceased to exist ten years ago but also because the original game had been released in 2011.
When this game was released I decided to get the original game and check it out. I remember it being very good but not quite good enough to break into my top ten for the year. So my question is will this one fare better?
Set nearly one hundred years after the original game. You reprise the role of Captain Titus, or rather, Lieutenant Titus as he had been demoted due to the events of the first game. In the first game the antagonist force was Orks, this time you contend with a far more terrifying foe, the Tyranids. Just in case you’re new to Warhammer 40,000 and its various races, the Tyranids are a purely biological hive mind race that rapidly adapts to suit any situation. They don’t care about individuals and will fight you as a swarm. With Tyranids there is no diplomacy, the only thing they want is your biomass to continue the growth of the swarm.
Combat is fast paced and visceral, each weapon feels like it really has weight and punch to it. Just like in the first game you can and will use your ranged weapons but the real meat of this game is the melee. You will be parrying, dodging and stringing together attack combinations as you purge the hordes of enemies. The enemies roughly fit into one of three categories; small, large and bosses. Small enemies are quick and easy to kill, being turned into mist with a single hit of your melee weapon. However among them will be larger enemies that cannot be defeated so easily, having much more health and dealing far more damage than their smaller counterparts. Finally you have the bosses, I’m sure I don’t need to go into these as they’re fairly self explanatory.
Titus has a certain amount of armour that gets depleted by enemy attacks, if you can avoid being hit for a short time it will regenerate. Health that has been recently lost can be regained by dealing damage. A whited out section indicates how much can be regained.
When it comes to stringing together melee combos the longer the combo you can string together is the more powerful the heavy attack at the end of the string will be. This heavy attack will kill multiple smaller enemies around you at once as well as damage any larger enemies caught in the blast. Keep in mind though that this isn’t a spectacle fighter, there are no complicated moves to remember, a string of attacks is literally pressing the same button repeatedly without being interrupted, nothing more. One such thing that can interrupt your combo string is an enemy successfully striking you. Thankfully you can parry enemy melee attacks and, if timed correctly, a parry can stagger larger enemies and outright kill smaller ones. However, heavy attacks cannot be parried and must be dodged instead. These heavy attacks are indicated by a red ring on the attacker.
Once an enemy has taken enough damage they will flash red, indicating they can be executed. Performing an execution will instantly regenerate some armour and kill any smaller enemies near the larger one.
Once you’ve completed the intro the game allows you to play through the campaign with up to two friends who would take control of the two other characters, Chairon and Gadriel, in your team.
The attention to detail on display in the environments is amazing. It’s clear that the developers took great care in understanding the aesthetics of Warhammer 40K. Some of it is frankly unnecessary but it is welcomed. A great example of this is that the Cadian Guardsmen you encounter all have purple irises, this isn’t something you really notice unless you look very very closely at the soldiers eyes (something best done with the built in photo function). As I said, it’s a totally unnecessary detail that could easily have been avoided by not mentioning that the Guardsmen are from Cadia.
After each mission you return to your home base, a spaceship (known as a Battle Barge) called Resilient. When here you can choose to replay any completed missions at a mission terminal. You can also choose to take part in Operations (more on that later) or Eternal War (which is a PVP game mode). It’s recommended to complete the main campaign before you try the Operations though as they would contain some spoilers.
Throughout the campaign other teams get sent to do missions ‘off screen’ that you see the effects of. This is where Operations come in, because within Operations you get to play as those teams.
Sadly, due to none of my friends owning this game (and myself not wanting to play with random people) I wasn’t able to play any of the Operations as it is an online PVE (player versus environment) mode.
One of the previous games developed by Saber Interactive was World War Z. World War Z was praised for the way the zombies would swarm and Saber have utilised (and perhaps improved upon) the technology behind that to allow so many enemies on screen at once, and by many I mean hundreds.
You don’t need to have played the original game, or be familiar with the Warhammer 40,000 universe, to understand what is going on. However, for those that have played the previous game there are a lot of subtle (and not so subtle) callbacks and plenty of references for those familiar with the universe as a whole.
Oh, I had fun with this one. It’s a stunning looking game that really brings that universe to life and really lets you revel in being a Space Marine. From last stands to tearing a Tyranid apart by hand everything about this game feels great.
