Space Marine 2’s co-op suggests it is in fact jetpacks that make the dream work

In the grim heatwave of the midsummer, everyone you know would love to come hunch over a table and roll dice for six hours, actually, but they’ve got that thing on. You remember that thing, right? Plus, no-one’s got a big enough table. Or the new errata. Also, Trevor’s been banging on about lady Custodes for five months straight and nobody wants to be around him right now. Thank the Omni-trevor, then, for the three-player co-op of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. “Warhammer with the boys?” said Horace as he stretchily dished out preview keys from an entirely different postcode. James, Edwin and Nic were initially all booked-up for the week, but Horace repeated himself, making it absolutely clear that it wasn’t a question.

James: Alright chaps, first thing’s first: are Space Marine II’s Space Marines as heavy and stompy as Space Marines should be? I feel yes when moving, heck yes when shooting, and ehhh not so much when melee’ing.

Nic: It does feel like there’s some conflicting priorities between wanting to offer up a cathartic horde hack n’ slash and giving you timed parries and dodge rolls for precise counters. The tells are decently telegraphed, and the counters are mainly useful for the warriors, which are much taller than your average ‘nid. Still, I wasn’t quite able to get in the rhythm of it all. The jump pack, however...

Edwin: They seem commendably chonky to me? I was playing on controller, which has rumble for footsteps. I didn’t feel like they were too light-touch in melee, either. I thought they were overly sluggish, in fact, if not outright contemptuous of my attempts to evade, but then I realised there was a dodge button. I do agree that there’s tension between this being a horde-slaying game and a duelling game. And yeah, that jetpack. Similar to the first game, it launches you directly up and lets you aim a landing reticule in hover view. If you aim it far afield it makes the game feel almost like a wingsuit simulator. Space Marines are more aerodynamic than they seem.

James: I did enjoy the one-on-one, chainsword-versus-handknife duels when they happened, especially since winning them ends with a satisfying coup de grâce and a fresh burst of regenerated armour. It’s just that you’re so easily mobbed by the smaller Tyranids that those dances rarely have a chance to get going – if I stop swinging wildly, I’ll lose more health to their nibbling than I’d get back from a Big Nid kill.

That’s partly why I preferred sticking to blasting, along with the guns themselves being properly deafening bang-bang factories. I’m just enough into 40k that I care about the fantasy of firing Bolter weapons, and these ones are very, very well-realised.

Nic: It’s a given by this point that whenever a 40k game comes up, some charming giganerd will make a long video breaking down how lore-accurate the Bolters are. They’re basically cannons, you see. And yep, they do feel great here. You do get a good sense of just how massive the Marines are too, since the intro starts you off near a gaggle of pathetic, regular-sized humans, and also has some Imperial Guard fail to open a door that you easily yank apart.

Edwin: Ah, the Imperial Guard. You see a lot of them in the opening campaign mission and it’s a nice way to inflate the player’s self-esteem. They’re so tiny! And so helpless.

Nic: A fun feature of doing this piece is I can start a sentence in chat with “What’s cool about that Thunderhawk Gunship…” and James and Edwin absolutely have to listen to me, because it’s technically work-related. But yes, Space Marine II’s opening level goes hard on the wish fulfilment. Even standing next to a static model of a flyer that would cost you, lol, 598 actual pounds to interact with on the tabletop feels like an opulent power fantasy.

Edwin: Is this the one I said I wanted to eat? With the lovely lozenge-y blue hull panels and those nibbly golden parts. I think the Imperial fleet at large would make for an amazing line of luxury ice creams – all those pistachio green crenellations and that white chocolate bit on the prow of a Lunar cruiser. It turns out I’d like to eat quite a lot of the Warhammer 40K universe, actually. Maybe not so much the Eldar, who seem awfully stringy with hat plumes that make me think of the irritating fibrous parts of sweetcorn. Now the smaller Tyranids, they look like they’d be great sautéed with some salty spring greens and a splash of red wine. Sorry, what were we talking about again?

Nic: I, too, have been watching too much Delicious In Dungeon. Were we talking about jetpacks?

James: The Battle Barge does look a little like a Viennetta, now come to think of it. Wait, no, it was jetpacks. Or Jump Packs. Whatever. I appreciated how they let the grand bedlam continue playing out at ground level, but also grant you the agility to take fights more decisively, and not just get buffeted around by the horde. They’re such a strong powerup that I think we all realised simultaneously that they were but fleeting toys, soon to be taken away again.

Nic: Yeah it was hard to tell, since the preview only covered the opening up to the first boss, but I was a bit concerned about the game blowing its load too quickly. That’s a compliment, really. The first stage was so explosive and utterly swarmed with enemies that it had me wondering where they’d take it from there. And lawdy, those skyboxes! Although, talking of the first boss, I was a bit disappointed to see him summoning regular mobs, which felt like a bit of a tired trick to fall back on so soon. But, yeah, there was definitely that sense of likely getting Megamanned after a frantic opening. It’s at this point that I envisioned the jetpack gaining sentience just so it could return later in your hour of need and rescue you while spouting one liners.

James: "Sorry I had to… jet."

Edwin: Picture it showing up as a Warhammer brand Mr Clippy. "It looks like you’re trying to climb some platforms. Would you like a jetpack?"

Nic: "I’m back…pack!" I feel I might have stolen that one from one of you two.

James: Possibly from Edwin. But then I’ll allow it, because Edwin was always STEALING MY KILLS.

Edwin: "Feeling exhausted" was definitely mine. As were all those executions I stole from you, James, during our try at the dedicated co-op PvE missions, which give you six classes to choose from. The best is the one that has a wrist grapple, to be used exclusively for reeling yourself in for a canned finisher. Ah, the look on your face as I Spider-Manned past you and nabbed murder after murder from right under your nose. That flying brain thing, for example. It was kind of a dick move, in hindsight. Finishers in Space Marine II aren’t just for show - they replenish your shields. I guess that’s why you kept dying suddenly? Sorry about that.

James: I definitely got some Spess Mehreen FOMO watching you two, the MO part covering both my chances of healing and the more interesting/dynamic abilities. My skill just created a big green holo-ball that marked beasties for extra damage. Extra damage? Sir, my gun fires explosive shells the size of their skulls, outgoing damage ain’t the issue here.

Nic: Yeah, there's definetely a gap between how useful or fun the skills feel, although I can see the more humdrum support skills being very useful in the PvE operation's higher difficulties. With the campaign, a neat thing I didn’t pick up from the trailers is how quickly non-Tyranid enemies get introduced. Waiter, there’s some blue goats in my bug soup! Or Tzaangors, I suppose, if you want to be a nerd about it. You’d burst into a room to see ‘nids fighting Tzeentch chaos warriors. I do hope the Orks make a return later though. I feel there’s not much levity with ‘nids, unless you count spiking them into the concrete.

Edwin: I like how you can bully the smaller nids - there are canned finishers for them too. COME HITHER, SCURRYING XENO CHILD. BANG BANG BANG ON THE FLOOR WITH YOU.

James: I too enjoyed the mishmash of xenos and Chaos baddies; previous trailers suggested Space Marine II might just pull the exact same “Ahhhh it was the cult dudes all along” late-game reveal as the first one. Nope - Tzeentch’s lads are on tour and they don’t care who knows it. Also, their Chaos Space Marines explode into a clattering pile of shattered armour on death, which is even funnier than stealing a Tyranid’s arm and hitting him with it.

Warhammer with the boys continued apace up until the game’s first boss. We spent less time with the Darktide-esque operations mode overall, but it’s looking very expansive, with multiple classes and huge skill trees for each. You can even switch weapons mid-match. Nic got a powerfist at one point, then spent the rest of the match demanding that James and Edwin exclusively refer to him as 'Captain Fisto'. Rumour has it he’s still demanding everyone refer to him as 'Captain Fisto' to this day, although no-one can hear him from the storage cupboard he’s now locked inside.