W40k: Space Marine, aka GoW

[Deleted member 7219]

Shame we won't find out what happened to Titus now THQ have shot down a sequel.

 

[Mangoose]

So anyone still have this installed?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh58Z0vsARQ

That fog of war really better be due to the video being on the console. I mean wtf.

4 days...

 

[Gragt]

It's not leaving my hard drive anytime soon.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

It's not leaving my hard drive anytime soon.

Same. I keep meaning to do a second playthrough to get the no-dying achievements. I reckon it'll be really tough to do, I already did it on the hardest difficulty on my first playthrough and I died a lot.

 

[Oriebam]

sup bros do you recommend this game and have any tip about it? almost downloadan

 

[Mangoose]

Mediocre/lackluster single player campaign.

Fun multiplayer that is hampered by lack of variety.

Exterminatus/4-player horde mode is coming out on the 25th so wait for our impressions then.

 

[shihonage]

As I'm only interested in single-player, it sucks. The game comes out 4-5 years after the first Gears of War, yet is inferior to it in every single way - scenery, level design (a non-existent concept in Space Marine), gameplay mechanics, and even the writing.

Yes, the fucking writing. The cheesy dialogues between Fenix and others at least had some effort put into them.

Its intended design does not even match ITSELF. There are no cover mechanics in the game ("because Space Marines don't take cover"), but it's filled with snipers and shit, so you have to popamole in a mildly humiliating ("I'm not really supposed to be doing this") way. Hello FPS cover mechanics (i.e. run behind wall) awkwardly forced in a TPS.

Whenever you pick up a "new thingy" (conveniently dropped from the sky by the level designer), you can continue moving for a few seconds and then the "Hint screen" comes up, saying "Enter" to exit. The button is not clickable; you have to remove the left hand from WASD and move it to the right to press the fucking Enter key, which gets only more infuriating when you're trapped in one of those boxes they call "levels" where the difficulty level spikes and you keep dying and restarting the section, and the moron-in-charge couldn't place the checkpoint AFTER you get the "new thingy".

The game fails.

 

[shihonage]

I won't deny the butthurt. TotalHalibut's video sold the game to me, but I regret the purchase, especially because I'm angry at myself - I knew the game was mediocre, but allowed his judgement to override mine.

 

[Oriebam]

Can't you use your thumb to hit right enter? or only left enter works? At what difficulty were you playing?

How is the combat? I mean, is it satisfying? Repetitive? Restrictive?

 

[Mangoose]

Could've sworn space or dodge or some other button also works for Enter. But I forget.

Combat is fun in the first half (Orks), crappy in the second (Chaos). Because the Orks come at you in a variety of ways, actually allowing you to engage both shooting and melee mechanisms. On the other hand, Chaos is all a bunch of heavy weapon or lasgun spammers.

I don't know why they thought taking the melee aspect away from encounters was a good thing.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I won't deny the butthurt. TotalHalibut's video sold the game to me, but I regret the purchase, especially because I'm angry at myself - I knew the game was mediocre, but allowed his judgement to override mine.

Why did you trust him. Why. He is an unbro.

 

[Oriebam]

So it's not worth getting for SP? Did you guys like Dark Sector?

I won't deny the butthurt. TotalHalibut's video sold the game to me, but I regret the purchase, especially because I'm angry at myself - I knew the game was mediocre, but allowed his judgement to override mine.

Why did you trust him. Why. He is an unbro.

From the videos I've seen it's easy to assume he is a tard, but why do you say he is a unbro?

 

[shihonage]

TotalHalibut is cool, most of the time.

He's fairly balanced, he usually calls obvious crap what it is, and he's sufficiently oldschool to appreciate a wide range of gameplay mechanics.

And stuffies and thingies.

 

[Angelo85]

If you don't like TotalBiscuit's judgement, just watch the videos muted. He covers pretty much every game that gets released on Steam so his channel is good for at least watch how a game actually plays.

 

[ricolikesrice]

i wouldnt be suprised if playing Exterminatus solo is more fun than the singleplayer campaign - i mean no lame SLOWMOTION AWESOMENESS, no akward story, not forced to play Titus (yeah i know there s reskin mods for campaign ) .... and instead you simply kill orcs & heretics for xp to unlock new perks & stuff.

really looking forward to it ( obviously with friends its gonna be even more fun ) and i hope there s gonna be a few more maps down the line + chaos playable + further support (new classes like librarian/sorcerer etc.).

heck, exterminatus should have been the real game from the start ....

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

If you don't like TotalBiscuit's judgement, just watch the videos muted. He covers pretty much every game that gets released on Steam so his channel is good for at least watch how a game actually plays.

I am ashamed to admit I have done this on occasion when a Glorious Giantbombdotcom quick look isn't available of a game I'm interested in. Hearing him say "Issue" will curl your toes.

And Rico, they probably won't let you play exterminatus solo. You can't do Last Stand solo in Dawn of War 2, either. It'll probably just be a "PLAY EXTERMINATUS" button and then start matchmaking or some crap. And the slowmotion awesomeness I sorta like, since I thought the sync-kill for health system was kinda cool.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh58Z0vsARQ
Kinda crappy video showing exterminatus off. Does look like you can probably play solo.

 

[Mangoose]

Hm, maybe so, they were playing with only 3 instead of 4 players. Doubt it will scale though (which.. isn't a bad thing).

 

[Gragt]

I wouldn't be so harsh on Space Marine. I'd say that it isn't really good but still a notch above mediocre — which means that it is neither good nor bad. The story and dialogs are serviceable and that's it: they do not bring anything but at the same time they do not detract from the game. The action is very repetitive but at the same time it provides some good fun with lots of bloody bits and I find myself returning to it once in a while, which is more than I can say of many games. Levels are very linear unfortunately, though fighting hordes of Orks isn't as boring as it sounds, and if anything the various environment looks sufficiently huge to be interesting. I don't really get the hate for the need to sometimes take cover without having a cover system though.

Multiplayer is a bit of the same quality but again nothing I'd qualify as bad. If anything I wish Relic got more ambitious while developping the game, but in the end I just have good honest fun bashing Orks and people in multiplayer.

 

[Excidium]

Well, let's be honest here: Would anyone even install this game if it wasn't for the 40k license?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Not me, but I thought it was a good use of the license. I found the story to be very satisfying in terms of Space Marine and Chaos lore.

 

[sea]

I think the issue with all these shooters is a lack of variety and generally just poor pacing and tempo to the whole experience. The game mechanics are great fun for about an hour, but when you realize that it's just brown corridor after brown corridor, with few new ideas (hell, the jump pack is pretty much the coolest thing in the game, and they give it like 30 minutes in), well, what can you expect other than boredom? You need pacing - puzzles, story, action, tension, plus new weapons, enemies that require unique strategies to defeat, and mechanics that get introduced bit-by-bit. Going full-cylinder all the time and relegating the non-shooty bits to cutscenes and elevators/loading screens ends up burning both the game and the player out way too fast.

Say what you like about a game like Half-Life 2, but it pretty much utterly nailed pacing - and yet in 7 years since then nobody has really learned the lesson. It's like developers spend so long tweaking their finishing animations that they never bother to think how much fun their game is ever going to be beyond 30-second intervals. The worst is when a developer goes to all the trouble of creating a cool new mechanic, weapon, scenario etc. and then it lasts all of five or ten minutes, like they can't figure out what to do with it or assume players are going to get bored if they can't go back to machine-gunning every five minutes. Hell, I think Half-Life 2 takes something like the better part of an hour to even give the player a gun... in Homefront, Call of Duty, Space Marine, etc. it's rare you have more than two minutes where you aren't shooting. No amount of awesomeness, or stupid-fun explosions, or compelling narrative can make up for a game that, structurally, plays the same note over and over and over.

 

[Destroid]

I can shoot for hours on end in a multiplayer shooter.

 

[shihonage]

I think the issue with all these shooters is a lack of variety and generally just poor pacing and tempo to the whole experience. The game mechanics are great fun for about an hour, but when you realize that it's just brown corridor after brown corridor, with few new ideas (hell, the jump pack is pretty much the coolest thing in the game, and they give it like 30 minutes in), well, what can you expect other than boredom? You need pacing - puzzles, story, action, tension, plus new weapons, enemies that require unique strategies to defeat, and mechanics that get introduced bit-by-bit. Going full-cylinder all the time and relegating the non-shooty bits to cutscenes and elevators/loading screens ends up burning both the game and the player out way too fast.

Yar. The game has terrible pacing. It's pacing that wasn't even designed. It just exists by the mere nature of there being a "pace" to any game. A byproduct of their occupation with filling their boxes and connecting them with corridors.

 

[ricolikesrice]

I d have much, much preferred a story where the conflict itself is the star, not a single individual like Titus. That way could have had a lot more room for gameplay (and environment ) variety.

One mission you could have been playing a scout, next mission an assault marine, next mission a devastator, next mission a librarian, a chaplain, a terminator , a marine on a bike ….
now that would have been a lot of variety and something remotely unique for a shooter/
hack n slash to separate SM from the competition. But no, you have to play as some dude who s probably more boring & uninspired than even the masterchief or that gears dude.

But even without throwing you into a new “class” every mission there could have been soo much more variety given the background lore.

And then there s the whole “cover” issue…..

For a game that hyped itself with “cover being for pussies” Space Marine completely failed to live up to that hype. Fucking hilarious how they released a wallpaper poking fun at Gears of War with a Space marine smashing through cover …. yet in the actual game most cover cannot be smashed through - heck you cant even jump over it (unless with a jumppack) so a knee-high box will force Titus to run around it. Big mouth and nothing to back it up….

And aside from that in the later half of the game you constantly have to use cover - not that that’s a bad thing mind you – in higher difficulties and melee becomes more or less pointless because the geniuses at relic spent more time making up shitty uninspired weapons like the vengeance launcher instead of including actually existing weapons like flamers and smoke nades which could have helped with getting into melee without being blown to bits.

Speaking of melee the melee combat vs hordes is still incredibly satisfying even if at its core its pretty simplistic and repeative ….. but combined with good encounter design (not always the case unfortunately) its pretty damn fun. Problem is, if it’s the only thing that’s fun its not gonna carry an entire game except for the most diehard of 40k fans. Relic could have shined here by spicing up the horde combat with some great duels between Space Marine and Chaos Space marine (or Demon, or Nob, or or or ) in the form of plenty of “mini-bosses”....
....“could have” because they completely missed that chance unfortunately - and I don’t get why since Space Marine is based on Darksiders which did have plenty of “mini-boss-encounters” (I m not talking about the QTE-heavy real bosses ) where Vigil mixed up mini-bosses with normal mobs and (on highest difficulty) those fights could be really fun and somewhat challenging. SMs "mini-bosses" (and actual bosses) are beyond lame.

Anyway, personally I think (nowadays) relic is simply awful at making interesting singleplayer content – they should stick to MP ( no beef here with space marine except for how little content there was upon release) and leave the singleplayer content to different studios. Its painfully obvious that for them “singleplayer” means “story” and they either lack the motivation or the talent to design good singleplayer GAMEPLAY apart from one or two good ideas.

thats why i think that MP content like exterminatus will actually be more fun to play solo (if possible ) than the campaign - and thats why they should have made a L4D-like from the start, instead of trying (and failing) this "CINEMATIC BLOCKBUSTER ACTION" approach.