OK, I'll start this off with a little history of my gaming time with Games Workshop products...
I started playing games workshop games way back in the VERY early 90's, when I was a wee snapper of 12 and my parents took us to Toy's R Us and we got Hero Quest and Space Crusade (on special offer mind you, my parents were skin flints like that), then I found a gamer group in my school who played Space Marine (Epic to those nowadays) and the very first Games Workshop miniature I ever built and painted in fun Airfix paints (sorry GW) was an Imperator Titan (oh yeah boy!)
Since those long years past, I have built many armies and painted a few more for myself and for others, I am a proud Son of Leman Russ and my Space Wolves have won me a few good games in my time, but I also play a beardy World Eater Chaos army too...
So this leads me to 2010, and after many years sating my bloodlust for Space Marines in Dawn of War 1, but not as much in Dawn of War 2 (as I like building armies), we have THQ announcing Space Marine, a Gears of War style third person shooter/hack and slash and much geeky joy was had following it and how it was coming along...
So here we are, September 9th 2011 and its released... I was at my local GAME store in Cheltenham and ready to buy it, but fuck you GAME, I am NOT paying £39.99 for it, so off for breakfast I went and waited for my other gaming store Game On to get a copy in and so they did, and for a more reasonable price too (again, screw you GAME) and skipping back home ready to install it!
Gotta love my internet connection, downloaded and installed in less than 45minutes on Steam and I was in the campaign on Normal... God damn this is a beautiful game! As I said, I started on Normal as I had played the demo, so I knew what I was doing and knew the controls already and damn, I AM A SPACE MARINE!
True to THQ's press releases, this has a fantactic story, it looks exactly as you would think it does when you read a Black Library book and imagine what you are reading! You can see models and terrain you have seen on gaming boards up and down the land and in Games Workshop stores every where and even the NPC design and models in game look exactly like they do in a hobby centre... But that could also be one of the major criticisms against Space Marine... there are only 6 Ork designs in the game, you see the same Ork, but a million times... Same with the Chaos Marines in the campaign, they are all generic Black Legion and all adorned the same, even the Loyalist marines you see in game, all bar the three main characters (the one you play and the two that follow you through), all the marines are the same skin and colour scheme... what would have been cooler would have let the game randomly generate the skins... other games do it, why can't this?
Now, Multiplayer... Its awesome... if you can actually play through the lag of course, which I apparently can't... and no, its not graphics Lag, my machine is old, but not THAT old, but even Xbox and PS3 players are complaining about it on the official forums, so yeah theres an issue there for sure! But ignoring that, the customiser is made available to you at lvl 4 and the lvl'ing system for multiplayer makes one of the same mistakes that games like CoD and Battlefield do nowadays in Multiplayer, and lump all players at the same lvl in together, meaning newbies at lvl 1 are getting hammered by lvl 20's with all the awesome Killing Blow power ups (yes, Killing blow! theres also Teleport Homers and other "Wargear" fromt eh 40k rulebook too, which is actually pretty cool from a fans perspective), but on the flipside, when you are killed, you get the chance to copy the loadout of the guy that killed you, so yes, you can go hunting for the guy that pwn'ed you with his own gear
I love this game, I knew I would love it before I bought it and I am still enjoying it now (hell, theres a few things in it that I intend to convert for my armies for the tabletop daddy to this, like teh Chaos Space Marine lord, if Games day wasn;t in two weeks, I reckopn we'd be seeing a few conversions of him appearing at Games Day for sure!), but it has its faults, it needs polishing still and the netcode for multiplayer needs a lot of work!
Should you buy this game? certainly!
Should you pay full price for it at GAME? hell no! even the elite armours are not worth £10 more than anywhere else (and more than likely they will be DLC soon anyway)
also remember, the Exterminatus (Survival) four player co-op addon is coming next month and hopefully with some great netcode fixes too...
There is also a petition on the official forums for dedicated servers, but thats happened for LOADS of games and bugger has happened, so I don't hold out much hope for themm, so you shouldn't either...
Graphics: 9/10 (even using the same models a billion times doesn;t drop this score)
Presentation: 8/10 (the collectors edition looked awesome, but not worth £80, sorry, and the normal version only has discs and a usermanual of 8 pages)
Value: 7.5/10 (the campaign is a solid 8 hours of game play, which is what I expected, the multiplayer is great, but the lag ruins it)
Overall: 8/10 (Get it, your games collection will be stronger for it!)
