Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

With multiplayer in tow, Space Marine represents a pretty solid foray into third-person action, particularly for a developer which founded its reputation on real-time strategy.

Warhammer 40k: Space Marine is exactly what you'd expect: bloody, brutal, bombastic. The mix of hack'n'slay and shooter really won us over.

All the shooting, hacking and slashing in the Warhammer universe make for a long and very enjoyable experience. However, a few small issues, like the rather boring way in which the story is told and online connection problems, keep it from receiving a master score.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a title that brims with great visuals, solid sound, and some very good gameplay.

Space Marine may not have convinced me to buy thousands of dollars worth of pewter figurines or tabletop maps, but it did provide some serious, bloody fun.

Space Marine sports some cool visual touches, but its presentation falls shy of the top shooters' slick production values and its camera becomes a bit over-caffeinated during close-quarters combat. [Nov 2011, p.86]

Sometimes it's very relaxing to just shut off the brain and perform some indecent acts of brutal shooting and hand-to-hand combat. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine delivers this experience in abundance. This is an enjoyable experience that falls a little flat due to pacing and repetitiveness, but for sheer brutal fun, it's hard to beat.

Space Marine asks players to become single-minded servants to the call of combat in a variety of brutal forms, each equivalent in intensity, efficiency, and ardor. A satisfying, cathartic release, though with minimal cerebral stimulation.

The game moves along nicely, eliminating potential problems with repetition; the graphics are great and the multiplayer is enormous fun, despite a few technical problems. OK, so Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine isn't the most original of games, or the most innovative, but it is finely polished and paced, and offers enough entertainment to overlook any shortcomings.

Space Marine gets off to a sluggish start and it never really reaches the lofty heights that long-time fans of the tabletop games probably hoped for, but Relic has still done an admirable job in making their first AAA-level action game - and the online play is a definite fun distraction if not entirely unique or long-lasting.

Relic's Dawn of the War series remains the best video game adaptation of this universe, but Space Marine is a close second. The combat – for both single and multiplayer – pumps out barbaric excitement and continues to improve as the adventure unfolds.

A pleasant surprise. It provides a good story wrapped in some very enjoyable gameplay mechanics. Whilst it does have a few niggles, there's no denying that it's a hoot to play through as you hack, slash and blast your way to the Spire. The key issue though is the lack of variety.

Space Marine's intuitive system will have you carving hordes of enemies with your chainsword, power axe, or hammer in no time.

A pleasant surprise in the third-person action genre, which results in a frantic action game with a splendid campaign, that Warhammer 40.000 fans will love. It offers constant action and challenges, and has three different difficulty levels to make sure it is accesible por all the gamers.

Overall, I would say that if you are a fan of explosive, blockbuster-style gameplay with a lot of blood, guts, and glory, then this is most definitely your game. Even if the gameplay was linear, I was most satisfied by the blood of my enemies, which covered my armor and dripped, like so much wine, from my sword.

If you are a fan of Warhammer I would suggest picking up Space Marine for the joy of playing and creating a hulking mass of destruction.

Space Marine doesn't break any rules or push any boundaries, but Warhammer fans across the globe might finally have the non-RTS Warhammer game that we've been waiting for.

It could use some fine tuning but it's a great first entry for the series and I can't wait to see where things go. The campaign could give more of a reason to come back but you'll be hard-pressed to find a better multiplayer game out there.

The campaign may be a little short and rough around the edges, but it still is a great adventure that should not be missed by the fans and should be given a try by people unknown with the Warhammer universe.

The artificial intelligence in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is pretty bad and the story is very poor. On the other hand this game is extremely brutal with quite some entertainment value.

Apart from being set in the Warhammer 40k universe however, it doesn't really have its own voice - but Relic now have a basis to build on. If you like the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Space Marine is a must buy - but if you aren't familiar with it you might want to leave Space Marine aside.

One of 2011's best surprises.