This is, potentially, the greatest bro shooter of all time.

If I played this game when I was younger, maybe around the same age I was when I played and loved the original Space Marine, I think this would have been the piece of Warhammer media that would convert me. I know Warhammer is much more than just cool little painted figures; it’s hundreds of books, tabletop & video games, and more across tomes and tomes of fantasy and science fiction lore. It’s frankly so much that I get intimidated by the amount of it to absorb myself into. But this kind of game has the highest potential to convert me.

The gameplay is admittedly simple. The PVP and cooperative modes have deep progression systems, which I’ll get into later, but the single-player has none of it. For 7-8 hours, all you’re doing is shooting a small variety of automatic & semi-automatic weapons, swinging a small variety of swords and hammers, and triggering a small variety of flashy melee executions. But they make that campaign engaging through incredible visual art and the sense of overwhelming scale in its setpieces.

Not including this year’s Astro Bot, I can’t recall the last time I used photo mode on a game like this. Tehre are so many detailed alcoves and corners are adorned with such intricate details that I would often stop for pictures when there isn’t even a setpiece happening. And even when there is, I was too impressed by its magnitude to even remember to pull out the camera. This game is simple fun, but I never expected so much of that fun to come from gazing upon the beauty of the world you get to fight within.

But the gameplay is good, too! Perfect parries and slow-motion dodges are rewarded by a powerful, contextual, execution-style headshot. Mowing down enemy hordes is kept from being monotonous thanks to bigger, more threatening enemies being sprinkled throughout. These more imposing foes are similar to the Marauder in Doom Eternal, as they temporarily require all of your attention, and battles with them are reminiscent of fight scenes in The Matrix where one Mr. Smith steps out of the crowd to challenge Neo.

Gunplay is satisfying as well, as hitmarkers and slight audio feedback let you know when you’ve killed an enemy or hit a headshot. And those executions have a function outside of being flashy, as they refill your regenerating shields immediately. Those shields are more important than the last game as well since your health bar underneath is extremely limited. It can only be refilled using sims, only two of which you can carry, and your ultimate ability, which regenerates your health temporarily. The stinginess with health makes for a gameplay loop that feels slower and more deliberate when compared to the rhythms of the original Space Marine, which were much more casual and similar to the original Doom reboot.

The story itself is…fine. I recognized many aspects that would be red meat to Warhammer-heads, or even folks who remember the original game’s plot more than I did. But for me, much of the proper nouns thrown about did not affect me. But the story of skepticism, heresy, and brotherhood is the part I found engaging. Take away the oodles of lore and you have a simple story of coming to depend on those in your ranks in the most separate times of war, and that was indeed something I could latch onto. Still, even those aspects didn’t make the narrative life-changing, it is simply a pulp action tale that I’ve seen before, but done much better than many of those past efforts.

Outside of the campaign, I did put time into the Eternal War mode, better known as the PVP multiplayer. I had a blast with it as well! It’s class-based, with a little room for loadout customization within each class, but coordinating with your teammates against the enemy action was always fun. When matchmaking randomly, I stumbled across a lobby full of folks strategizing over mics, and to my delight, they didn’t regress into slurs or harmful trash talk. Their conversation convinced me enough to hop on coms and help call out enemy positions and such along with them. I genuinely haven’t had a night of digital comradery with strangers like that in at least a decade, going back to my time playing PS3 games like Warhawk and Timeshift.

Overall, I think that’s why this game hits so hard because it feels like a game of a different era. It has a simple campaign, free of the RPG elements you’d expect in a game like this, that is short and varied enough to entertain purely off the fun of its combat and the strength of its narrative and visual art. It has a multiplayer mode without an in-game store or seasonal events, yet it manages to have hours of unlockables and chaotic, yet strategic fun. I’ve yet to touch the separate set of cooperative missions in the Operations mode, but those missions follow a separate squad that you’ve fought alongside during the single-player campaign. Those missions promise to carry even more rewards for its leveling path shared across PVP and PVE modes. They even have an insane amount of armor customization options available as well, and I was able to rock a fully orange Space Marine after only a few matches.

This game expertly brings forward the spirit of games like Gears of War, Killzone, and, appropriately, the original Space Marine. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed shooters like this until playing this one. And to be honest, in the opening hours, I questioned if this game truly had the sauce to justify the universal ravings I heard about it, despite my pre-release hype for it. But the visual art and the narrative stakes just escalate the more you play, and it leads to an incredibly satisfying climax. Feels like a miracle for a game like this to exist in 2024, and I am eternally glad I got to witness it. FOR THE EMPEROR!

Final Score: