I am a massive Warhammer 40k nerd, I don't play the tabletop but I devour the books, the lore and any snippet I can get from the Warhammer 40k universe, I probably read every page of the lexicanum.. twice.
So when THQ came out and told us that Relic, one of my favorite developers, was making another Warhammer 40.000 game, I was pretty happy, when they announced it was a third person game I was ecstatic and when they showed us that the player was going to be following Captain Titus of the Ultramarines I passed out, and regained consciousness a day later with a smile from ear to ear and in dire need of clean pants.
Needless to explain any further, I am a fanboy, and my views should be considered as such. This probably isn't objective, it is biased. You are considered warned.
It's going to be LEGEN -wait for it- DARY.
The premise is this. You are Captain Titus of the Ultramarines Chapter, you lead a small squad of battle hardened Space Marine veterans onto an Imperial planet beset by Orc's.
Note, this isn't your typical "Space Marine" these are the big daddy Space Marines, the one everyone else (Read: Halo, Starcraft, Gears of War) tried to imitate and fail at it. These are the quintessential superhumans in power armor. They aren't some kind of steel biting testosterone filled macho males, these are warrior monks, who lived for centuries and have been bred and genetically modified for war, so far in fact that they are only human in superficial comparison, they are taller, their skin is different, they have 13 more organs then we have including a second heart, a solid bone plate covering their vital muscles and an organ that helps them regenerate wounds on the fly, or at least close off open wounds so they can continue fighting.
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| Per example: The Ultramarine Leader. |
The game focuses heavily on combat to be as visceral as possible and as most engaging as possible, per example, there is no cover system, under the motto that a Space Marine does not hide from the enemy (debatable but let's swing with it for now) instead you execute enemies to regain fury and health.
The environment will mostly consist of the planet, which could be detrimental but for what I have seen so far they are being true to the books and lore, and if that's the case it shouldn't be a problem. The Warhammer 40.000 universe humans live in a sort of high Gothic cities, with large cathedral like structures. Their electronics and machines are so advanced they themselves have forgotten the exact workings of them, they are inhabited by 'Machine Spirits' and are adorned with skulls and brass idols.
The factory planets in the books are planets completely covered with factories and machine shops, literally every square inch is inhabited, they are bleak desolate planets whose only function is to supply ammo, weapons and armor to the Imperial war machine.
The weapons shown off so far are part lore and part fabrication by Relic, though all weapons so far seem to be of lore true strength. The main weapon of a Space Marine is his Bolter, a gun unlike anything we have, it fires shells that are actually miniature rockets that bore into their targets and then explode, reducing their targets to a fine red pulp.
Combat seems to revolve around massive hordes, and that's where the difficulty comes from, it's not so much a one on one battle, but more the danger of being overwhelmed by mooks, which again is pretty much spot on lorewise, as a Space Marine is a warrior few can stand toe-to-toe with and survive.
Recommended system specs have been announced for PC, but Space Marine will be released for all platforms.
Recommended Configuration
* OS - Windows 7
* Processor - Any Quad-core AMD or Intel Processor
* RAM - 1GB (XP), 2GB (Vista), 2GB (Windows 7)
* Hard Drive - 20 GB space free (10 GB free after install)
* Video Card - 512MB Video Card using Shader Model 3 & DirectX 9.0 or better (Performance equivalent to an AMD Radeon 5750 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260)
* Online Steam account
As announced on the Space Marine forums, the only thing that worries me slightly is that last line.
Not that I don't like Steam (I really really don't, but it's tolerable) but I fear the game won't get full exposure possible if only available on digital distribution. And some people will even go as far as refuse to install a game that requires steam.
Space Marine E3 Demo.
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