Adeptus Ridiculous - We will now talk about Space Marine 2 for over an hour (SPOILERS)

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousThe galaxy is in peril. Entire worlds are falling. The Imperium needs you.Embody the superhuman skill and brutality of a Space Marine, the greatest of the Emperor’s warriors. Unleash deadly abilities and an arsenal of devastating weaponry to obliterate the relentless Tyranid hordes.Hold at bay the horrors of the galaxy in epic battles on far-flung planets. Uncover dark secrets and drive back the everlasting night to prove your ultimate loyalty to humanity.Heed the call of battle.For there is only war. Review code provided by publisher. Support the show

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Adeptus Ridiculous podcast. My name is D.K. Diamante's. His name is Bricky. And why hello, Karioth. But before we get into that, if you enjoy today's episode, head over the Patreon. Patreon.com slash Adeptis Ridiculous. You know all the usual stuff, but there are a couple of new little itty-bitty points that I would like to share with you. On the Patreon, Shai has made a solo video review of Space Marine 2 that you can watch

for free on our Patreon, no subscription required. You can also follow our Patreon page, kind of like a YouTube or Twitch channel. You don't need to pay, does need a credit card. You'll see all the news and updates and stuff like that for free, and you don't even need a Patreon account. You can log in with Google, Apple Pay, or if you are over 70, Facebook.

Also, if you want to try our paid perks on Patreon, there is now a free seven-day trial, but it will require that you put in a credit card. We have also switched to a new payment method where instead of paying at the end of the month, you pay the day you subscribe. So before, if you subbed on like the 28th, you would then get charged on like the 31st

and it is weird, but that will not happen anymore. Also, I am researching the next fantasy episode. That will happen in two weeks. So patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous. Bricky. What's up, dude? Hey, what's up? Well, you know, if you want to read the next book, I believe it is a false gods.

Now that we've moved through Horace Rising, so read that. And a check out Orchidate.com link in the description where you can go ahead and snag all kinds of really cool merchandise. Hell yeah, great stuff. Hell yeah. Be excited for the next book club episode in 14 years. Oh, we're going to get to it real quick this time. I know. know. Okay, okay. And we have Kiriath here, Kiryath. How are you doing? Hello, I've been very

busy playing the most popular game of 2024. It kind of feels like that. Like, actually Jay-Fing-W-Kong? Yeah, BlackMith, Wukkah. Oh, Concord? Oh, yeah, Concord. Oh, yeah, Concord. Fantastic. Black-Mith Concord? Black-Mith, Woucong-Kong-Kort? Oh, you beat me to it. Shoot. So I guess I would should, I mean, you can probably tell from the title of this video already, but we might as well go ahead and chat about this a little bit specifically.

You know, in lieu of today's normal episode, we are here to talk with a little impromptu roundtable review of the newest biggest 40K thing out there. Space Marine 2. Hey, let's go. It finally happened. It's actually out.

We're better and for worse. being out at the time that it is is why I meant. And I've made a couple videos on some thoughts, streamed it a ton. We've all played it a decent amount. And I know I'm like working on like the main video for obviously, but like that's probably not going to be out yet.

And all that stuff. But yeah, it'd be cool, a cool, cool roundtable. So shy, as she met as D.K. mentioned earlier, made a solo video review on the Patreon for Space Marine 2 as well. I don't know if she would like to There we go. I was about to say, do a little TLDR. DK, you want to read that?

Sure. This is Shai's opinion. Yeah, this is Shai's TLDR. Story sucks. Combat is good. Graphics and visual spectacle is great. Co-op is good. PVP is good.

Every mode has its own unique upside and downside. Solo campaign is the weakest by far. Overall, as a complete set of main story, co-op and PVP, I think it's a good purchase for full price. If you are only interested in one part of the game like solo single player and nothing else or only PVP and nothing else, wait for the discount. Someone, you guys know, I think it's ACG.

He does game reviews? Nope. You may have seen his thumbnail. It's buy, wait for sale, rent, or never touch. That's his- familiar. That's his scoring system. I think it's a really good scoring system because like one through 10 ratings are so screwed up right now. Yeah. They make no sense. And so for the most part, I think it's kind of, I kind of like using that system. Someone else made a thing where it's like if you do like a Yelp review for a company, like I don't know, like a trade that kind of comes out like air conditioning. Because, DK, did I tell you that my air conditioning isn't broke in the last five days? As someone that has no air conditioning, I feel your pain. Oh, right.

You don't have air conditioning. I was going to say. It's been absolutely awful these last couple days. So, yeah, I get you. I get you, man. I get you. But they had like three reviews. It was like met expectations were below expectations or went above expectations.

It's just good because like very often companies believe that anything below like a nine out of 10 is like bad. Oh. You know? Okay. Yeah. The C is ridiculous, right? It's like, oh, if this wasn't universally praised, it was clearly a commercial

failure. And I said, well, no, that's not how that works. But it kind of feels like that's how a lot of companies approach it now. Yeah. And it's a thing that we talked about a little bit, I've talked about a little bit like on stream here and there, which is like IGN doesn't do a one through 10 scale. They do like a five through 10 scale. Yeah.

And so there's sevens. are actually like not very good and everything else is like every goddamn thing is a seven and that kind of stuff so it's weird because like I I gave Space Marines campaign a six Space Marine 2's campaign is six

I think it's the combat and the spectacle and the visuals put it slightly above average but the story really brings it down but people think six is like a D they think it's like dog shit yeah I felt the same way about

the campaign. It's, it's as deep as a puddle, but boy, does it feel good to play? It feels real good. And it's got all those like, uh, Warhammer moments, you know, where if you've never seen like a really good rendered like Space Marine Warhammer thing, it's like, oh, there's so many just spectacle moments that just really like carry it up past the just not great story. It's, it feels like the combat and the scale of it are so good that it distracts you from playing something that is incredibly formulaic and kind of like just by the numbers. It's like, it's so nothing special, but the other stuff that you do around it is special enough that you're like, I'm having a great time.

And then you stop and you think about it. And you're like, wait a minute. This is actually all that good. At least the story isn't that good. Yeah. I think, shy, you mentioned it in your review that it, it was very much like the same story beats basically as Space Marine One. It's just this one is just like the combat's better. The spectacle of it is better. It feels better. But essentially, it's like, oh, look, hordes of things you need to kill. Oh, look. You are being suspected of heresy. Oh, look. Chaos showed up. Oh, look. Random chaos leader shows up. And it's just kind of like, very similar beats to Space Marine 1. There is a, there is, shy as said, which I'll read out. I want to address some comments in advance because we'll be complaining a lot about

the plot of the game and it will be met with why do you expect a good narrative from a shooter in the first place. Why wouldn't you? Yeah, why? Expecting a shooter to have a dog shit story seems like a you problem. I played plenty of great shooters with compelling characters and narrative like Half-Life 2, Bioshock 1 and 2, Original Modern Warfare, Last of Us 1, Halo, Max Payne 1 and 2, the Metro games, Titan 4 2, Wolfenstein, Speckx the line, uncharted games, the list goes on.

So no, combat-focused games having a shit story is not a given, and we shouldn't expect that, especially when these games are set in such a rich universe, such as Warhammer 40,000, where you can absolutely can tell a compelling story about war, and we have dozens upon dozens of great space marine focus books to prove that. I totally agree with that 100%. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the biggest things that that kind of bugs me.

And I think maybe set me up for issues is that people look at Warhammer from an outside perspective, very similarly that they used to look at Gears of War back in the day. Gears of War stories of the first three games were actually very good and like depressing as shit. They were like hardcore emotionally charged games. But if you look on the outside of it, you only saw the gameplay. You'd be like, oh, dudes wearing refrigerators murder thing, right? They've got the chainsaw gun and everything.

And that can't have a good story to it, can it? It's like, well. And I think the same trap has happened with Warhammer. They see that kind of thing. And they see this overarching, like, macho man murder fest. And they assume that that's just what they're getting into. And if their expectations are set up that way, then you probably love the camera. Because you that's exactly what you were looking into.

But we've read the books. We've seen how good the narrative of Warhammer can be. And I'd argue we stick around with it for that narrative more than just the aesthetic and the blood. Yeah, I mean, I mean, a good friend of mine described watching like me streamed Space Marine too as the beefy man wool, which. is kind of accurate, but also kind of telling in that, like, watching someone play that story or playing through that story, what you mostly get is, and then bad things happen, but the beefy man fixes it, and that's all you get, which is so not representative of so many really good stories set in this universe.

Like, I know it's technically Horace Heresy, not 40K, but things like, I mean, the entirety of Lorgar's arc throughout the Horace Heresy, there are plenty of good books in that series, which are so well written and just so nicely done that when you then look at like, I mean, both Space Marine and Space Marine 2 have the same kind of issue where it's, it's a lot of very thin plot that's kind of smeared over about, you know, 10 to 15 hours, if you're slow about it. And it mostly just revolves around there's a guy, right, and he kills everybody, and then he finds that there's more people to kill, and then he kills them.

and then that's it. And it's like there might be kind of a little twist, like a little kind of, oh, it's actually chaos. Spoiler alert. But like it's not that, that's not interesting or deep. It's just part of the formula for space marine kind of, like the lowest tier of space marine stories

is a bad thing to happen. And then it turns out there's also chaos, which is fine, but it's not like, it's not pushing the boundary of what you can do in that universe, you know? Yeah, it definitely seems like they prioritize like mass appeal spectacle and good combat to just like get as many people in as they could, you know, because they're, I mean, like Warhammer's becoming mainstream for sure. There's already mainstream in the UK, if I'm being honest.

That's fair. But I feel like they're trying to get like as many new people as they can. And they're just kind of going for that like mass appeal. Good graphics, good gameplay. Sure, there's a story here, but don't you just want to kill lots of bugs and stuff with your big, beefy, space marine and this big, beefy gun? And it kind of feels like that was the priority for them, right? Not craft this really good book-level story, but it was just like, let's make mass

appeal so we can really, like, get people to buy this. I, I mean, when you really think about it, one of the best Horacey books, well, I don't know. I haven't read them all, but like, the way of the best 40K books is the first heretic. And the entire arc and importance of that book is one of these gigantic muscle bound demigods talking with like a blind civilian about like a crisis of faith. Like it's R. And like Sarini, I think like just talking about that.

And it's like that's like it's literally his, his crisis and the importance of faith. Like that is so impactful there. Um, despite the fact that Arjel Tull is. like then becomes like a half demon dude dual wielding spears and swords, which is like awesome. Don't get me wrong. But you know, that's kind of like the whole, you can absolutely do both.

Oh, sure, sure. And it's absolutely, but it just feels like that was the priority for them. Like you can absolutely do both. But it kind of feels like the mass appeal was like what their priority was. I still maintain that the first heretic isn't just like a good book within the Horace heresy. It's just a good book. Like, I read a lot of stuff outside of Warhammer. And when it comes to just a very good sci-fi story with, like, really deep roots in humanity,

first heretic is an excellent, excellent read. And so when it's like, when you compare that to, like, I don't know, like, oh, it turns out it's the same artifact from the first one. So, come on, guys, come on. There's so much you could do. And the continuity is fun. but we already have continuity and the fact that we're playing

the same character from the previous one. You know, the redemption arc is fine by itself. You don't need to just make it reference upon reference. Shia has just said

before he downvote, we like the game, I promise. That's the thing. We do, though. I do. It's very fun to play. Yes.

But we are a lore podcast and therefore the narrative is arguably the most important part at least in the beginning of our brains. The gameplay is the most important part

from being honest. But like, it's very forefront and that's the thing that's like the most disappointing and it's the easiest thing to discuss yeah

as a lore podcast it's hard for us to gloss over that yeah now once we get to PVP my tune will shift quickly

because I really like the PVP yeah it's we'll talk about it we'll talk about it yeah also why I gotta be honest

why do they do the same arc like it's the same thing thing of like Titus being quite okay spoilers by the way for the story but we'll guess we'll be quick about it like light spoilers you won't go well I feel like this is going to be a spoiler heavy video

this might be a spoiler episode yeah it's a short campaign by the time it's a very short campaign it might well be that most of the people watching if they're done with it intended to get the game are done with it yeah like I think excluding faffing around with the operations I think I was done with the story in like

eight hours Yeah, I think I was like 8.2 hours. Yeah. Yeah, 8 for me as well. But yeah, I know all the stuff is like relatively the same. As I was going through it, more and more things kind of started to bite at me. Shai mentioned this earlier in her review, but the fact that once the Ksons arrive and they like kill a hive tyrant in the mission off screen, the tyranny terror never brought up again once. They disappear.

They fall off the face of the year, just like the orcs. They just stop being relevant. Yeah. And then there's also a. a lot of other side things that really started to mess with me. Like, do you remember in the beginning when they find the crash Thunderhawk and they have all the things in Titus faints? Yeah.

That's never brought up again. Why did he faint? Oh, that's true. What caused that? Was it the chaos thing? Did he have an old effect to it? Is there something going on there? It literally is never happens again.

The dude, the dude, if the game is not lying to us was like actually in the warp, which I can't tell if that's real or not because they kind of gloss over it. Yeah. Which is wild to me. But like the dude is, is it chaos supposed to make him faint? Like, what happens? Yeah, because if it's chaos that makes him faint, why doesn't it ever happen when you're fighting the T-sons or you're going through all of the zingch crazy warped shenan stuff or any time that you're face to face with the thousand sons leader? Yeah, it never happens again, does it? And it's just kind of like, why did that happen? Was it chaos? Was it like specifically the artifact, like even though we go back to the art.

Like, yeah, I don't even think about that. Like, you see it again later. It's not like, that's the only point of contact he has with it and then you never see it again. It's super prominent later on. And that issue just never occurs after that first instance, which at the time I was like, oh, he's being affected by chaos stuff. But you know what?

I hadn't even, it not even occurred to me that later on, he's right. up in chaos for ages. He's in more chaos even. Yeah. I didn't even think about that until you brought it up that like, yeah, that's probably something that needs addressing, right? It's like a dropped plot point. It's just, oh, he can't be near this.

Except, actually, if he can't be near this, that completely wrecks the final arc of the story. So we're just going to have to pretend that didn't happen. Yeah, that's, uh... Yeah, it's really strange. I still want to make sure that we hang on the fact that it almost seemed like we went to the warp. Like I got to be I got to be honest. I put this part in my script for my video later on.

Everyone gets stunned. And then Marnius Calgar like passes a kidney stone. And it's just like no. And just like unstuns himself and walks right into what appears to be a warp portal, which shouldn't actually be a warp portal. Because if it was a warp portal, there'd be a bunch of shit like flinging out of it, like Vortex. Doom style. Oh yeah, after their portrayal of the Iwo Jima flag being put up with... I did like the flag part.

That was a little okay. I don't know. That seemed a little much to me. I liked that it was a different, like, thing to do. The game is like the same gameplay loop the entire time. I would kill for like a turret section or a tank driving moment or something to like break up the monotony of the gameplay at times. That part where you jump out of.

of the ship and like fly down into the planet. I really liked that part because it was different. Yeah. And it broke up the gameplay. It was very fun. My depth perception is terrible, so I just kept smacking into stuff, but it was also very enjoyable. I was like, I don't know what's going on, but this is actually kind of cool.

I like this. But yeah, it gets a bit, it gets a bit much. And I mean, to be honest, the like the last sort of, I want to say like half an hour, maybe 40 minutes of the campaign is. it kind of felt like they sat down, put a hat in a table, and said, everyone write down a cool set piece and we'll pick the best one. And then they took all the answers out and went, well, all of these are great. We'll do literally everything.

It kind of, it got a bit silly towards the end where it's like, how many fake outs and this is the end? Oh, but it's not really the end. Oh, but it feels like the end. Oh, but it's not actually the end. Like, it felt like it went on a lot. And I, for a moment, was super, super happy because one of the main issues that I've had with the first games ending was QuickTime event done, which it sucks. Like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it just sucks. And I was like genuinely impressed and kind of happy that there is a legit boss fight.

I've been playing a lot of Remnant 2 and it felt quite reminiscent of some of the less bullshit Remnant 2 fights. I like the boss fight quite a bit personally. Yeah, the final boss was like a highlight. That was a highlight of the game. But then you have the final boss fight, but it's not. Because there's then areas after that. And the actual moment of catharsis of like actually defeating this enemy, you still don't get to do it.

Instead, you get a cutscene. Which again is like, it's not the same thing, but the gap between successfully beating the boss and them like getting their comeuppance was quite long and there was some weird stuff in between that shifted the focus away from the character that you are playing and towards Mr Calgar who apparently is just, can just do whatever he likes now,

which is very cool but also like who is the main character in this story by that point. And then it kind of takes it away a little bit by just going, you're going to watch the character you control do this cool thing. but you don't actually get to do it yourself, which is always, it never sits right with me. That sort of like, that kind of gap followed by,

oh, the thing we did a while ago was technically winning, but now we've just sort of got to wait for a bit to take effect. Dude, Calgar, I didn't know, man. Calgar was like the biggest

soyjack pointing moment I've ever seen. It was such like a, yo, it's Galgar! As he like jumps down and slow mo kills him. Bangor's and I was like, dude, they're jerking themselves. I loved it, I loved it a little bit.

I got to be honest, like, as someone that does not like the Ultramarines, like, that's my thing is disliking the Ultramarines, I marked out when he showed up because I genuinely was like, okay, they're, they're probably not going to show a Primark. They're probably not going to show a Chapter Master because, like, they're these larger than life things. They never show them, whatever. And then when he stepped off that thing and just started like wrecking everything, I was like, Okay. Okay. Look, that's pretty dope. I looked at it like I was smiling and shaking my head at the same time. I was like, God damn it. I was doing both. I was like, all right, this is so over the top and stupid, but like it's kind of fun. I don't know. It's got a lot of things here and there. There's a lot of holes. She said she cringed at it. She said if it was robot girly man, she would get it, but not Marnia's Calgary. To be fair, it was it was vastly overshadowed by the redempted

Red Nort section, which... Yeah, I do with the Dredd. Murdering a hellbrute. So stupid. I loved it. Like, don't get me wrong. I was... That was gritting the entire time.

Not just the Hellbrute, but then... The Hell Drake. A Hell Drake by throwing a statue at it. Like, I needed died laughing. I inhaled, like, part of my own throat when that happened. And on stream, I'm just like,

I gotta breathe. It's so bad. But it was so... It just made me laugh so much. And it's like the perfect kind of ridiculous stuff that I feel like you need to have kind of at least a bit of a passion on the team for the tabletop because that's the kind of dumb stuff that comes up in games constantly. Where there's like there's something that happens and it's like that shouldn't have happened. How did that happen? And then someone comes up with an idea and that's how that event went down. You know, you got the perfect number of roles.

You've got the perfect number of sixes and something killed something that really either shouldn't have or it was just a very unlawful. likely thing to occur. And that's where all the little narrative moments happen, which is what makes the tabletop so fun for me. That felt like that. That felt like he kind of, oh, wow, he just fully wiped that out. I don't think that, okay, cool. He threw a statue at it. Whatever, let's move on. Like, that sort of thing I really liked, but it was so over the, like, so over the top. I needed, that's exactly the point. I, that I needed more of that. His name is Dreadnought Dave. That's what I've called him. Um, the fact. that he like shows up,

bodies a hell brute, and it's like, where the fuck is Magnus? I'm going to kill him. Yeah. And then he's like, oh, Madison here, and he's like, damn it. And then he throws a statue at a hell Drake and then runs off. Like, that is awesome. And that just,

that screams old school, uh, uh, what is it? Um, old school like FPS environmental gimmick. Yeah, it's like a part at the end of, uh, there's a mission in at Marlvre two called like favela or something. where you're like chasing down this one dude.

And then like ghosts like blows through a window, tackles the guy and lands on a car beneath him. And it's like the stupidest thing ever. But you just kind of look at it and you're like, nice. That's great. And I need more of that. There's that that dude on top of the Bainblade,

giving the greatest speech of all time to the guardsman. Just like ripping into it like top level voice acting. Like I needed more of that stuff, man. I need more of the super over. the top. Because over the top is great, but not like, I think it's my issue with Calgar, is, like, it's so over the top that I kind of like it, but it's also very, like, ultramarine jerky that I don't love it. I'm a little stuck in between on that one. I think Calgar is, like, he's over the top, but he's played straight. Like, it's, it's ridiculous, but he does everything

with this sort of stoic, like, I don't know, there's, there's like a kind of very serious aura around Calgar. You wanted to lean into it and just be a yuckster and be like sort of like an Arnold Schwarzenegger type like do a one liner and just like really lean into it? Well, that's the thing. He kind of just like 80s action hero I'm impervious nonsense constantly. But he's treated as being a very serious, like a serious dude. When it comes to the Redemptor, like there was no part of that that felt serious. He busts through a hellbrute using his assault cannon to shove it through his mouth,

chucks a statue at a Heldrache, in between demands to fight Magnus. And for that section of the game, you don't have to do anything. He just kills everybody. You can sit there not touching the mouse and just being like, this guy's got it. And it's absolutely fine. But it comes across as being a bit silly, but in a good way, like in a fun way, in a 40K way. Whereas Calgar is very like straight-laced comparatively. And it just kind of like, I don't know.

It just kind of made me go, hang on, I thought we were the main character in this story. What's going on here? Why is Calgar's like properly just doing all of the things? You know, you've spent like at this point seven hours or so basically performing all the important actions yourself, apart from the stuff covered in operations, which is a whole, a whole. other thing when it comes to the pacing of the campaign. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know.

Calgar is very like the straight guy. And when are you doing that kind of ridiculous stuff? I don't know that you can get away with it in that context, you know? Yeah. I will say on a positive note, it did feel like they got a lot of like the little details of Warhammer right. Like when you're just walking around and like you see the commissar has a shooting line for like betrayers going on. up and they're all getting like shot and then like the other guards like oh emperor save me but forgive me for my betrayal towards you and and and you see all these guard and and you know it feels like

they got a lot of that little stuff right the the the space dust that just explodes out of a thousand some when you rip their helmet off the sorcerers are flesh and blood as they should be and it's just you know maybe it wasn't like the perfect campaign but it felt like a lot of the 40k details We're just like, oh, that's the way it's supposed to be. And God damn, that looks good. Yeah, they nailed the 40K aesthetic for the most part as well as the, I mean, people, people always ask like, oh, how accurate is this to Warhammer? And I'm like, well, I mean, you can only get so far. Like, if this is perfectly accurate, your space Marines would be moving about twice as fast.

And, like, there would be actually maybe like triple the amount of tyrannids and also quadruple the amount of guardsmen. but like it's a video game you can only go so far whatever right who cares yeah who cares about that stuff I don't know what I thought a carnifex

was size wise I did not realize they were that big I don't know what my brain thought they were like I guess because I always was like oh old one eye and I was like oh old one eye

is probably like the size of like a big wolf and it's like no no no huge I was like oh that's a And effects. All right. No wonder their minis are so fucking expensive. There's also things like, like the kind of the set dressing and stuff are levels.

Like wandering around and going, oh my God, it's a Rogaldorn tank. Oh, there's Lehman Russ. Sort of that pattern. There's a bunch of chimeras, mantichores, and having a bane blade just sat there was really cool. But then like little things like the vehicles that you got out of the, oh, was it not Zomortales. But there was a like scenery pack that the Games Workshop did that had like a little tractor, like a little kind of treaded tractor that's got a claw on it, seeing little things like that dotted around, the fact that when you got to, again, massive Sporder Alert, the fact that there was a massive Necron tomb complex, like, buried in the world.

And nobody cared. I was so sad. I thought I was going to fight, like, they held like a secret Necron thing at the end. I really wanted there to be necron. Like, as we were walking around, I was like, I don't think we're going to get. to fight necrons, but oh my gosh, that would be so good. Can I ask, quick question, without diverting this too much, do you think maybe they are planting DLC seed of necrone missions? If they don't, I'll be angry. So, okay, so they have their Space Marine 2 roadmap. Um,

and on the roadmap, it says new enemy, uh, how, as part of it, however, I would be shocked if the new enemy was a new enemy faction of the necrons. That's insane. more like a new type of like thousands. We're gonna, we're gonna fight a Tyrannofax boss or we're gonna fight a mutileth vortex beast boss. It's, I don't believe them adding a brand new faction.

That sounds insane to me. It would be so good though. I mean, even just the fact that walking around the, like the Necron complex, the stuff that they went for when it came to like remnants of Necron technology was Tomb Sentinel's. The Tomb Sentinel is a,

Forge World Kit. It's like for the overall kind of audience, even like those who play the tabletop. Most people will never see a tomb sample on the tabletop. That's what they went for. And they went for loads of them. The scale of them is massive. It looks super intimidating. It's incredibly alien and insectoid.

So instead of being faced with like, okay, here's tyrannids, which are kind of insectoid, here's thousand sons, which are humanoid, they could have done like, like flayed ones or destroyers or Necron Warriors. Instead, they went for something really weird, really creepy, like proper mechanical, gigantic millipede type things, which just made the whole thing feel way creepier than it would do otherwise. And again, it's like, the attention to detail there is great.

So why was the story so much like the first one? And why did it have the same beats? And why did it have a kind of messy end? what like clearly there's a huge passion there but i have an idea because the game wasn't done yet that is entirely possible it is because there's still so much stuff about it that feels like they had to rush to the finish like even with the the delays that they already had it you're not wrong it does kind of feel like they had to kind of really just push this out a little bit i mean so you know that road like okay so it should be obvious

at this point, this game was not ready for release. Straight up was not ready for release. The roadmap, the first September update, includes ultra-wide support. That not being as part of the game is hilarious. Yeah, that's... The server, I mean, the servers are completely boned. The game is not well optimized whatsoever.

Yep. There is a weird issue with the cosmetics being the same currency you use to level up your character in PVE. There is transfer over a PVP and you're using the same one in both. Yep. It's, uh, the PVP has only three game modes with only three maps. Yeah.

Um, the spawn system is horrible. Oh yeah. How many times you end up spawn camping the other team? It happens all the time. It happens consistently. Yep. Um, there are, there are so many issues with that.

It is clearly not done. Um, and I'm, I'm, they want, I mean, weren't they planning on putting it out? I am under the opinion that they course corrected.

Oh, it must be that. It has to be. Some major, like, change to the game that they weren't initially going to in the last, like, six to eight months. As fun as PVP is, it feels like this should have been, like, an early access,

almost beta that came out, like, three months ago just to get a feel for what direction they were going. And it's just, yeah. Also, Shia says, multiplayer issues. Server's not working. Bugs, glitches, little depth to progression.

Players having weird stand-ups when they pick the same class in co-op and stare at each other waiting for the other to switch class. One chapter per class, exactly same ability as loyalists. I'm assuming you mean for chaos? Well, yeah, for traders.

Also, no trader customization at all, which is odd. It really sucks. I get not changing it for classes because you need the correct silhouettes for the people to be identifiable. You need the jump pack night lord to look like a jump pack night lord because

then people know if they see a night lord's a jump pack guy that that part's fine. But I would hope the night lord would have like where's my skin cape GW? Where's the saber? Where's my skin cape? Huh? Yeah, yeah. Make, make you you have customizable greaves. Just put a skin face like that one artwork that has the dude's like

face on the grieves. Yeah, like yeah. Well, not easy. I say easy. I know it's more complicated than that, but yeah. It's definitely not dumb. I think the difficulty with discussing the game too is that like the it's hard to say you can only say gameplay good so much because like yeah. Yeah. It's fun to shoot things. It's fun to stab things. Killing tyrannids is awesome. Killing zonthropes sucks balls. I absolutely hate Zonthropes. They're so dude, stonethropes and the hellfire rack Scarebacult Terminators make me lose my

I actually So I'm not saying Those are easy I dislike the termies that Like charge tackle you way more Because they just get up in your grill And they don't stop Something that doesn't help

Is that the The parry and Dodge system is Look For a long time My sort of gaming time It's been dedicated to Dark Souls 3 Then Remnant

Then Eldon Ring then Remnant 2 I've kind of got used to a specific system for dodging and parrying, which Space Marine 2 doesn't necessarily adhere to. It could fully be a skill issue on my part. And if the overall consensus get good, totally legit. I don't mind that. But they kind of introduce the thing of you see the red symbol, you do one thing. You see the blue symbol, you do the other thing. Oh, by the way, when you see the symbol, for some enemies, you need to do that straight away. For other ones don't do it straight away or it does literally nothing.

There's no consistency between enemies. So it's like you see a carnifex charging at you. You've got a big red symbol. If you dodge when the symbol shows up, it murders you. But if you do the same thing with, you know, a bunch of smaller enemies, you'll dodge it. It's fine, which I guess is the same thing as learning the kind of like the move set of each enemy. but it's not presented that way.

It's presented like kind of Batman style, where it's just kind of, you know, yeah, you see the thing, you press the button, you've dodged the thing. Same thing with the Mad Max game, funnily enough, where it's just a case of you see it, you press it, you have succeeded. It's presented that way initially, but that's not how it works overall. And the Zones Ropes are the absolute worst for that, where no matter what I do, I don't know the time. timing of that. Sometimes I feel like I dodge twice and it still hits me. Sometimes I stand still and it also doesn't hit me. And it's like, what happened?

Why is it so inconsistent from one thing to the next? I love when I get hit by the first green blasts from a zone throat that stunlocks me into the other two green blasts and I take my full HP bar. Also, one thing, on that same topic,

the lash-wip-turinid warriors have the the first blue parry swing, you parry it and you expect like some kind of gun strike, whatever they call that thing. But no, you have to then parry the other last swing coming after that. And then you get your thing. But the second last swing doesn't have a blue marker. It's really weird.

It's so annoying. Odd. They're very odd. And the thing is if you miss the first one and then parry the second one, I'm pretty sure you do get to do gun strike. I think you're right. Yeah. There's just no point besides not taking damage, I guess. Again, just makes it more complicated and confusing. It's like, how does it work? Do you need to do both? Do you need to do one? Can you dodge one and then parry the other? I don't know, because it just isn't consistent enough to get a good feel for it. Though on the topic of warriors, not to derail,

I love the fact that when you kill a warrior, all of its little minions just with it. Oh, the synaptic Enactically. Yeah, I love that. I thought that was another little detail that's just like, oh, nice, let's go. Yeah, I actually am a huge fan of that. That's a great, great thing they did for it. So good, so good. Oh, yeah, PC controls are terrible. This is a game pad game. You have to, if you're going to play mouse and keyboard, you have to rebind. There's just no other way around it. You have to figure out what, mm-hmm.

Oh, you do? And, well, I'm just bad at aiming with a controller. So I'm like, I prefer shooting. with a mouse. It's just more fun. Can I ask how you felt about the default being aimed down sights is middle mouse click and it is enforced ADS until you click

the middle mouse again? I hate that, but I immediately got, like, I immediately got used to it because I was like, how does this work? It's this really bizarre system where I found that if it's toggle on and off, it's bad. If it's hold it,

it's all so bad. There's literally no good option for that because toggling it, you forget to untoggle so then you can't dodge properly, which again is infuriating, but that's a whole separate thing. But then holding it down, I don't know whether it's just me, I find that super

uncomfortable. When I'm playing a game, generally speaking, I have my, like, first and second fingers are on the mouse buttons, not on the scroll wheel. But because Space Marine, too, like Space Marine, you've got gun and melee, and both of

them are like interchangeable depending on where things are and you expect it to utilize both as much as possible it just means that i'm in a really uncomfortable position trying to hold down the scroll wheel to aim but then if i slightly move the aim goes away and i'm like oh god and then i have to reposition to it it's not it's not good it's not a good system i'm not a fan yeah yeah definitely you got to re bind if you're going to play on mouse and keyboard i and once i made the switch to game pat it Oh, I get it. Like, like Bricky said, this is a million percent gamepad game. No doubt in my mind.

Like, just get any game pad. Just, yeah, it's so much better. There is all, yeah, there's also a weird community thing where people getting kicked for picking a class. Someone does. It's the classic issue of if you're not picking the most meta thing. Oh, you get kicked. I, oh my God, I got kicked by a black Templar dress guy, which is. So,

shocking. Because I was running a, I was running a low level vanguard, um, because I was leveling him up and I guess I wasn't high enough of a level. Despite me, me and my buddies beat, um,

the highest difficulty on two missions, hive tyrants on the first one. Uh, and I was a level seven vanguard because, no, they were both level 24, but, um,

I, I, like, I had the highest range damage by far because the melta gun, the vanguard melta gun, slatters everything in, it's insanely good. Well, the melt gun in the campaign

so good. If you're not running the melta rifle as like a vanguard or something in the PVE mode, put it on. It's incredibly powerful. Because it's like a shotgun and when you fire it, you can like kill like 20 termagons in one shot. It's hilarious. There's a lot of that.

Okay, can we talk about the best part of the game? Can I talk about the PVP? Let's talk about the PVP. Can I risk can I risk Iar just for just for a second? I'm going to annoy a good number of people with this. but I just, I have to get it off my chest. Okay.

You haven't played it. If, if in quick match, which you should never use in any online game, I realize that. It's my own fault. I'm a fool to myself. I shouldn't be using it. I use it all the time. If I see two more bulwarks standing there in the assembly area, staring at each other, refusing to switch out to something else, I'm going to lose my mind. I literally timed it at one point.

And I watched two people stand there for five minutes just walking around each other. Whose time are you actually wasting? It's yours. Just change class. Do something else. Grow up. What is wrong with you? I was just like, you know what?

This has happened multiple times now. I'm just going to see how long these two go for it. And I'm just going to sit back and watch. And I literally set a timer on my phone. And at five minutes, I was like, I have things to do. I have like responsibilities. I'm a functional adult. I'm not putting up with this.

And I left, they're probably still there. I don't know. It's entirely plausible. 48 hours later, they're still looking at each other. Just play something else. Oh my God. Anyway, sorry, I'll shut up. That's for the PVE assembly area, right?

Because I was like in PVPB. Nobody cares if you went two ball works. It's a mess. It's awful. Yeah. I haven't done a lot of quick match PVE to be fair. So I don't know about all. I have done a ton of it.

PVP though. I fucking love the PVP so much. It is not finished. It is, it needs updates. Three matches,

three maps is like Concord had four, I had 12 maps. Lamau. I know it's a little different, but like, like, it's a low hangary, sure, yeah.

Three maps is nothing. Like six, five or six would have been better. Three game modes is small. not enough. Servers are crushed and terrible. Shy, I disagree. Balance is not fucked at all.

I don't feel like the balance is that bad, actually. I don't think so. I have played every single class all the time, and every single one of them, I have gotten some ridiculous top score thing. I don't... They're all usable, I feel like. I don't think there's, like, assault might be the quote-unquote worse,

but it's not like it's unplayable and you can't do anything with it either. I thought assault was the worst too. And then I forgot the golden rule. Gamers don't look up. I'm literally able, in half of the maps, I get to the corner, fly in the air, people don't notice me,

stun grenade on the ground, pistol whip two guys to death before they notice I'm even there, and then slam the third. And then my teammate mops up. It's insane. Every time. Pigs and penguins.

That's what I mean. Like, it's probably the worst, but like you can still do a lot of good stuff with it. I think the best class is probably tactical. I think because seeing through walls in a shooter is always the strongest because you're seeing through walls. That's always the power's powerful.

The only complaint I have about tactical is I kind of hate the fact that the OSPEC scan will go through people and hit the wall behind them and miss everybody. I feel like if your OSPEC scan hits a person, it should, but it doesn't treat them like they're an obstacle. and it just right on through. That's true. The OSPEX scan attaches to terrain, but it also affects behind the terrain. So putting on like a pillar is fine because you get the go behind the pillar.

Yeah, yeah. That's true. No, I think the PVP is actually at the moment, very well balanced. I found a couple builds that might need nerfs. But every time I find a class that I'm like, this class is BS, I then use a different class to counter it works every time. And I think it's the fact that they limit you to two. Like if you can't roll four heavies.

Yeah, if you had like six heavies, then I would call it BS. Or like six bulwarks, I'd probably call it BS. But other than like my sneaky sniper build, I have yet to find a class that I think genuinely needs a Nerf. I saw you using that on stream ones.

And now every time there's a sniper on the other team, I'm worried that they're going to do that. And I'm just like, oh, no, I've seen what that can do. I don't, I don't want any part of that. Okay. Shai is yelling at me. What, what do you think is, what, what do you think is too strong? Tell me.

Just going to say, are you, oh. Oh, I thought you were going to get strong, but it's a question. Okay. Oh, another question. Okay, okay. Tell me, tell me. All right, all right. I've played like 25 hours of the PVP.

I really like it. Wow. Yeah, I've played it a lot, too, actually. And I hate PVP modes usually. I usually avoid PVP like the plague And I've probably put in like 15 hours on this thing They didn't have time to put those in, come on Where the tech marines, chaplains, librarians and Flamers

Oh well you see Yeah, you see the librarians will be a future DLC Where you get to finally have a thousand son traitor And you get to play as a librarian Oh there's a don't worry, there's a chaplain in the game shy Oh yeah you mean the big The big swerve The man himself

that I literally called the moment I saw him. The first few hours, I was like, oh, there's so many people have called that, too. Like, that must have been like the least surprising thing ever. Oh, yeah, my chat called it like three hours in.

And I was just like, oh, wow, if it is him, I guess, wow, ironically, though,

like, okay, I was playing with poor hammer, and they only got an hour in so that we could all play the game together. And Brad was like, dude, that Traplin dude,

like, I'm betting he's Leandro's. And I, And I just sat there like, no, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe not. No, I mean, I actually like Leandro's. Like, I almost find him more interesting than Titus because he's an uptight asshole. Why, yeah, that's true.

Because he has character. But, like, I mean, if Leontros was going to become anything, he would become a chaplain. Yeah, absolutely. It fits that he would be the chaplain, yeah. I will say something that I'm going to give them a bit of credit for. At the start, it felt like Titus's new squad was going to follow the same formula as the previous game where it would be like, oh well, you know, what's his name? Gadriel, he kind of had a bit of a bit of Leandro's about him.

He sort of leaned that way. He was very untrusting of Titus. He did not just lean. He tried to shoot him in the face. Yeah. But I was like initially like, oh God, they're doing exactly the same arc. This kind of sucks. If we get to the end of this and he's like, yeah, I don't trust Titus, that will, I

I mean, it's just the same storyline. But to be fair, I feel like by the time you get to the end of the campaign, Titus' squad has his back. It's not Leandros 2.0. It's not like it just went, yeah, no, I fully agree. This guy is clearly, you know, chaos infected. Instead, there was, like, trust and development and the acknowledgement that actually, just because someone doesn't want to share everything, doesn't mean they're not inherently bad.

like I kind of like the fact they moved away from that a bit. Kairon, I really would have liked to see some character development from him instead of literally nothing. We remember when Kairon got really angry out of nowhere for like one scene and it was never brought up again. Yeah, because what, his buddy died on Kaltz, right? He got really annoyed and then it was like, and he's never going to do it again. Move on. And it's like, oh, come on, guys. Yeah, he had so much more room for, like, character development.

Yeah. No, I mean, there's, there's so much more that even, you don't know this yet, D.K. Do you know when Calth was? Calth was, uh, it was during the Horace heresy. It was during the Horace heresy. Because Primaris Marines often came from the heresy that were put in stasis by Call and Gilliman at the time for 10,000 years to eventually be brought back into the fold in the modern day. The dude is 10,000 years old and was a kid when the word bearers attacked Calth, a major Horace heresy event.

Yeah. And it's never talked about. The dude was born during the heresy. There's so much there. It was never discussed. He was there the day Horace slew the emperor. It was like a boy or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That would have been a great thing to talk about more. They took someone with. potentially the most interesting backstory out of anyone in the campaign and we're never going to focus on him again. That's true. The stuff Kyron could tell you. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we also just for a moment talk about the insane monologing that went on with the main villain in the end? Dude, I loved it so much.

Yeah, I was going to say any time Imrah. spoke like you pay it a 10 whoever you are voice actor well done 10 out of 10 they were like just trudging to the tomb complex

and he's like the council of Nike is crap the emperor is a psycher and like demands that we can't do it you're all horrible and I'm like The hypocrisy of the council of Nike let's go dude

he's right yep he's based base thousand sun sorcerer I had such such a good time listening to that dude ramble and rant he was so fun and we got a disc

we got a pedestal we got a circle pedestal thing we got a floaty disc it's just like the exact yeah it's like the exact same thing from the first space marine game the best character was like lord graz skull or whatever the hell

his name was I forget the orc boss where he just runs around saying the exact same thing. Just like, get off my ship, Space Marine. Yep. Yeah, that was all. He was great, man.

He was great. There's a lot of good moments from there. That's the thing. One of the things I thought was actually really cool and fun was the whole, like, messing with the Space Marines minds thing, like going full zinch and making everything illusory and, you know, he's only talking to one of them, but they think that he's talking to all of them or like Titus is like, oh, you can't hear that? And like, no. Oh, he's just messing with me specifically. All of that was really cool. I really liked that,

but it only showed up right at the end, whereas it would have been really fun to introduce way earlier and not just have Titus be affected. Like, the fact that it was only Titus that was like showing signs of being messed with. If Chiron, if Gadriel had been messed with, if Akron have been messed with, that would have made it way more interesting because just because you are the main character doesn't mean that no other characters should have spotlight.

Do you know what I mean? Like, having to deal with other people expressing distrust because the main villain of the piece is just outright messing your team up. Would have been really cool, but we didn't get any of that.

You know, Yeah. I keep thinking to myself, like, can you imagine what this could have been like if you were like, it was like a chaos game and you were like, hey, here's your next objective. Gather human sacrifices to do the ritual to the dark gods. Oh, hell yeah. I'm just thinking how awesome that is as a concept. And like, you can have such more interesting discussions with chaos space range because they're all, they all goddamn hate each other. Um, Imura is voiced by Alistar Petrere who plays generals in Rogue 1 and Andor.

That's so funny. I don't remember him from Rogue 1 and I didn't watch Andor. Well, I watched the first episode of Andor and I was like, this isn't for me. Yeah, he's so unfortunate that you say that because it's so good. We've discussed this. So good. Right. Like, what you want from Star Wars and what I want from Star Wars is kind of like our take on books, right?

Yeah, you want lightsaberers and Jedi and that stuff for. And you're just tired of that and think it's awful. And, you know, to each their own, they're both valid. It's just we want different things. That's surprising to me, then. I would assume you would like the Space Marine campaign more in that case, because if you just want to see big, like big cool dudes doing stuff, like. So for me, like I said, I understand all this stuff that we've been talking about.

Absolutely. But like, I did really like the Space Marine 2 campaign for the visual spectacle. Like every boss fight for me, was like a soy jack moment. Literally every single one was like, oh my God, we get to fight a lictor. Oh my God, that's a hell brute. Oh my God, it's a fucking carnifax.

And so, I mean, while I realized it had problems, I did really enjoy the spectacle of it. I mean, to be fair. That's, I think, especially comparing Space Marine one to Space Marine two, Space Marine two does the spectacle thing way better than I think any of the 40K game. Like genuinely, all those set pieces where you look out over an entire city and it's like a thousand church towers and huge domes and there's destruction raining down from the sky,

like all of that stuff. It's so well done. Like going down beneath like to the Necron Tomb Complex, looking out across that, you see that. And immediately it's like, oh my God, they really messed up coming down here. This is bad. This is bad. This is awful. But in the best way, like, they nailed the, like, the feeling of the universe, like, no other game so far. Space Marine norm is good, but it was quite closed off. And a lot of levels were very sort of, like, confined and small comparatively.

Whereas so many times in Space Marine 2, you walk through a room and it's like, here is war on an insane scale. they did it so well I know that like canon wise there should have been like a lot more tyrannids but still like the the swarms that you end up seeing

is like oh god like seeing even that scope of it is like wow like you know like you always read like oh yeah they're blotting out the sun and it's like okay cool and I don't know you form like this mental picture of oh yeah I guess there's a lot of them

but like when you actually see the swarm and all the bugs in the air and just it's it's it's it's pretty. Yeah. I yeah there's that part where you're going up the big lift and the gargoyles are attacking the chains that shit. Oh yep. Despite it was

running at like 30 frames a second for me because that part was really chugging. Um, I really like that part a lot. That whole thing is pretty cool. The the general spectacle is good. I think I think I needed, I needed depth. I need gameplay gimmicks to swap it.

Um, and that's like the, the, the main thing, like we talked about earlier, games like Titanfall 2 and stuff. They always have some kind of gimmick in their matches that cut up the general gameplay. Even Cod, if you remember like Monofer 2, you had the snow mission at the end. There's like the big snowmobile section. And Cod's actually really good at that because it starts off with like the usual gameplay. Then they might go into stealth. Then they might go into like a turret section.

Then they might go into like a defense mission. And that's kind of what made it really enjoyable. Uncharted, same deal. even, you know, there's always like a driving section, you know, they always mixing it up. And for the most part, the only times I saw them mixing it up was the flame thrower section that doesn't last long. Yeah, that's not a great mix up anyway. The flag holding part that. I hate it.

It started cool and then it stopped being cool. Yeah, like you said earlier, it overstated it's welcome. Yeah. Yeah, the flag holding section was one of them and then like falling from the sky. Those are like the main parts I remember and I needed more. Like, it's like, it's like Halo does this, right? Halo will have their mission and it's the usual gameplay and then you'll get to a part with like certain heavy weapons or a defense or a warthog run or a tank run. That's or if you fly and like that's how how Halo keeps it up.

I was I would have killed to drive like a repulsor executioner. Yeah. And just like roll it through with like all those guns, you know. And there are so many options for vehicles in the 40K universe too that it wouldn't have been hard to pick one. like i think i think they forgot the the reason why those games campaigns were like maybe not narratively great but were more fun romps because they had those breakups you know yeah and that really helps a lot dude the pvp is so good yeah let's go let's go back to the pvp man pvp i i love it even though it's even though it's an unfinished mess it's still so satisfying to play it is

i do i also can i i have to it's so unfortunate too because they didn't give you any customization but the the fact that they voice acted the individual heretic Astardis oh and they have such proper good delivered lines too. It's really cool. The death guard dude running out and he's like I

am not yet ripe he's fucking crazy oh shy says she has something super she has one super nice thing to say if you assholes will let me go ahead the floor is yours it's shy as typing we get to when the typing has arrived

I can't read minds. But hey, hey. Operations are also good. The co-op is really good. They put a load of effort into the co-op. It's actually good. And yeah, I was going to bring this up as well, yeah. Giant props to the devs for adding and thanking Total Biscuit in the end credits.

That was really, really great. Yeah. Yeah, that is very nice thing to do. Although, as someone pointed out, they thanked Total Biscuit, there's no F-O-V slider. So. Oh, no. hollow posturing of all the face signaling

It was like Having boardline ruined it It was like honestly really nice to see Like I only got to speak to a total biscuit a few times And Do you remember the co-optional podcast like way back When it was on Game Station of all things Before that became before that is

That is got me into making content Yeah. Dang. I was very lucky in that me and a friend of mine who had a channel together at the time got to be on co-optional

and I just remember being a really nice person just like a really nice guy to talk to, super knowledgeable and his love of 40K and especially the first game was just,

like it was palpable. You could just tell when he talked about it how passionate he was. So seeing that at the end was like a proper, just like a really nice moment. Yeah.

Yeah. It's been a while since he passed, but they didn't forget that. And he's like kind of, I don't know, like immortalized in that, which is just super nice. Yeah. Yeah, it is really good. The co-optional podcast is what I watched when I was, when I was an EMT. And that was kind of what got me really interested in like, damn, maybe I'll try some videos out. And then, you know, that was about 10 years ago.

And, hey, there we are. I have a huge. I think everybody's seen at least one episode of what the is game. So, yeah. Kind of hard not to understand his influence on like, well, I guess just the content creation sphere. Like a part of me was going to say like the gaming sphere, but it's like it was so much more widespreading than that. No FOV Slater is pretty hilarious though. I'm not going to.

That'll be in the next update. It's fine. Yeah. Along with ultra wide support, it'll be okay. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're all, we're all, yeah, we're all big fans of Tollibisket here. He didn't get me into 40K specifically, but he got shy into 40K. And yeah, apparently his recording studio was covered in 40K minis as is tradition. Yeah. I don't know a single person who, I don't know a single person who ever basically just had nothing but 40K minis in like their studio for a while. That was mine.

Yeah, it still is, dude. What are you talking about? I wouldn't know what you're talking about. It's not like there's almost 20 Levin-Russ is in the room with me right now. What are you talking about? Bro, even I have painted an unpainted thousand sons next to me, and I am admittedly probably the least 40K-pilled person here, and I still have a shitload of minis around me.

When's the next painting stream, DK? Come on. When's the next one? Look, once these games stop, like, taking my soul, I will get back into it But it was the case of getting stuck Into Final Fantasy 14 WeBS Gundam game came out

And then Space Marine 2 came out And it's just been Goodbye This is what you're doing with your free time All right That is fair That is fair I'll give me that

Once they get their claws out of me I'll definitely You know I want to finish this damn Thousand Suns army Especially now after Space Marine 2 One day One day Outside of that and all of that,

I will say that like overall, I'd say that the game is probably worth a buy if you're going to engage in all aspects of it, though I would warn of very bad optimization and server problems. Apparently there's going to be a server downtime and re-up sometime today. Hopefully that might fix some of that issue,

those issues up. When can I just... It's a beefy game. Like you, really got to make sure, like go check the minimum specs and make sure your computer can run it because it's beefy. When you say optimization issues, here's where I feel like I'm like a super, like, outlier. As we were talking about before we started recording, um, my PC has been upgraded over the years, but I've neglected the graphics card quite badly, like quite a little bit badly.

Tell people what graphics card you have. Tell them, Kyrgyath. It's a 980TI. Ouch. 980. Admittedly, you could argue that having a Rise of 9 and 64 gig of RAM is absolutely stupid when you're running a 980 TI, but that's just how things worked out. I will say, my PC ran Space Marine 2 pretty much flawlessly right up until the end. It was only in the last like two cutscenes where there's a bunch of Marines on screen. weirdly, I will say, when it comes to the last like two or three, it only struggled on like two of them. The rest of the time, it ran super well. But at the same time, a good friend of mine has a super up-to-date system, and it ran

awfully on his. So I don't know what's going on with the optimization, but it feels like something of a, like a, what's the phrase? I'm trying to think of a good friend, like a crapshoot. Is that a good phrase? Just like it might be fine, it might be awful. For me, it was great not just playing it, but also streaming it and recording it at the same time. But I do know someone else who has got a much more modern system than mine who really struggled and found it chugging quite a bit. So it feels really inconsistent.

Has the game ever closed properly for either of you yet? Because to his day, never once. not know. I have to task manager every time. Is it me? It crashes every time. Yeah. I have to task manager the game closed every single time. And what's worse is that when I open the game, it doesn't register my mouse or keyboard existing. So I have to open up task manager, which somehow resets it and then it notices that I have a mouse and keyboard

and I can start the game. Also, does it freeze for like three minutes if you dare to alt tab out of the screen? When it, when it, when, you are opening it? Like say like you're just in the middle of a game and it's like, oh shoot, I have to alt tab to answer like a Discord or something. No, I don't have a chance of al-tapping. Mine does. If I alt-tab out, it freezes for like two to three minutes and then it starts going again. Oh God.

What are you doing? I will say that every app outside of Space Marine 2, I've got like a three monitor set up and everything on the other two monitors is like one frame a second whilst it's running. unless I opt out to it but then it's fine so again I don't know really what's going on there it's really odd it's really weird very odd it yeah

this game absolutely needed three more months in the tank in the oven it needed more it needed more optimization it needed another map or two it needs a lot of that stuff I

that's the funniest part for me you know when you go to PVP and you, you know, you can't figure out what the game modes mean. Because you, right. If you mouse over them, it doesn't show you what they are. No information at all. Yeah. I mean, you can take a wild stuff.

You know, like, okay, maybe domination, but like, you don't know. Yeah, like, you can figure out annihilation is like, okay, that's team death match. But then it's like, there's seize ground and there's capture and control. And it's like, what? What do you mean? What those could both be, uh, point capture things. What?

And you just kind of have to figure out how they're different when you start playing. Also, Shai says, Space Marine 2 is a fine game, but it made me want the same kind of game but about the Death Watch.

At the start you play as Titus, pretending to be brother Nolus in awesome Death Watch get-up with a team of Marines from different chapters like Space Wolf with Giant Power Ax

who's literally tearing nids apart with his fangs and you get to ride Rare Death Watch Corvus Blackstar, in a secret inquisition mission. It's so cool to not see generic appeal, common denominator stuff,

but it ends super quick. Someone do this. Well, maybe now that Space Marine 2 has made a ton of money, I'm assuming anyway, it seems like it's sold pretty well. Maybe they will. Yeah. I mean, how cool was it, though,

to see a cool of this Black Star in a game? Like, really? The first hour of this game, I think, is the best hour of the game. They're so good. Yeah. So, so. good. I will say as well, like, the Sabre Interactive, the, like, horde mechanic that they have,

I think I'm one of, like, five people who played World War Z, which they also made. We all played it. I did it for a, um, a sponsor of the stream. It's actually, like, the game overall is like, yeah, whatever, but like the way the hordes work and the zombie mechanics and the way they climb over to each other goes and stuff, super good an absolutely perfect for Tyrannette. And so good. And immediately abandoned when we gave up on the Tyrannets halfway through the game.

Why it couldn't have been a more sort of like three-way wall? I don't know. We could have done pink, like blue or blue boroughs. We could have done horrors as that, yeah. Just big swarms of screamers towards the end of the game. Literally like massive flocks of screamers. And you never fight wars. one.

Bullshit. Show me the demons. Come on. Show me the Carfax. That's funny. Anyway, despite this being mostly complaining, I think we're all happy

that the game is selling well, most definitely. Oh, absolutely. Because by doing so, we'll hopefully get more, clearly. Game is fun. Game is undone.

Or unfinished, needs more. But I don't know. It's not bad. It's, like, you can, it's so easy to point out, like, oh, this isn't right. Story's not deep enough. There's these weird gameplay things. There's these weird optimization things.

But, like, then when you sit down and you play it, it's like, God, this is so much fun. Like, I can see all the problems, but I'm having so much fun. It looks so great. It doesn't make any sense. I shouldn't be having this much fun, but it's like, yeah. Ooh, this is good. And then you go into the PVP just as good. PVP is like, it's this.

same thing. Every mode is like, God, I can see so many things wrong, but God, is it fun. It's like the core gameplay mechanics are so enjoyable that you don't think about anything else until you stop. And then you go, oh, what have I actually done in the campaign? Oh, that's actually kind of lame. But on the other hand, for like the eight hours I was playing it, I was smiling the whole time. Yeah, it just flies by. Yeah. It's, it's, the actual gameplay is so, enjoyable and it's so like visceral and it, the whole job of

Space Marine 1 and Space Marine too was to make you feel like you were playing a Space Marine and I feel like both of them fully achieved that. At this point Titus, his feats of strength are absurd and ridiculous and like absolutely don't fit in with most

of the 40K universe. But whilst you're doing it, it's like, okay, well the plot is lacking depth, but I did just rip the face off a hellbrute. So do I care in this instant? No. It's so, like, the core of the game is so well crafted that it almost makes you forget about

everything else whilst you're actually playing it. Which is pretty good. I'm curious to see the longevity. I don't, I'm sure if I like the PVE enough to really keep going on it for a while, but I do love the PVP a lot. So I might keep playing that. I need a Hort mode. That's what I really want.

I'm very curious to see how Horde mode goes. I would be happy with Horde mode. Yeah, that's another thing that probably should have been in the game at launch. But, you know, it's cool. Don't worry about it. They've got a roadmap. Here's Shai's last point. Liking game doesn't mean you need to suck.

It's, you know what. And Fondlets Balls, I like the game, but I point out the issues because I want devs to improve the weak parts and make space. Base Marine 3 even better. The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is to tell them their work is flawless when it isn't. Yatsi... Quote from Yatshaw? I think it's Krenshaw specifically.

He's the guy with zero punctuation. Oh, sorry. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. He's the guy from second wind, my apologies. Yeah, it's Yatsy Crossaw. How you can't possibly not know who that is, D.K. Crenshaw?

Koshra. Crosser. Crosser. Orrisis. Crosser. Either way, zero puncture. Like sort of three to five minute long, well, yeah. Fully ramblomatic.

It's fully ramblomatic. We don't want to talk about zero punctuation anymore because. We don't want to talk about the old place. It was bad. But like, come on. D.K., come on. So space serene 2 was really good, right guys? I am going to continue to beat the shit out of people and play PVP.

Hell yeah. The hormone works. We'll see how it goes. and go from there. Yeah. Final score. Despite the complaint, it's good.

Final score, I would recommend buying it, but make sure that your optimization is good, and maybe after some small patches. Yeah, I give it an IGN 7 out of 10. Yeah, IGN. Everyone,

IGN 7, too much Zeech.