Let me start off this review with one simple question: Do you like hitting things?

Hear me out. Life is stressful — it can make you angry, overworked, and tired. And it’s healthy for that anger to be released. You could even release that anger by smacking around a bunch of insane half-mushroom people, while in power armor with a weapon that’s a cross between a chainsaw and a sword. If any of that seems the tiniest bit entertaining to you, I highly recommend “Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine” as an optimal choice for stress relief.

In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there is only war. A time when peace, happiness, and prosperity have been replaced with war, death, and destruction. Not necessarily in that order, but definitely in mass quantities. Mankind is now a bunch of genocidal, xenophobic zealots who worship the corpse of the Holy Emperor (the guy who united humanity together and created the space marines before his untimely death at the hands of the forces of Chaos — but we’ll get to them later). The Space Marines were made as humanity’s champions against the forces of Chaos and the Xenos races. A particularly large and powerful race of Xenos are the Orks. A band of war-happy, half-mushroom people whose hobbies include waging war on anything that moves, shouting, and using the primary strategy of “I’m gonna throw so many men at you that you will drown in their blood as you kill them.”

The Ork Warboss Grimskull has decided to invade the imperial forge world, housing massive, walking death machines called Titans. The Imperium doesn’t exactly want to deal with the Orks, especially if they have an army of death robots on their side, so the Imperial Guard and Space Marines are sent to stop them. You play as Captain Titus of the Space Marines to kick a**, take names, and stop the Orks from gaining control of the Titans by any means necessary. You are accompanied by Leandros, a by-the-books, fresh-out-of-training Marine, and Sidonus, Titus’ close friend and veteran Space Marine. After arriving on the planet, you meet Grimskull on his “Kill Krooza,” destroy it, and proceed to kill even more Orks as you make your way to the Titans.

The story is pretty bare throughout the game, but that isn’t really the main focus of it. The main focus is destroying Orks, and the game nails it perfectly. You start with only a wimpy bolt pistol and a combat knife, but you slowly gain more powerful weapons as you progress, such as the bolt rifle, plasma gun, and chainsword. Jetpacks also become available, but only in certain missions. You have four weapon slots: primary, pistol, heavy weapon, and melee. You can only carry one weapon for each category, so finding the loadout that works for you is very important. It can be hard with so many options, but I’ve found a lot of success in the default bolt rifle you get in the beginning. The shooting is pretty good, but melee is where it really shines. You have three options for a melee weapon: the chainsword, power ax, and thunder hammer. Hitting scores of Orks with all of these weapons is extremely satisfy- ing. Damaging an Ork enough puts them in a stunned state, where you can initiate a cinematic, instant-kill attack that restores a ton of health.

You have two health bars: an armor bar that can recharge, and a health bar that only refills through kills. You also have an ultimate ability that you charge by killing Orks. After enough of them are dead, you can activate it for an instant armor recharge and jacked melee damage. Where the game lacks in story, it totally makes up for it in Ork-slaughtering action.

The final stretch of the game is where it gets boring. With the tankiest enemies now spawning, the game’s flaws become more noticeable without the testosterone-supplying feeling of cleaving through Orks like a chainsword through butter. It becomes a boring slog of awkwardly hiding
as you wait for the armor meter to recharge, popping out to shoot a bit, but then your armor getting shredded, then rinse and repeat. It’s at this point I’d like to talk about the game’s colors. While this is a personal preference of mine, the game is... really, really brown. And with the unskippable dialogue bits that pop up here and there, apart from a few exceptions, I found my eyes beginning to feel weird from staring at such a colorless, bland world. I guess that’s supposed to be the point, showing the state of decay the massive city is in, and to highlight the deep blue of the Marines and the green and red of the Orks — but I still find it annoying.

Although it becomes a bit of a chore near the end, the majority of the game is great. I recommend this game to people who enjoy a good power fantasy game with $30 on hand — just not to anyone hoping for a stunning narrative.