I’m actually quite happy with how many of my voted games made it into this year’s Advent Calendar, not least because it proves I am acutely in-touch, and definitely didn’t dedicate at least fifty percent of my 2024 playing time to a late-onset Elden Ring obsession. Point being, I can present to you my almost-made-it picks without malice nor bitterness, unlike my loser colleagues who didn’t get as many in the main list. Nyeh nyeh.
]]>If you’re a fan of Warhammer 40k, you know John Blanche. Even if it’s you’re first time hearing his name, you’ll be familiar with his fingerprints on some of the setting’s most defining artwork. He’s responsible for that iconic imagine of the emprah - the one the best shows off the dark irony of a such a wretched figure becoming an idol of worship. While the term ‘grimdark’ originates from 40k’s "in the grim darkness of the far future…" tagline, grimdark as an aesthetic is one Blanche pioneered. There’s even a style of miniature painting - Blanchitsu - named after him.
Basically, even games that don’t use the 40k license owe an incredible amount to Blanche’s work. That’s not to mention his influence on the fantasy setting of the Total War: Warhammer series either. His piece Harry The Hammer was the cover for the first edition of Fantasy Battle - recently added to the strategy game as chaos hero Harold Hammerstorm. I could go on, and I might do so in a bit, but here’s the news: Trademark Films are making a documentary on Blanche’s work, starring Napoleon Dynamite actor Jon Heder. It’s called The Grim And The Dark: The Search For John Blanche, and it’s out next Spring. Here’s a trailer:
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is making changes to how it handles mods in order to address server stability issues. Come the next big update in December, mods "will be prohibited from public online sessions," according to an update from the game director.
]]>"Where’s my Neo-Volkite pistol, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2?" was my perhaps slightly ungrateful reaction upon booting the action game up after the previous patch. "I didn’t even know what a Neo-Volkite pistol was until five minutes ago, but now this whole game is trash until I get one!." As promised in the roadmap, the last big update added a whole new Operations map, complete with a gargantuan new pseudo-boss in the form of a hierophant bio-titan. It did not, however, give me my beloved pistol. It’s fine. It’s in now, along with a few, less Neo-Volkite updates to other weapons.
]]>The developers of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 have released an update to the third-person shooter that reverts a lot of tough difficulty changes made in a previous patch. Turns out upping the spawn rate of the vicious Tyrannid baddies across all difficulty modes was not welcome among the meathead murder boys of the Imperium. And this change wasn't the only one that caused enough ructions to justify hasty recalibrations from Saber Interactive.
]]>In order to make Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 enjoyable, Saber Interactive had to make the Space Marines less like Space Marines. That's to say, less like "semi-lobotomized, hypnotically indoctrinated slave-soldiers in thrall to an uncaring (and possibly non-existent) god", in the words of Rick Priestley, primary writer for the original Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader rulebooks back in the 1980s.
]]>In the grim darkness of the far future, you will not have to worry about getting preyed upon by rival Space Marine chapters whilst duffing up the Tyranids, for there are no plans to add a PvPvE mode to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. That's according to game director Dmitry Grigorenko, who observes that enjoyable PvPvE is the "holy grail" of game design, much-sought and seldom claimed. Balancing shooters in which players fight both each other and the bots is tricky, especially in a game as prone to dousing the screen in giblets as Space Marine 2.
]]>As members of RPS’s "nutritious", "life altering" and "it cured my oddly-shaped bottom!" supporters program (not actual reviews) will get to read about this Friday, I’ve recently done a 180 in my opinions of scrappy ‘nid stomper Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. That’s mainly down the multiplayer Operations mode. It isn’t quite as deep as Darktide, but it feels like much less work, and I’m starting to realise just how phenomenal the little details in the animation and sound are. Saber seem to agree they’ve got a winner on their hands, too. As per yesterday’s community update, they’re not wasting any time spilling the details on the game’s next co-op mission.
]]>In the grim darkness of the far future you will no longer get quite so violently annoyed with your Spiced Margerine battle-bros Chairon and Gadriel, because they will actually finish off flickering, near-dead Tyranids rather than waiting for you to clean up. Sometimes when I'm playing Space Marine 2's campaign, I feel like I'm trying to direct untrained child actors from the orchestra pit. No, don't look at me, Gadriel - look at the Tyranid. He can only act concussed for so long. Hit him with your chainsword now, there's a dear.
]]>Yesterday I watched a Youtube video about Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, in which sundry, gesticulating milords of the internet opine that they had "forgot what it's like to be the target audience" for games, hailing the new (and for our money, fairly good) Warhammer 40K shooter as a throwback affair that "oozes masculinity", with no excess feelings or real-life social relevancy. I then combed through several thousand comments below said video, many of which expressed similar longing for the hypothetical Good Old Days, before those wily feminists invaded the medium, transformed every game into a LGBT+ weeping simulator, and threw all the Real Men into a big hole. I did this because I was searching for one particular comment written by somebody claiming to be Matthew Karch, CEO of Space Marine 2 developers Saber Interactive.
]]>I’ve been looking forward to playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for yonks, but had convinced myself that performance-testing it would have some of my lesser graphics cards quivering in their PCIe slots. All those onscreen 'Nids, yeah? And the stutterfest that was the recent preview build? Surely enough to make a Tech-Priest shed at least one oily tear.
But nah, turns out it’s fine. Pretty good, actually – perhaps not to the extent that you should tackle Space Marine 2 on a crusty notebook (or, for the record, a Steam Deck), but it runs decently on minimum specs and is noticeably more stable than in that preview. The only thing that might offend your PC’s machine spirit is some quality setting weirdness, where dropping or raising the graphics options can produce inconsistent results.
]]>In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only widescreen. No ultrawide for the moment, sadly. As and when they add support for ultrawide monitors, perhaps they should call it "ultramarinewide". Ha ha! Ha. Anyway, here's what's coming in the first round of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 patches.
]]>I've already said my piece on the hulking bugstomper in our Space Marine 2 review, but I'd like to celebrate one more thing about it - the photo mode. This is a fairly standard feature for a lot of blockbuster games, but in the world of Warhammer 40K there are so many mega-scale battles with pitch-perfect composition that I found it hard to resist hitting pause and taking a handful of snaps every few minutes. With a keen eye (and a beefy PC) you can capture some wonderfully violent moments.
]]>It's been 13 years since the first Space Marine came out. While it wasn't outstanding in the grander landscape of gaming, enough Warhammer 40K fans seem to have cherished the escapades of bulky blue boltgunner Demetrian Titus for the action game to merit a sequel a decade later. It left its story on something of a cliffhanger, with said hero being dragged away to face untold tortures by the Inquisition, the most zealous sect of this preternaturally paranoid sci-fi universe. Today, Titus is free again. Free to stomp towards hordes of alien foes, blast them with a plasma incinerator, and shred the stragglers with a chainsaw sword. Space Marine 2 is an often-satisfying scrapper that has me convinced of 40K's merit as a crafting ground for excellent-looking environments and creatures, even if I'm not particularly moved by the bland character of Titus and his fellow Ultramarines.
]]>We’re a week out from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s release date, and Saber have put out a final roundup of details in a Steam blog. Alongside a global release time map (or two maps, technically, since they’re pulling that pay-more-to-play-early nonsense), there’s a big Q&A covering all your burning questions about burning 'nids. Among these is a confirmation that, no, the action game won’t be implementing DRM software such as Denuvo.
]]>Exterminatus. Exterminatus. You’re all exterminatused. None of you are free of sin. Except, maybe Focus Interactive are actually? While it would be a monumentally silly heel turn to go back on their promise of only charging Space Marine 2 players extra for cosmetics a mere week and change before the shooter’s September 9 release date, the new year one roadmap does at least look piously forthright.
Chatting to James at Gamescom recently (possibly from his cathedral ship made out of graphics cards), Saber boss Tim Willits dragged out an armoured horse and proceeded to flog it mercilessly, saying that players don’t want to be sold the equivalent of Oblivion's infamous deadbeat daddy of DLCs. As several of you identified, this seemed like an odd comparison when Spice Maureen 2 specifically plans to charge for comparable cosmetics, although I imagine Willits was referencing the “packs” that his space game’s baubles come in. “Our fans never thought we ripped them off in World War Z,” he said, comparing Space Marine 2’s optional spendables to that game.
Whether you see the cosmetic's pricing as egregious or not, yesterday’s roadmap does look to make good on Saber’s promise to keep wearables and playables separate. Here’s it:
]]>Our James recently stormed off to Cologne after having one too many kills stolen by Edwin in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. “I’m never even going to look at another videogame again!”, he declared. Unfortunately for James, he accidentally walked straight into Gamescom. “I’m starting to think that there are a lot of video games” he informed us yesterday. Horrifying if true. Still, it does sound like he’s managing to have some fun there, mainly by hitting up Saber Interactive COO and former id Software co-owner Tim Willits for some top tips on how to avenge Edwin’s thieving ways.
Tips about kill-stealing aside, James found time to ask Willits about Space Marine 2's microtransactions, and whether there was any nervousness returning to a cult hit series… especially one a lot of people had almost given up on ever seeing again. “Even the “push forward” combat of the original was part of [id’s] inspiration when we created Doom 2016,” answered Willits. “So for me personally, it’s this huge circle. It’s always intimidating working on a franchise that people love.” But, with the right team, technology, and vision he says, “it just comes together.”
]]>In the grim heatwave of the midsummer, everyone you know would love to come hunch over a table and roll dice for six hours, actually, but they’ve got that thing on. You remember that thing, right? Plus, no-one’s got a big enough table. Or the new errata. Also, Trevor’s been banging on about lady Custodes for five months straight and nobody wants to be around him right now. Thank the Omni-trevor, then, for the three-player co-op of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. “Warhammer with the boys?” said Horace as he stretchily dished out preview keys from an entirely different postcode. James, Edwin and Nic were initially all booked-up for the week, but Horace repeated himself, making it absolutely clear that it wasn’t a question.
]]>Yesterday, Nic took James and I on a tour of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2's co-op campaign. A merry old time was had, romping through fortress cities like a small herd of crusader buffalo, using the game's absurd jetpack functionality to pancake invading Tyranids, and getting our screens so slathered in gore we couldn't work out who was killing what.
It looks like the gargantuan action game's PvP multiplayer will be even messier. Saber and Focus Home have released an extended trailer that walks you through two major modes - the PvE boss and wave-slaying frenzy of Operations, and the 12-player PvP carnage of Eternal War, which spans a range of match types. The ecstasy of dying for the Emperor aside, both give me frightful flashbacks to the early days of Gears Of War.
]]>In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only War, unless you don't have a 64-bit PC with an Intel Core i5-8600K equivalent and at least eight gigs of RAM, in which case you'll have to, I don't know, live in everlasting peace, or something. I'm pretty sure not having eight gigs of RAM is heretical, but never fear, you can probably compensate by taking a leaf from the God-Emperor's book and arrange for a host of dying psykers to pour their brain energy into your motherboard.
All of which is to say that Focus Home have released the system requirements for huge-shouldered action game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Find them proudly emblazoned across the header image above, and written out for easier copy-pasting in the blockquote, below.
]]>We’re still a few months out from the bug-be-gone-em-up action of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s September 9th release date, but that hasn’t stopped a jolly band of heretics skirting the watchful gaze of the inquisition and pirating what appears to be a leaked version of the entire game. The 75GB torrent is apparently fully playable minus a few assets, and also includes server binaries, meaning cool pirates can play with their cool pirate mates.
Sorry, sorry, I’m being told pirates aren’t cool and don’t have any mates. Sorry. Sorry.
]]>Gears of Warhammer sequel Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 will feature some kind of PvP multiplayer mode, similar to the first Warhammer 40k game, going by an early look at an art book for the upcoming third-person shooter.
]]>The $70 release day price for standard AAA titles is both unsustainable and on the way out, claims Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch, via an interview with IGN reporter Rebekah Valentine.
Speaking to Valentine, Karch reckoned in public that the $70 game is “going to go the way of the dodo" because it isn't "sustainable". Here's the full chunk:
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Have you recovered from the all the 100+ hour RPGs that came out last year? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather in 2024, because (at time of writing at least) the official "big'uns" calendar is looking remarkably slim at the moment. There are still some heavy-hitters coming our way this year, such as Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws and Path Of Exile 2, but 2024 looks like another year where it will be the smaller, independent games that shine the brightest. They certainly make up the bulk of our most anticipated games list for 2024, which the RPS Treehouse has been feverishly putting together over the last few days. The bad news is that there are still loads of great games coming out. So come, join us, and see what's on our personal wishlists for 2024.
]]>Around this time last year it was announced that Games Workshop had reached an "agreement in principle" with Amazon to bring the Warhammer 40,000 universe to the screen. That full agreement has now been finalised, Games Workshop say, meaning "the next stage can begin."
]]>After recently being delayed to late 2024, Focus Entertainment and Saber Interactive have been toying with our emotions over the last few weeks over whether or not they'll reveal an actual release date for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2. Well, you can set your heart at ease. You might have missed its brief 30-second reveal during tonight's Game Awards, but at long last, we have a date.
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 had no confirmed release date beyond the vague "2023" still listed on its Steam page. In a business update released today by publishers Focus Entertainment, however, it seems the third-person boltgunner has been delayed into the "second half of 2024".
]]>We still don’t know when we’ll be able to play the unexpected - but welcome - Warhammer 40k Gears of War-a-like sequel Space Marine 2, but we can at least get a look at who we’ll be shooting in the face when it arrives. 10 minutes of extended gameplay footage have teased the appearance of Chaos marines in the upcoming shooter, along with lots of slow, stompy walking through its grimdark universe.
]]>When Geoff Keighley announced in 2020 that he would be filling the space left by the recently cancelled E3 with his own gaming festival, none of us suspected that from that point on we would be doomed to an endless stream of livestreams from now until the heat death of the universe. Did 2020's summer of gaming ever end? It did not. It is a constant. Like the stars in the sky or the ocean blue. Geoff is here. He has a game to show you. It's probably a horror game set in space. Doesn't that look great? Now let's take a look at the first game by a new studio comprised of ex-Bioware devs.
Yep, that's right. Not-E3 2023 is over (I think?) and once again I've commanded team RPS to dig their microphones out of storage before forcing them to tell me about their favourite game from the cavalcade of directs, showcases and presentations that have replaced my once beloved E3 weekend.
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 was announced at The Game Awards in 2021, and it resurfaced tonight at The Geoffer's other event, Summer Game Fest. The third-person boltgunner still doesn't have a precise release date, but a new trailer did reveal a full co-op campaign.
]]>Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 offered another gameplay trailer today as part of the Warhammer Skulls Showcase, and this one finally shows off the waves of Tyranids you’ll need to stomp through in this surprise sequel. There’s a solid view of both the shooty parts and the stabby parts of combat, as our superhuman hero rips through enemies with the mechanical teeth of his chainsword. Wholesome fun below.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.
]]>I was astonished by the announcement of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 at last year's Game Awards, never expecting a sequel to actually happen, so I'm pleased to see a new trailer at this year's Geoffries. This "gameplay reveal trailer" only has a few wee snippets of the game being played, but they're solid. As our boy Spice Maureen stomps through vast Gothic industrial ruins and cuts through hordes of aliens, it's got that 'Dynasty Warriors meets God Of War' look again. But I do already miss the Orks.
]]>The week-long Warhammer Skulls event has kicked off with an avalanche of announcements. Leading the pack are three new games: CRPG Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader, digital card game Warhammer 40,000: Warpforge, and retro FPS Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef, the 2D action platformer, also got a release date. It’ll be out on the 20th of October.
]]>2022 is finally here and that can only mean one thing. We've got another year of hip new video games to look forward to, and we've been busy rustling up the ones we're most excited about. In truth, there are tons of games on the horizon that could easily sit on this list, and some of them are so close to release we can practically already see the pixels on our screens morphing into their lush, polygonal landscapes. Games like Monster Hunter Rise, God Of War and Rainbow Six Extraction. You won't find them here, but trust us, you'll be seeing a lot of them over the coming weeks.
There are always more games coming out than we have fingers to write about them, but the 2022 games we've listed below are the ones the RPS team are personally most looking forward to playing. We've got games big and small here, and they're all listed in alphabetical order. After all, release dates are increasingly slippery beasts these days. Think we've missed something? Why not take to the comments below and tell us all about it. You might just convince us to put it on our radars. But enough from me. Here are our 43 most anticipated games of 2022.
]]>The actual biggest surprise of The Game Awards was the announcement of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, a sequel coming a decade after Relic's chainsword-wielding action game. Spoice Mahreen was a lovely wee stompy hack-and-slash game, capturing the chunky feeling and ultraviolence of futurefascists in a way no other 40K game had. Ultramarine boy Captain Titus will return, this time cutting into the Tyranid hordes. Check out the announcement trailer.
]]>
