Just beat Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, and I'm actually kind of floored by how good it turned out to be.
Like I said before, I expected it to be little more than a sort of "B-grade" shooter.Never heard any hype for it whatsoever. I played the demo before and liked it well enough, but still wasn't convinced that it would leave any kind of impression.
The game is actually very much a hybrid shooter/beat-em-up, a bit like Dead to Rights: Retribution in a way. But rather than being a cover shooter, this one is strictly run-n-gun. And instead of the melee combat feeling like something along the lines of Godhand, it's much closer to something like Dynasty Warriors, pitting you against large hordes of enemies all at once. And it all flows together seemlessly, just about as smoothly as a hybrid of this kind could ever feel.
One thing I love about the melee combat is the process of performing executions on enemies to regain health. Your character is very vulnerable much of the time, and his health chips away pretty quickly, so when you're surrounded by enemies and hacking away at them, it's important to occasionally stun an enemy so you can perform an execution and regain your life bar. It's great because rather than simple tearing through your opponents without a care in the world (as in most Koei slashers), your character is almost constantly near death, which necessitates a bit more strategy in timing your moves and executions together. It keeps the action intense, and keeps the adrenaline flowing.
Otherwise the story is competent enough, the graphics look great considering this obviously isn't a triple-A sort of title, and it plays with virtually no glitches or hiccups at all (not that I could find at least). There's the very occasional bit of variety when they game goes rail shooter, or when it equips you with a jetpack, and it's actually a bit longer than I was expecting (not sure of the actual timeframe, but I was expecting the game to end around the third act, but it continued for two more after that; a pleasant surprise).
It's a surprisingly rock-solid game all around. I usually expect western-made games to have bugs-aplenty, even if only from a graphical standpoint, but everything about this one is really technically sound. The artistic design is great as well, and the gameplay is unique enough that the game can't really be properly lumped in with every other shooter out there.
An easy recommendation. :nice!: