In the 41st Millennium, humanity faces extinction at the hands of horrific aliens and demonic hordes. Only one force offers salvation, the superhuman Space Marines. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is an intense Action-RPG featuring epic battles where players take direct control of the ultimate defender of humanity, the mighty Space Marine. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war...

Space Marine takes place in the brutal, science fiction setting of Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 universe. This third person shooter looks great, with wave after wave of enemy swamping you with hardly a flicker in sight. But it becomes a little too repetitive a little too quickly.

The biggest problem is that once you've unlocked all the weapons and had fun playing with them, the constant hand holding of the game's maps becomes a little annoying. Yes, unfortunately you constantly feel as though you are being shepherded through the game as you only have one direction in which to travel. And, should you ever spot another path, you can bet that it leads to a collectable or hidden ammo resupply just waiting to be picked up.

Online play, I thought, was a bit of a disappointment. There's no real attempt to put you against teams of a similar standing as yourself. So straight away I was fighting against enemies with far superior weapons than the default class you start with. So, I'd sneak behind an enemy and unload my feeble firepower on them. Every shot would hit the desired target, but they'd simply turn slowly around and kill me almost immediately. You do have the option to steal their class, but then you're forced to play quite a few matches switching between different classes almost every time you die. And when you don't know what these classes are like until you start playing... well, it soon becomes way more hassle than its worth.

While this is far from a perfect game, the minor niggles will probably not matter to most. The superb graphics and mindless hack and slash / gun battle game play will have most Warhammer fans in heaven.

7

Darren Rea