I’m a sucker for a good power move. I’m not talking just about the dancey-prancy one-handed cartwheel while firing a gun or posey Assassin’s Creed-style slickness, but single meaty moves that signal to the player that you’re controlling a hero who doesn’t mess around; the type who drinks their coffee black and doesn’t wear long johns in winter. I wrote a while back about the old cinematic platformer Blackthorne, and how even today the hero’sno-look backwards shot is still one of the most badass moves in gaming, but having just watched the Space Marine 2 trailer, I think Blackthorne may have just been topped by everyone’s favourite Ultramarine, Captain Titus.
The move in question is actually quite subtle, and you can easily miss it in the action-packed trailer. We watch Titus boltgunning down a swarm of Tyranids, before parrying a dual-wielding big boy (forgive my lack of proper Warhammer 40K parlance), then delivering an overhand fist to send it reeling backwards. So far, so Space Marine. Next, Titus follows this up by shooting the stunned beast, but in the middle of this a smaller Tyranid leaps from the swarm straight for Titus’ head. With the reticule set firmly on another enemy, you’d need the twitchiest of reflexes to switch over to the new assailant, and would basically be screwed at that moment if using a controller.
But that’s no problem for our Titus, who at the last nanosecond grabs the leaping Tyranid when it’s right in front of his face like it’s a plushy thrown by a raging toddler, slams it into the ground, then stomps it with his giant Space Marine boot.
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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a move quite like it—so simple yet so incredibly metal. I’ve played plenty of games where you’re the aggressor, dashing forward to grab enemies and finish them in a brutal melee attack (DOOM, God of War, Wolfenstein, to name a few), but here it’s a defensive move that I imagine functionally works like some kind of block. I can see from the trailer that you can do regular blocks and parries as well, but this air grab adds an extra layer of badassery to the usual selection of defensive moves.
Seeing this move now, I’m kinda surprised that we haven’t seen similar things implemented in some of the above-mentioned games, which star the kinds of heavy-hitting demigod protagonists who would be capable of pulling it off. That’s part of it as well: you need a big beefy bastard for such a move to look and feel right, and Titus is as beefy and bastardly as they come.
Space Marine 2 looks predictably fantastic. Spectacular backdrops showing thousands of Tyranid-dactyls (apologies for the lack of 40K parlance #2) flying around the ruins of an industrial-Gothic city, vast quantities of enemies to shoot and stomp at any one time, and no-nonsense linear action.The original Space Marinewas an unexpected treat back in 2011, but this time round my expectations are sky high. Here’s hoping it also has a co-op mode to make it truly worthy of the Emperor.
