The developers of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 still arranged a “beta”, but only for journalists – impressions, screenshots and a lot of gameplay

Journalists from Western publications shared their impressions of a personal acquaintance with the beta version of the hotly anticipated third-person shooter Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, published by Focus Entertainment and developed by Saber Interactive.

Image source: Focus Entertainment

The media were given a chance to try a mission from the middle of the campaign and two missions from the PvE mode “Operations.” According to the author of Push Square, the beta version included two hours of content, but many journalists spent significantly more time in it.

Testing was carried out on a PC. Journalists encountered frame rate drops even on powerful machines, bugs of varying severity, a lack of AI for teammates, and sometimes inconvenient controls (especially on a controller).

The authors of preliminary reviews unanimously praised the quality of the graphics and the level of detail, the dynamic and brutal combat system, as well as the “Operations” mode (which had fewer technical problems) and the class system.

The melee combat (it’s difficult to parry in the thick of battles, finishing moves slow down the action), the mission from the story campaign (the bosses also got it) and the balance of the distribution of ammunition points in the levels received mixed reviews.

Lots of new Space Marine 2 gameplay from journalists and bloggers

What conclusions did journalists from various publications come to after getting acquainted with the game:

• «“Space Marine 2 has a real chance to become the quintessential third-person action game in the 40K universe,” says an IGN employee;
• «In many ways, this is an AA game in AAA skin: simple joys and occasional clumsiness with a touch of dark gothic. Bliss,” reports the author of Eurogamer;
• «If the rest of the game is as tight as this demo, I’ll be a very happy Space Marine when it releases on September 9th,” reports a GamesRadar journalist;
• «”Everything that made the original Space Marine great is still there, but in a more thoughtful and developed form, making Space Marine 2 feel both like a good old friend and an exciting new experience,” the GameSpot reviewer says.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is being created for PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X and S. The developers canceled the promised public “beta” (the team is focused on preparing for release), but the other day they presented the system requirements.