## TECHNICAL NOTES
0) There's absolutely *no* fucking reason why Space Marine 2 takes up 75-80GB of disk space, and as a fucking *demo* too. I've been playing Warframe intermittently since 2020, and this *entire* game across multiple updates and expansions over *at least* 5 and a half years is ~50GB. That's *before* I even feel compelled to go into the launcher and either optimise or outright *trim* the shader and download caches! To be *absolutely* fair here... this isn't unique to Space Marine 2, it's more of an industry-wide problem, but Space Marine 2 is the first AAA game I've paid *any* modicum of attention to. *EVEN AS A DEMO WHILE WAITING FOR THE GAME TO INSTALL,* I feel like I got ripped off and deserve a goddamn refund. All the more reason why I prefer Demon's Souls on the PS3 instead of the PS5, but that's a different digression for a different day.
1) I'm not entirely fond of Easy Anticheat being installed, but Proton's abstractions allow it to work more or less "rootless." If I actually felt like I would keep the game *without* peer pressure from normie friends, I'd probably live with it. But Space Marine 2 didn't spark joy. I'm just saying: Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, Dark Souls III, and CSGO all solved the anticheat problem through wildly different methods while converging on roughly similar grounds (cough SERVER SIDE ANTICHEAT cough). Cheaters grouped with cheaters, normies grouped with normies, and then that weird in between space where people are fiddling with CheatEngine tables for shits and giggles and forgot to go offline. Prolific hackers universally get banned. I think I'll need to actually double check and make sure that it's wholly removed because I have the distinct feeling that type of anticheat likes to linger... like a turd that you can feel but can't quite push out. *THANKFULLY,* EAC doesn't have ring 0 access to *my* Linux kernel; thank you WineHQ and Valve for all your hard work with userspace isolation.
2) Holy fucking shit, this game takes an *eternity* to download, initialise, pre-render the shader caches, and load in the fucking game world. Why the fuck does a game running off the aforementioned, plus an NVMe SSD take like 2 solid minutes to get to the goddamn *start* menu on first boot? I have a 9070 XT, I'm running off dual 1080p monitors with like 75Hz. These are *used* enterprise panels I've had for at least 7-8 years. This ain't some high-level gaming monitor that puts my 9070 XT through its paces. I'm coasting when everything's settled in... but getting *started* made me feel like I'm in orbit on Destiny 1, I finally assembled a 3-man team for the Nightfall strike (The Shadow Thief), but we're all fiddling with our ships in orbit until the game world properly loads. Y'know... except without the perennial joy of listening to Variks the Loyal saying "TANIKS HAS NO HOUSE... HE KNEELS BEFORE NO BANNER... OWES ALLEGIANCE TO NO KELL... HE IS A MURDERER, AND *VERY GOOD* AT WHAT HE DOES..."
3) The Steam overlay for hardware performance was genuinely frightening at first. Like 99% CPU utilisation for a good 20-30 seconds, and that's during a protracted black screen before I even see the loading circle pop up. Yes I know shader compilation is CPU-bound, but what the actual fuck is this?! Has no one ever heard of this little concept called "optimisation," or does every game developer think I'm running the Code Lyoko supercomputer with plenty of power and resources to spare? Eventually it levelled off. I got like... a consistent 120-130fps with in-game cutscenes, a solid 30fps on cinematic cutscenes, and an average of like... 75-90fps while I'm actually in the game killing those tyranids and tracking down the virus bomb. Supposedly, this is "below" what my hardware on these monitors is capable of... but I'm pressing X to doubt because this entire experience is like paying Michelin Star prices at a 2 star hotel where I heard the guy above me scream about a roach being in his bathtub. I can't help but feel like I'll be seeing silverfish in cobwebs after a certain point.
## GAMEPLAY & PRESENTATION NOTES
1) The gameplay feels like... a confusing cross between Destiny, Devil May Cry, and that *slight* touch of Dark Souls because your melee attacks are mapped to R1/RB. Except I lack the ability to create my own character like in Destiny or in Dark Souls, Titus is basically DOOM Guy Dante but without any of the charisma of either, and... I'm still basically button mashing either way. Except with highly telegraphed parry windows flashing in blue, a dodge button mapped to X/A, but no ability to jump... oh and like eleventy bazillion little Hive thrall tyranid motherfuckers swarming me. Except I don't have the Titan punch and panic bubble from Destiny 1... there's a very schizophrenic gameplay identity here. You want me to push the stick to run like it's Destiny, but hit R1/RB to do light attacks like it's Dark Souls. You want me to use L2 to aim my firearm and R2 to fire like I'm using a crossbow in Dark Souls, except I don't have the luxury of jank Havok engine AI. I have attack combos and special finisher animations (in theory) but the execution is so sludgy, to the point where I felt like I was *fighting* my controller. A far cry from the dynamism of Devil May Cry, let alone the sheer fluidity of Bayonetta. FFS pick a goddamn lane and stick with it.
2) The maps are *extremely* linear. Appallingly so, given how many uncompressed assets this game ships with. How am I a 10 foot tall, heavily armoured Space Marine serving the Imperium of Man, fighting back the tyranid menace in the very beginning of the game... and I can't just brute force my way past 2 feet of fucking foliage that separates me from the vast expanse directly in front of me?! This feels like I'm being railroaded in such a way that matches Crisis Core or Final Fantasy XIII without the charm nor the snark bait. Also, there's a distinct lack of objective markers like in Warframe or Destiny to keep me on track. My eye gets drawn to the *vast* vista in front of me, I naturally assume that I can just hug the right wall and explore, maybe loot some hidden treasures, but nope. Some shitty little foliage has me jogging in place and *then* I realise "oh... the path off to the left is where I'm supposed to go." Dark Souls III *is* a linear game, but at least every fucking map *has* layers upon layers of depth to it, starting all the way at the High Wall of Lothric, and slowly building upon that depth through the Undead Settlement, Cathedral of the Deep, Farron Keep, Irithyll, and blah blah fucking blah. Space Marine 2 somehow feels *worse* than Dark Souls III where I can kill Dancer of the Boreal Valley, Oceiros the Consumed King, Champion Gundyr, *and* the Dragonslayer Armour before Vordt of the Boreal Valley yet can't progress further toward Twin Princes until I kill Abyss Watchers, Aldrich Devourer of Gods, and Yhorm the Giant.
3) I don't care about Titus being a black shield or his fallen comrades or any of that crap. When I think of Warhammer, I think of BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!, that edit of Michael from Vsauce talking about Corn but it's really Khorne and he's made into the one sane Khorne worshipper, along with the Alex Jones memes where he's trapped in the Warhammer universe and somehow makes *more* sense. I don't expect to be dropped into bonehurt Saving Private Ryan with an identity crisis. Spare me the Warhammer military drama crap for when I'm in the mood to actually *READ* the novels. I know Lufgt Huron, the Tyrant of Badab, Warden of the Maelstrom aligned with Chaos without pledging fealty to any of the Chaos Gods because his hatred of the Imperium was that much stronger. I love making tax evasion jokes at his expense. I also know that he's got WH novel lore, and that to me is like reading the EU novels to learn about the Yuuzhan Vong. I ain't *that* deep in the WH fandom, but even if I was... where the joy?! Where's the sensation?! Where's the originality?! Dude, humanizing Master Chief was the biggest mistake 343 made because the whole point of Master Chief (per original Bungie release material) is that he's a machine built to rip and tear but in space! I'm so fucking sick of stoic badass characters. They murdered my boy Kratos with the Nordic games with that bullshit, and I'm so fucking sick and tired of it. You want melancholic male solitude in the face of murderous combat? *READ* something like Berserk. Play something like The Witcher 3. *DON'T* shove that bullshit in my high concept, maximally absurdist grimdark power fantasy games!!!
4) The overall PvE is... functional but it does not spark joy. Is the PvE fun if I commit? Maybe... but I could just play Warframe instead. It already feels like Space Marine 2 insofar as being a third person action/shooter game with shared world elements, but it's also extremely well optimised and the full fucking game updates expansions and all fits under 50GB with DX12 and ultra settings... and the fucking demo for Space Marine 2 takes up like 75-80 GB and runs noticeably worse. Space Marines in the Imperium of Man are supposed to be genetically engineered and technologically augmented ubermensches who manage to strike despair, fear, and terror in the hearts of those who dare defy the will of the God-Emperor and the Omnissiah! Here, it feels like all any tyranid, chaos devotee, or whatever has to do to get outta my way is walk away at a moderate pace... or just swarm me and drain my shields because I have such a wide hurtbox and extremely limited options for crowd control. At least in Destiny, I could be a Defender Titan and panic bubble to get Blessings of Light to renew my shields. I don't even get *that* much as a consolation prize.
