Is anyone excited about Space Marine?

[White Haven]

You can't boost-jump out of it as an assault? I'm usually a tactical, so I don't have TOO much trouble with it when I'm expecting it and don't reflexively dive inwards.

[Mr. Coffee]

See, when I use the dive roll I try to do it backwards or to the sides to create distance since I'm gay for playing Tactical. I'm using a bolter most of the time so I want to create distance more than close it. When the Assault Marines exploding jump pack cheese gets me mostly is if they explode behind me where I don't notice them or if there's a few other players in the way and I can't move off.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

You can't boost-jump out of it as an assault? I'm usually a tactical, so I don't have TOO much trouble with it when I'm expecting it and don't reflexively dive inwards.

You can, but it requires a hair trigger. If you linger for even a second too long (such as by finishing your current melee swing), you'll be in instant-kill range even if you try to dodge-jump. Or if not insta-kill, then usually enough to do enough damage to kill you after taking damage in a melee.

[xthetenth]

You can't boost-jump out of it as an assault? I'm usually a tactical, so I don't have TOO much trouble with it when I'm expecting it and don't reflexively dive inwards.

You can, but it requires a hair trigger. If you linger for even a second too long (such as by finishing your current melee swing), you'll be in instant-kill range even if you try to dodge-jump. Or if not insta-kill, then usually enough to do enough damage to kill you after taking damage in a melee.

Hmm, I generally didn't have much trouble. Then again I'm a fan of the thunder hammer of one hit meat tenderization, so I know when that kill hit is there.

[Darksider]

ok, I picked up the game, but it freezes at the intro screen. Is anyone else having issues, or did I just get a bad disc?

[Darksider]

Ghetto Edit: Jesus! Kill Team's freezing up too now. I wonder if it's because I've got an older system. I hope this thing isn't shitting the bed.

[xthetenth]

Discovery: Vengeance launcher nades stick to allies. Assault marines are assault marines. Pugs generally don't have friendly fire. Three vengeance nades is a heck of a lot of instakill. Testing begins shortly.

[Rogue 9]

An upgraded meltagun is a 1-shot 99% of the time, and because you're at point blank anyway you can melee a split-second after you fire, for what is effectively a 1-shot (the melee occurs almost instantaneously with the melta shot, so you have no time to respond anyway).

That might have something to do with the fact that you just got nailed in the face with an antitank round.

[White Haven]

Uh, Bro-Cap? The melta upgrades do nothing whatsoever to influence damage. Please hang up and try again.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yeah I hadn't used the melta much at that point so I couldn't see the perks for it. It was the improved reload rate that kept showing up.

[Mr. Coffee]

Discovery: Vengeance launcher nades stick to allies. Assault marines are assault marines. Pugs generally don't have friendly fire. Three vengeance nades is a heck of a lot of instakill. Testing begins shortly.

The funniest part of that was the double assault marine kill Prezo got loading me down with vengeance grenades. Running around looking for people, look up and suddenly "Oh fuck... Blow me up! Blow me up!" BOOM! To bad one of then had to have that goddamn final vengeance perk. Two guys killed by vengeance grenades and one kill from final vengeance... Sounds like a fucking "Yo, dawg...".

[PainRack]

Are there grenades in multi player? I'm still playing the SP atm:D

[Mr. Coffee]

Are there grenades in multi player? I'm still playing the SP atm:D

Yes, there are grenades. Oh, sweet Jesus, there are grenades. Fucking. Everywhere.

There's also flash bangs, which while doing no damage render you blind as a bat and deaf, which is bad as it's usually Assault Marine builds flinging the damned things, and the last thing you want to be when an Assault Marine is about to land on you is blind.

Speaking of single player, is it just me or does Bother-Sergeant Sidonus look like Kenny Rogers?

[Feil]

The multiplayer plays a lot like HALO, if you're using the Tactical Marine class. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since HALO is an incredibly successful game that stands on the strength of its multiplayer. Many of the weapons feel like direct ports: the meltagun is the shotgun, the bolter is the assault rifle, the stalker bolter is the battle rifle. Grenades work similarly in terms of thrown range, explosion range, and damage. The health model is virtually identical to HALO, with a rapidly regenerating shield (cough cough, "armor") protecting a relatively fragile health bar.

Obviously, the addition of Assault and Devastator marines takes away from the HALOyness, and the relatively low effectiveness of melee attacks for the non-Assault classes means that you don't see people bouncing off of one another repeatedly mashing B for Bash

Poorly conceived perks are the already mentioned Final Vengeance, plus the Devastator's Reactive Blast perk. Reactive Blast is actually worse than Final Vengeance, in my opinion, because it punishes you for doing what you're supposed to do - flank the devastator and close to point blank range. Another bad decision is to give higher leveled players two perks and lower leveled players only one. The ability to take the loadout of the person who killed you is a great feature which goes a long way to hide this imbalance, but it really is unfair. Leveling up should give you more choices, not make you fundamentally better.

The weapons in the game are fantastic. There is only one - the Vengeance Launcher - that isn't commonly used. The niche it occupies - getting enemies behind cover - is already filled by frag grenades and plasma cannons, which do it better and are available at lower levels. Of the rest, all have a place, all are frequently used, and even the back-up weapons like the devastator's bolt pistol or the tactical marine's combat knife are valuable, unique weapons more than capable of standing on their own when used properly.

[White Haven]

Honestly, Feil? The second perk slot unlocks at level fifteen. That takes all of no time at all of any kind whatsoever to achieve.

EDIT: Also, I take an obscure pleasure in being killed by sub-15s with my own kit copied. It says to me that at some level they said 'Holy shit, that fucker just murdered me. Hey wait a minute, cool kit...'

[Feil]

Fair enough. I thought it was higher, for some reason.

[White Haven]

Fifteen, unlike, say, the last five levels in the curve, is quick. Good god, do the last levels take a comparative shit-ton of exp

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yeah. I just hit 37 and... damn. Agonizingly slow.

[White Haven]

Of course everything useful is front-loaded, so you sorta stop caring about levels unless you really like the Mk 4 armour.

[Mr. Coffee]

Fair enough. I thought it was higher, for some reason.

Are you playing it on PC or console? If you're on PC then PM me your steam ID and I'll show you how to effectively make the leveling system your bitch.

Same offer, Bro-Cap. Few hours could probably have us both at 41 and unlock that totally sweet looking Mk.4 armor.

[Jaevric]

How's the balance between the Assault, Tactical and Devastator Marine? Still waiting on my copy to show up, unfortunately -- I ordered directly from THQ and apparently that was a mistake. I'm not normally into FPS games but I couldn't resist a WH40K FPS, and I needed a break from EVE Online.

I'm really looking forward to hitting a lot of people in the face with a chainsword.

[White Haven]

It's not so much specifically assault/dev/tac, as they all have weapon choices that drastically change how they play. Assault-Thunder Hammer builds? Great ambushers, if you don't see them coming, you more or less just die, but slow swing times render them generally easy to kill as a tac marine if they get the drop on you. Tac marines with Meltas are death incarnate at point-blank range, which makes going after them as an assault marine (or anyone else in close range, the few people who use meltas religiously are scary people) a risky proposition. A lascannon devastator makes a mean sniper, but get into short-range combat of one and you can probably take him as more or less anything, unless he's really good at no-scoping with a slow-firing weapon that lacks crosshairs out of scope. Group of guys at short to medium range clustered on a control point? Plasma cannon devastator will ruin your shit.

There's enough variation of weapons to fill niches and perks to customize your style that things stay fairly fluid. I tend towards a Bolter tac marine with Kraken bolts and a bolter targeting system. It's a good jack-of-all-trades build that can be a nasty customer to most anything. It doesn't lol-hard-counter anything like an assault marine dropping in behind a braced heavy bolter devastator, but few things pose an insurmountable problem for it. Other than turning a corner into a face-full of melta. That...yeah. Ow.

[DPDarkPrimus]

My two loadouts of choice right now are both Tactical. One with Bolter/Vengeance Launcher and Kraken Bolts, the other with Stalker Bolter/Melta and Tactical Readout.

[Feil]

Assault Marines are valuable, but more for their mobility and unpredictability than as close combat warriors. In a fair fight against a decent opponent, the best you can hope for is a kill against a lascannon dev or taking a plasma dev with you when he blows you both up with an overcharged blast. Tacs and heavy bolter devs will murder you every time. The value of the assault marine is showing up where your opponent doesn't expect you, doing your damage fast, and getting out.

[Stark]

Thanks to Zod I finished the SP the other day. It's taken me ages because it's so amazingly bland I can't do more than a few chapters at a time before playing something fun.

And all the banging on about cover is a giant lol when the game constantly put you in situations where you're covered from above (and can't melee) or covered from so far away you'll die before you got close. Space marines STAND TALL and... get shot to death? Sidestepping around doorframes and crates - particularly to kill the wizard guys - highlights the laughs. It wouldn't be a big deal if Relic werent' such a pack of beardos - plenty of games have the same thing - but it's great that they deliberately excluded a feature and then created situations where it would be useful.

Anyway, it's really short, it has no characters, the only actor who was acting in the game is Titus, and the level design gives no real sense of space. The objectives are retarded and the laughs of LEAVING landing pad to get picked up and the titan being 'unusable' and then suddenly fully crewed aren't even the best parts. The bosses are so bad I only noticed the Ork boss existed because he's immune to knockback and you have to shoot him. The last boss is an unfailable QTE, for christ's sake.

The real fail though is the missed opportunity of presenting 40k and Space Marines as a separate culture from conventional, modern culture. They largely talk like normal people, don't express much in the way of outlandish ideas, aren't even particularly concerned by chaos, and the 'climax' should have been very different. I get the impression either Relic's version of 40k is different or they aimed this at non-40k fans and dialed down the mysticism and fanatacism, scale, ruthlessness, etc. Events could have had the drama of inhuman tragedy, but they don't; the final scene had me nodding along and saying 'oh yeah totally' instead fo the obvious intention of 'OH EMM GEE U BAD MANS'.