I’ve felt a bit of whiplash following Concord’s shutdown this week. Not only is Sony launching the excellent single-player Astro Bot the same day Concord is going offline, but we’ve just gotten another multiplayer game that’s already a hit. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is available now for those who bought the special editions of the game.
Space Marine 2 is a sci-fi shooter with a story campaign, co-op, and competitive modes. It’s quaint but feels like a throwback to the era of multiplayer games that birthed series like Gears of War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Where Concord felt derivative of other modern live service games with its structure and presentation, Space Marine 2 feels refreshing by taking inspiration from another era of multiplayer. It’s one of the most fun multiplayer game I’ve played since Helldivers 2.
Finding the multiplayer hook
It’s not surprising that live service games like Concord have fallen into design clichés. Fortnite and Overwatch are successful in part because of how they’re structured, so if you’re chasing their success, it’s a safe move to copy what they’re doing. It still helps to have some original ideas to back that all up, and that’s one of the main areas where Concord faltered. From its menus to the content on offer, Concord felt like most other active live service games right now, aside from the fact that it eschewed having a battle pass.
While Concord had a few different modes, they all fell into expected hero shooter tropes. That was it, as Concord featured no campaign or PvE content for interested players to sink into. That’s not uncommon with most new multiplayer-focused games, leaving Concord feeling paltry. It was a one-trick pony; the problem is, we’d all seen that trick many times before. The apathy that caused played a critical role in the game’s failure, leaving me yearning for a shooter that felt different from its peers.
Enter Space Marine 2, a game that feels fresh by feeling old-school. In the 2000s, always-online games existed but were much less common. For console video games, the norm was to have a single-player campaign and an online multiplayer mode for those who had the means to play it. We’d also get cooperative modes via games like Gears of War if we were lucky. The formula didn’t always work — Spec Ops: The Line had a baffling multiplayer mode, for example — but it’s also the era of shooters I grew up with.
It yielded some great results. Franchises like Call of Duty became mainstream in this Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era of gaming and are still around today. Over time, as online gaming became more accessible and accepted, those norms were swapped out for new ones. Games like Overwatch, Destiny, and Fortnite set up specific standards that most multiplayer games in their wake followed. It doesn’t make much financial sense to create a campaign for a game you only plan on supporting the multiplayer of, after all. It’s also better to do one kind one thing well rather than three things in a mediocre fashion.
Because of that reasoning, I don’t blame the video game industry for going the way it has in this era of live service. But Space Marine 2 is here to prove that the old ways still work. The game is split into three modes: the story-driven Campaign, the 6v6 competitive multiplayer Eternal War, and cooperative Operations. That setup works well because it feels built for variety and engagement. While offline, single-player gamers can play through Titus’ story in Campaign, those who like its macho, brutal action can entice friends to play Campaign or Operations cooperatively.
Then, for those who are tired of fighting the same AI-controlled enemies and want to test their mettle against other players, Eternal War is there to satiate that. Its Team Deathmatch and Domination-inspired modes aren’t very original within the wider multiplayer space but are a nice change of pace within the confines of this specific game. Eternal War and Operations utilize class and progression systems that feel complementary to Space Marine 2’s Campaign. Space Marine 2 gives me reasons to stick around and hang out at its place, while Concord felt like it built an entire house for me that I did not want to live in.
In 2024, there’s room for both of these kinds of multiplayer experiences to exist. Breaking out a live service competitive multiplayer game is difficult, so any new games in that space must feel substantial. For games that cost $40 or more, offering less in the way of content variety doesn’t cut it anymore. Because of that, premium-priced multiplayer games should look to that Xbox 360-era multiplayer model like Space Marine 2 does. Draw players in with a variety of content and entice them to stick around; don’t just hope they get entrapped by your take on a widely popular game genre.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is now available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S to owners of any of its special editions. Space Marine 2’s standard edition will be released on those platforms on September 9.
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