Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Current goal: Make my brothers proud in multiplayer

I finally booted up Space Marine 2 this week after all the hype and was pleasantly surprised at just how immediately it won me over with chunky combat and dense environmental backdrops. The game is shockingly gorgeous and plays well so far. The voice acting is also decent and the story beats haven’t overstayed their welcome yet, even if the early missions are a bit stiff and overly tutorialized for my liking. Meanwhile, the chainsaw blade and bolt gun rip, and the kill animations for the enemies give the combat a lot of gory gravity. I’m still not crazy about the parry system, which feels to third-person action games like what the double-jump has become to almost everything, but so far I’m making it work.

I try to play a lot of stuff, experimenting with multiple new games a week. Sometimes I’ll play 15 minutes, sometimes I’ll stay for hours. The prospect of starting something new, priming my brain for new exposition dumps and rapid worldbuilding while also trying to quickly learn a new rule book, can feel preemptively exhausting, especially when it’s at the end of a long day. How much easier it would be just to sink into a game I already know I love and have poured dozens of hours into. But Space Marine 2 got its hooks into me immediately and it’s already climbing up my long-list for a potential GOTY nod. — Ethan Gach