Kalpar Lectures: Da Orks

Today I'm going to continue with the Kalpar Lectures series, which so far has been me explaining Warhammer 40,000 stuff to those who are unfamiliar with the franchise. And honestly, I've been in the mood to talk about the Orks. I don't know why, and since the orks never really go for much logic themselves it seems a perfect time.

To start, I'll talk a little about how the Orks play on the tabletop. I will admit that I have never personally fought Orks on the field or know anyone who fields the so a lot of what I'm going on is what other people have written on the internet and what information I can surmise from their stat blocks. Now, apparently like the Space Marines there are a lot of options available to the Ork player, however Orks have the advantage of being much cheaper in terms of points than Space Marines. (Don't expect to shell out less money, though. This is Warhammer 40k after all.) Thus in a 1,500 point army you can field significantly more Orks and overwhelm your enemy with sheer weight of numbers. However, while Marines can do pretty much anything at least competently if not extremely well, Orks gravitate towards close combat. Orks are extremely tough and have a decent Weapon Skill which makes them well-suited to close combat, while having a fairly low Ballistic Skill. A common tactic is called the "Green Tide" in which a large number of Orks are sent towards the enemy battle line and engage them in brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The greatest appeal of the Orks, though, is their fluff material and status as the comedic relief race of Warhammer 40k.

When talking about Orks, it's important to mention their biology. Simply put, Orks are a splice of fungal and animal DNA by an ancient race of aliens to fight the Necrons. (The Necrons are a race of zombie robots who want to wipe out all life in the galaxy to appease their dark gods. More on them later.) As a result, Orks have very few organs to damage, the remaining organs are extremely hardy and they're green. Seriously, the reason Orks are green in 40k is because they're a type of fungus. Like most fungi, Orks reproduce by spreading spores constantly and they emit a large number of spores when they die. This means that in terms of population Orks outnumber humans by a significant margin, and any planet unlucky enough to be invaded by the greenskins will probably never really be free of them. What is even weirder about the Orks is that the mysterious precursors have hard-wired certain Orks to turn into Mekboyz and Painboyz, which practice engineering and medicine respectively. Well....what passes for engineering and medicine in Ork circles anyway.

An important thing to keep in mind about Orks is that their very race runs on a weird kind of psychology. Basically anything the Orks believe to be true....becomes true. Warbosses and Nobz, the leaders of Ork society, grow bigger and stronger because Orks that are in charge are supposed to be the biggest and 'ardest boyz around. Because Orkz never stop growing during their lifetime it's not unusual for an Ork Warboss to be nine or twelve feet tall. In fact Warboss Ghazghkull, one of the more notorious Ork Warbosses, apparently clocks in at over eighteen feet tall, all of it well-honed killing muscle.

The Ork gestalt psychology gets even weirder when you start looking at their technology. For example Orks believe that "red wunz go faster", and oddly enough vehicles with red paint do move faster. Most of Ork technology is scrap metal and whatever parts they can find, welded or bolted together in some semblance of the desired product, that somehow works. Many an Imperial enginseer has looked at a captured Ork vehicle, only to conclude that the ramshackle monstrosity shouldn't even be able to move, much less fight under combat conditions. Taken to its logical conclusion, as my friends like to joke, if you give an Ork a stick and tell him it's a gun, somehow the stick will shoot bullets.

The Ork mentality is very simple and straightforward: the Orks love having fun. The best way to have fun? Fight. I guess the point I'm trying to convey is that Orks love to fight all the time. If there isn't someone else to fight, the Orks will fight amongst themselves for any reason imaginable, including if they're just bored. Did I mention they love to fight? As far as the Orks see it, at the end of the day if they won, they won, if they died, then they died fighting and it doesn't count, and if they had to run away, well they can come back for another go. It may seem an odd mentality, but in the rather dark world of 40k it's downright optimistic.

Broadly speaking the Orks are divided into six major clans, each which have their own unique characteristics and wears a specific color. The clans are as follows:

• Bad Moons: Wearing yellow, the Bad Moons are the wealthiest of the clans because their teeth grow most quickly. (Oh yeah, Orks use teeth as currency.) As a result the Bad Moons have the flashiest equipment and love the big shootas.
• Blood Axes: The only clan without a distinct color, the Blood Axes have the longest history of fighting the Imperium of Man. As a result they've begun to pick up tactics like camouflage and battle plans. As a result a large number of Warbosses come from the Blood Axes.
• Deathskulls: Wearing blue because it's a lucky color, the Deathskulls specialize in looting equipment from the battlefield, sometimes even while the battle is still raging. As a result they have a large number of converted enemy tanks in their arsenal.
• Evil Sunz: Orks who love speed, it's common to see an entire Evil Sunz army charging along on cobbled-together motorcycles and wartrukks. Because they love to go fast, and as you know, red ones go faster, the Evil Sunz often wear red themselves.
• Goffs: The toughest of the Ork clans, the Goffs love getting into the thick of close combat. The Goffs wear black they consider other colors to be "un-Orky".
• Snakebites: The Snakebites are staunch traditionalists and generally look down on using new-fangled technology. While other Ork clans might use armor and vehicles, the Snakebites use war paint and ride into battle on giant boars. Although less common in the more-developed Ork hordes, Snakebites are still a dangerous force.

Usually the various clans fight amongst themselves, but on occasion a cunning Warboss can unite the various clans into a mighty WAAGH!, a mighty invasion of Orks which is best described as one part mass migration, one part holy war, and one part pub crawl. Any planet that finds themselves in the path of an oncoming WAAGH! is in serious trouble.

At the end of the day, the Orks are a brutal race that love to fight and get into trouble. However they're also downright silly, with technology as likely to harm them or break down as it is to actually harm their enemies. As dangerous and intimidating as the Orks are, I still find them kind of funny and their philosophy rather logical. In the Grim Darkness of the 41st millennium where there is only war, perhaps the Orks are the ones that have it all figured out. If you're going to die horribly on a battlefield, you might as well enjoy it, right? The Orks certainly seem to enjoy it, and they're definitely not going away anytime soon.

- Kalpar

Kalpar Lectures: So what is a Space Marine?

Recently there has been a lot of girly stuff on the blog. Posts about the sexiest bits of beefcake and mancandy in the Marvel universe and nonsense such as that. (By the by, Katie owes me a quarter every time she uses mancandy, beefcake, or a similar term.She's up to about twenty dollars by now.) So I have decided that weneed to bring something MANLY to this site! "But Kalpar!"my one reader is probably exclaiming. "You have already reviewed the manliest comic ever: Tales From the Bully Pulpit. In which the manliest president of all time, Theodore Roosevelt, engages in the manliest pastime of all time, punching Nazis, on the most manly of planets of all time, Mars, even though it ain't the kind of place to raise your kids because it is in fact cold as hell." Well,dear reader, it is true that there is very little quite as manly asTales From the Bully Pulpit, I shall nonetheless attempt with a helpful lecture on the Space Marines of Warhammer 40k and their origins. BECAUSE SPACE MARINES ARE AWESOME! AND MANLY! And also I've done a couple of posts about Space Marines, so I figure people who are unfamiliar with Warhammer 40,000 would like to have some idea what on earth this is all about.

First I want to provide some background information on Warhammer 40,000 in general. Back in the 1980's a company called Games Workshop developed the table top game Warhammer 40,000. Set in the distant future of the 41st millennium, the forces of the Imperium of Man fight against....pretty much everyone really. How the game works is people buy, assemble, and paint model soldiers to formarmies based on rules in a collection of rule books called codices(plural of codex, I refuse to use codexes). Then you find someone as crazy as you and play on a table (thus tabletop game). To simplify, it's basically a more grown up and expensive way of playing with toy soldiers. The Space Marines are just one of the many armies available to play in 40k. But where do the books and video games that I've reviewed come into the picture? Well that's what we players like to call the "fluff". Basically all information about games like Warhammer 40k are divided into the categories of fluff and crunch. Actual game rules, like how much damage a Hellhound flamethrower tank does, is called crunch. Information like the tendency of Hellhound crews being pyromaniacs, which doesn't really affect gameplay, is called fluff. Books by people like Dan Abnett and Graham McNiell are pure fluff, entertaining to read and with lots of great stories, but really doesn't affect how I play the game. Some people do without fluff entirely, but I think it's a lot more fun to read the fluff and know the rules. So before I get into the fluff of Space Marines, I guess I'll provide their crunch. Basically the Space Marines are a middle-of-the-road army. There's nothing they're particularly bad at, but there's nowhere they shine either. Space Marines can be expected to do any task competently, but they probably won't win a shooting match with a Tau army or hand-to-hand combat with a bunch of Orks, simply because those armies have specialized in those tasks. Overall they're a pretty good army to play for beginners or people who like to keep their options open.

Now we start getting into the fluff. And to give credit where credit is due, some of my phrasing for the first part of this lecture is taken from this helpful video. In the distant future, the Immortal Emperor of Mankind unites the people of Terra under his rule and begins planning his Great Crusade, which would unite the many planet shumanity has settled upon into the Imperium of Man. To do this, he created twenty legions of genetically altered super-warriors which he called Space Marines. Each Space Marine is given nineteen extra organs which turn them into a seven foot tall bad ass warrior completely unarmed. The Imperium then makes them even better by giving them power armor, bolters, and chainswords. The power armor makes them very very hard to kill and the bolters fire .75 caliber bullets that explode. The chainswords are just really freaking cool. So, as you can imagine with twenty legions of these guys, the Emperor's armies seemed unstoppable. In addition, the Emperor created even more powerful Primarchs to lead these legions. However, the four Chaos Gods, realizing the Emperor was going to cause them some trouble, scattered the twenty Primarchs across the galaxy. Shrugging and deciding he'd best get to work anyway, the Emperor proceeded to conquer the galaxy. Along the way he found eighteen of his Primarchsons and put them in charge of their respective legions. (...We don't talk about the two missing Primarchs.) Of all the Primarchs, the Emperor chose Horus to be his commander-in-chief and left him in charge of the Grand Crusade so the Emperor could go set up a government for this empire he conquered. Eventually Horus began to feel unappreciated and fell to Chaos, taking eight other Primarchs and their legions with him. The remaining nine Primarchs and their legions remained loyal to the Emperor, but were overpowered by the treachery of their brothers. Eventually Horus managed to attack Terra itself and the Emperor had to intervene personally.

In the epic battle which followed, the Emperor managed to kill Horus but only after taking serious wounds to his body. (Hey, he was the Immortal Emperor of Mankind, not the Invulnerable Emperor of Mankind.) The traitor legions now broken, it fell to the surviving loyal Primarchs to rebuild the Imperium.

One loyal Primarch, Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines, decided to write a book called the Codex Astartes. This book would provide the rules for how Space Marines would act in the future and divide the Space Marine Legions into thousand-strong Space Marine Chapters. One Chapter would keep the colors and emblem of the original Legion, but the successor chapters would adopt their own colors and emblem. This division of the Space Marines would prevent any individual from controlling tensof thousands of Space Marines at once, as the original Primarchs did, and hopefully prevent a civil war on such a scale as the HorusHeresy. Initially half of the surviving loyalist Primarchs opposed Guilliman's plan, however Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists intervened and convinced his brothers to follow the Codex Astartes. To this day,however, several Space Marine Chapters do not follow the CodexAstartes and have their own organization and rules. While the successor Chapters number in the hundreds, the nine Chaptersdescended directly from the Legions are alive today, and are listed in order of Legion number.

• Legion I – The Dark Angels: The Dark Angels and their successor Chapters hold a dark secret: half of the Dark Angels Legion betrayed the Emperor during the Horus Heresy. As a result the Dark Angels and their successors, who collectively call themselves “The Unforgiven”, are dedicated to hunting down the surviving traitors.
  
• Legion V – The White Scars: Skilled in hit and run tactics, the White Scars are experts at using motorbikes in lightning assaults against their enemies. Frequently the enemies of the Imperium will find themselves outflanked and outmaneuvered by the White Scars.
  
• Legion VI – The Space Wolves: A notoriously unorthodox Chapter that refuses to follow the Codex Astartes, the Space Wolves are still one of the mightiest and most respected Space Marine Chapters. If there's anything they love more than drinking and carousing, it's fighting the enemies of Mankind. Kind of like Vikings in Space. If the Vikings could spit acid.
  
• Legion VII - The Imperial Fists: Experts at siege warfare, the Imperial Fists are notorious for holding a position against all odds. They also have a reputation for being meticulous in their planning and incredibly serious.
• Legion IX - The Blood Angels: The Blood Angels are one of the more...unorthodox of the Space Marine Chapters. While they follow the Codex Astartes, there are certain mutations in their genes which make them thirst for blood and go crazy. Kind of like vampires, except Katie wouldn't like them. Although repeated investigations have never proved the existence of such a mutation, it remains a major concern.
• Legion X - The Iron Hands: The Iron Hands are different from their brother Marines in the respect that they consider human flesh to be weak and inferior. As a result mechanical augmentations among the Iron Hands are extremely common and they work very closely with the Adeptus Mechanicus, the scientists of the Imperium. As a result of this close partnership, many other Chapters view them with a degree of suspicion.
• Legion XIII - The Ultramarines: The most rigid followers of the Codex Astartes, and as a result the most generic, the Ultramarines had the most surviving members after the Horus Heresy (mostly because they were on the other side of the galaxy.) As a result, the Ultramarines have the most successor Chapters out of all the original Legions.
• Legion XVIII - The Salamanders: The Salamanders have an affinity for fire and fire-based weaponry, which makes sense since they come from a world covered in volcanoes. The Salamanders are also famous for going out of their way to protect the people of the Imperium and are less willing to sacrifice civilians than some other Marine Chapters.
• Legion XIX - The Raven Guard: Despite being super strong and really tall super warriors, the Raven Guard are experts at infiltration and guerrilla warfare. Many enemies of the Imperium have found themselves tormented by the unpredictable and almost-unstoppable attacks of the Raven Guard where they least expect it.

Each Chapter which follows the Codex Astartes is divided into ten companies. The first company consists of the Chapter's veterans, experienced and much-honored warriors. The second through fifth companies are the Chapter's battle companies, the teams that do the bulk of the fighting. The sixth through ninth companies are reserve companies, typically called upon when the battle companies need extra men for a campaign. The tenth company consists of new recruits who are scouts. They do advanced reconnaissance for the other Marines and help soften up the enemy before the main force arrives. Each company is lead by a captain, and is divided into ten squads which are lead by sergeants. The entire Chapter is lead by a Chapter Master, although some Chapters choose to be lead by a council instead. Each Chapter also has a pool of armored vehicles, as well as several heavily armored space ships. Even at only a thousand strong, a Space Marine Chapter is a force to be reckoned with, especially if the entire Chapter is deployed in one place. (Although usually just one Company is enough to settle a conflict.)


Hopefully I haven't bored you to sleep with my lecture on Space Marines and have helped you learn something. Stay tuned for more Kalpar Lectures in the future when I talk about other 40k armies.

The Ultramarines Saga: First Impressions

Today I want to talk about the Ultramarines Saga, as I am calling it. I don't know if it quite counts as a saga and the word itself reminds me of Star Wars, but that's besides the point. The Ultramarines Saga is a collection of books written by Graham McNeill, and follow the adventures of the Ultramarines Chapter of Space Marines. "But Kalpar!" my sole reader would probably be exclaiming at this point. "What is a Space Marine, who are the Ultramarines, and what are these books about then?" A-ha, well I caught you there dear reader because I'm willing to bet that my single reader actually knows about Warhammer 40k. However for anyone who has stumbled onto this page by mistake, I shall explain. In the universe of Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines are genetically-enhanced warriors who defend the Imperium of Man from the uncounted threats it deals with on a daily basis. The Marines are divided into thousand-strong chapters and the most ordinary of these chapters is the Ultramarines. Well, ordinary if you're a seven-foot super soldier with nineteen extra organs in you. As I play the Ultramarines army myself on the tabletop, I was interested in reading McNeill's stories about their adventures.

The book that I read is the Ultramarines Omnibus, which collects a short story as well as the novels Nightbringer, Warriors of Ultramar and Dead Sky Black Sun into one book. However, I am also going to talk about Defenders of Ultramar, a graphic novel which takes place during the events of Dead Sky Black Sun and is tied to the overall plot.

To begin with, overall this book was kind of average. I am willing to recognize the unique challenge of writing Space Marines as character because a lot of what makes them human has been stripped away. They have only a vague memory of what it's like to feel cold or tired or scared, so they have a hard time relating to non-enhanced humans. At the same time, Space Marines still feel a gamut of emotions, joy, anger, pride, desperation, and a whole host of other impulses that can make a Marine make a poor decision. The thing I like about McNeill's writing is that he manages to slip these emotional conflicts into his main character, Captain Uriel Ventris.

When we first meet Captain Ventris, he is the freshly-minted Captain of the Ultramarines Fourth Company. In Nightbringer he forges his company in battle and becomes sure of himself and his abilities as a commander. In Warriors of Ultramar he faces against the Tyranid menace to save the Imperium. However to defeat the Tyranids Captain Ventris violates the Codex Astartes, the book of rules the Ultramarines follow with almost religious devotion, and so he is cast out of his Chapter. Dead Sky Black Sun follows Captain Ventris as he fulfills the Death Oath put upon him by his Chapter to atone for his unorthodox actions.

There are a couple of things that I like about Ventris which come up in these novels and make him a good character to follow. He believes that the Imperium of Man is a living breathing thing consisting of the untold trillions of people that are its population. While other leaders are willing to sacrifice entire planets to stop alien invasions, Ventris is willing to stand and fight to save those very planets even if it is a lost cause. This puts him into conflict with leaders willing to make such sacrifices and in fact drives much of the plot of Warriors of Ultramar. However the other main conflict Ventris faces is adhering to the Codex Astartes. On the one hand, the Codex provides information on a variety of tactical situations and has lead the Ultramarines to countless victories, while Chapters that have failed to heed the Codex have become "wild" and perform bizarre and disturbing rituals. On the other hand, rigid adherence to the Codex leads to predictable battle plans, allows for no initiative, and can lead to stagnation. Ultimately Ventris must find a balance between the two extremes to reap the most benefits.

While I liked Ventris as a character, and I want to read more of the books in the series, I suspect most of it comes from playing Ultramarines. Honestly if you're not into 40k already, you're probably not going to get brought in by this collection of novels. If you like Space Marines and Ultramarines in specific, you'll like this, but otherwise it's basically a bunch of fighting. Which I'm afraid a lot of these books boil down to.

I also want to touch on Defenders of Ultramar, a graphic novel written by McNeill and also features the ongoing battles of the Fourth Company. This story takes place during the events of Dead Sky Black Sun while Captain Ventris is on his Death Oath. Recovering from their wounds on Tarsis Ultra, Fourth Company goes to the world of Espandor to recover a lost Ultramarines ship. However, they soon discover an Ork horde on Espandor and join up with the Planetary Defense Force to defeat the Orks. Honestly, I did not think much of this comic. The plot is basically, Ultramarines go and kill things and does not get any more complex after that. The artwork is downright bad in some cases. And not bad like it's all black and you can't tell what's going on. No, it's more everything looks...rounded. Sort of like a kid's drawing. There are a few panels which look really good, but most of the book's art is sub-par in my opinion. Especially during the fight scenes, which is where you'd want it to be really good. Ultimately, even if you're a fan of the Ultramarines I'd have to give this specific graphic novel a pass.

I'm sorry these books didn't turn out better, however I will be looking more into the adventures of Fourth Company and let you know if it gets better. Hopefully I will be giving my reader more information on the Space Marines at a later date.

- BAK

Titanicus by Dan Abnett, a Warhammer 40,000 novel

So as my two readers...well, I don't know if anyone reads these anymore but I'll say two readers. Anyway as they know, I am a huge fan of Warhammer 40,000 in general, and more specifically Dan Abnett's novels about Warhammer 40k. So already Titanicus (Warhammer 40,000 Novels) fell pretty quickly onto my to-read list. What made this book stand out for me, though was that it is specifically about the Titans and the Adeptus Mechanicus. So far in my readings these factions are generally in the background and are never really main characters. Occasionally a techpriest will show up for a few pages, but they usually get killed in the incredibly dangerous forty-first millennium. So I was rather excited to finally read a book about the Techpriests and the towering war-machines that are the Titans.

Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with Warhammer 40k, I will explain what the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Titans are for the uninitiated. In the distant future humanity has got all sorts of wonderful technology however much of the understanding of how that technology works has been lost. What little knowledge remains has become a series of mystic rituals and superstitions, the majority of which is controlled by the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The techpriests also believe machinery is better than flesh and regularly augment their bodies with cybernetic implants. What isperhaps most important about the techpriests is that they worship the Machine God instead of the Immortal Emperor. While the Adeptus Mechanicus recognize the Emperor of Mankind as the Omnissiah, a physical avatar of the Machine God, they do not approach worship of the Emperor the same way as other Imperial citizens. This leads to some conflict between the two factions, which is explored in the book.The unique viewpoint of the techpriests was interesting to read and provided a good contrast to the Imperial characters.

As for the Titans, well they are the greatest machines of war the Imperium of Mankind can unleash. If you're familiar with the giant robots for Evangelion or Gundam, it's a close analogy however...the Titans are much larger. The largest of Titans carry battle cathedrals on their backs and carry enough firepower to level a city, but don't discount the smaller Titans. The smallest of Titans are only forty-five tall, but they still pack a heck of a punch. A single Titan is a force to be reckoned with, but an entire Legion is enough to raze a world. The main plot of Titanicus is that the forces of Chaos, with Titans stolen during the Horus Heresy, have attacked the Forge World of Orestes. Because they lack the necessary defenses on-planet to drive off the assault, the leaders of Orestes ask for the Titan Legion Invicta to come to their aid. The resulting war is of epic proportions, but an internal schism threatens to tear the Imperium asunder in the face of the forces of Chaos.

Now there were a lot of things I liked about this book, however I had a couple of problems. Abnett's writing is good, as usual, however there are some problems in specific with this book. It's longer than most of his books, being about six hundred pages instead of about three hundred and I feel like it dragged in the middle. For a long time it built up that there is a difference between the Imperium and the Mechanicus, how they're two different cultures that have reached a fragile symbiosis. While the difference becomes the major plot point in the last third or so of the book, I felt like the middle spent too much time building up to it. I also felt like there were a couple of character that were superfluous. Specifically the toymaker and the former crewmember of a Titan. Yeah, they provide a good way to show the atmosphere of the citizens of Orestes, but their scenes feel too short and disconnected from the larger story to be significant.

Aside from the pacing issues in the middle of the novel, I felt it was a good read overall, especially if you want to read about Titans and the techpriests. Again, if you're not a Warhammer 40k fan this is probably not a good introductory novel and I suggest you go with Dan's Gaunt's Ghosts series, but if you're a 40k veteran and want to learn about Titans this is a great book. I give it an overall rating of three and a half sheep because while it's good at what it does, the pacing issues in the middle bugged me. Anyway, if you're an old hand of Warhammer 40k, you'll definitely want to check this one out.

BAK

Space Marine: Chainsword Fun

So you're all probably wondering where the heck I disappeared to for the past week. Well for those of you in the know, you're probably aware that Warhammer 40k: Space Marine became available on September 6th. Since I had a gift card that covered most of the cost of the game I decided to get it and see if it was any good. Anyway, as part of my overall role as Warhammer 40,000 expert here at I Smell Sheep, I figured I could go ahead and review the game for the flock. I know it's kind of unusual, but since I managed to finish it within a week of getting the game, I think it calls for a little change-up.

The plot of the game focuses on an Imperial Forge World which has been invaded by a large and vicious horde of Orks. Imperial Authorities ask if they should nuke the planet from orbit, just to be sure, but because the Forge World produces mighty Titans (giant war robots) and other war materials for the Imperium, they decide it's too valuable to destroy. Thus a liberation fleet is sent to repel the Ork invasion and reclaim the planet for the Imperium. Spearheading the liberation is a band of Ultramarines, one of the many chapters of Space Marines, lead by Captain Titus. The Space Marines are genetically engineered super soldiers, given the best weapons and armor the Imperium can provide. Although there may be only about a million of these warriors in the galaxy, they are worth dozens if not hundreds of enemy opponents.

Overall, I found the game to be okay, maybe a little better than okay, but not mind-blowingly fun. To be fair, I haven't had a chance to try the multi-player yet because my X-Box isn't connected to my router, so I'm judging just the single-player campaign. I do have to say that the plot is probably It starts out: "There are some Orks! Go kill them!" and pretty much stays there until Inquisitor Drogan shows up. There is a plot twist, which I guess I shouldn't spoil, but if you're familiar with Warhammer 40,000 at all, you're going to see the plot twist coming from nearly a mile off.

Gameplay wise, I found it pretty enjoyable. Granted, I died a ton, but probably because I suck at video games more than anything else. The chainsword is a fun weapon to have, and you're going to use it a lot. Also there's a nice selection of ranged weapons which I felt allowed for varying play styles. Granted I stuck with my trusty bolter most of the time, but the lascannon was nice to have for those tougher targets. By far, my favorite part of the game was the portions with the jetpacks. I really hope I can get to try being an Assault Marine in the multi-player for more jetpack goodness.

Another thing I feel is worth mentioning is the voice acting, because Warhammer 40k games have a history of some rather hammy acting, but Space Marine manages to avoid this. There are a couple of portions where it feels people are just reading off of a script, but most of the voice acting feels real and reasonable for the situations in which the characters find themselves. True, I kind of liked the ham in previous 40k games, but at least the actors seemed to take themselves seriously.

Perhaps the greatest thing I appreciated about this game is that it really got into the lore of 40k. I specifically remember the game mentioning the Skitarii, a unit of soldiers that to my knowledge only appears in the 40k fluff and probably not many people know about. Also, various audio logs you can collect across the game give you a couple of windows into the 40k universe that really embraces the vast body of material that's been developed over the years. A couple of backgrounds in the game also made me feel like I really was on a Forge World of the Imperium. Any fan of Warhammer 40k is going to be delighted by all the fluff goodies the design team packed into this game.


Overall, the game is okay. If you're a fan of Warhammer 40,000 or a fan of shooters, this game is definitely worth picking up. But if you're more into RPGs or puzzle games, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Overall I give it a rating of three and a half sheep because while it's great for what it is, it's not really accessible to people outside the genres it's catering to. As always, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine is available at Amazon.com. (Please buy something! We need the ad money!)

BAK