I eagerly raced round my folks house last night as I don't have a internet connection at home, in order to download the Space Marine demo. After some gold member shennigans I managed to use my bros account to download the demo. I got it in the end that's the main thing.
Firstly the controls are pretty much like any other 360 shooting game more or less. I'm not going to go indepth to say which button does what as some people will be buying this game for PS3 or PC. There's no jump movement which I can find which makes sense for a Space Marine in bulky armour, though you can dodge attacks. The only bit of movement I found annoying was running which sometimes I wasn't able to do. Close combat you have three attacks, a basic attack, a stun attack and a execute which you can only do if a enemy is stunned. It should be noted that you get full health back up when you perform a execution.
The Space Marine can hold four weapons, which are easily accessible. You have a choice of bolt pistol and chainsword, boltgun, vengeance grenade launcher and stalker pattern boltgun. I tried the bolter first as everyone wants to use this, it sounds exactly like you think it would with a some of thud noise. I started moving through the level and come across some Orks, who were minding their own business, I blasted one with two shots of the bolter and it exploded into a shower of red mist - the bolts do actually explode like they are meant to!
The Orks quickly moved up and piled into close combat with. Now I'm a not very good gamer (feel free to mock my gaming skills here) and even on the easy setting I found my health going down quickly in combat after getting beaten on by about 10 Boyz. A quick swing of the chainsword and some excellent executions sees me back to health again. There's three execution moves and each one seems to be random, one the chainsword is thrusted through the Orks abdomen, second the chainsword is put across the Orks chest and the Ork lifted in the air as been cut to pieces and finally a over head throw followed by a curb stomp.
Now the Orks themselves in general are good size, though not as muscular as compared to the models but they do stand upright more. They are roughly about the same height as a Imperial Guardsmen and slightly bigger built, which I guess is accurate.
As I progressed through the level I came across some Shoota Boyz, I presume these were Bad Moonz as they wore yellow. These Orks fought differently camping behind cover and blasting me with fire power. Often they would huddle together and luckily for the Space Marine he has access to grenades! I'm not sure what type of grenades they were i.e krak, frag etc but they did make short work of the Shoota Boyz. For those more difficult to reach Shoota Boyz I brought out the stalker pattern boltgun. Think of the stalker as a boltgun and sniper rifles offspring, one shot at a Boyz head and poof it's blood mist. Excellent weapon the stalker.
The more I progressed through the level the more large Ork units I came across, at one point I found a unit of Orks and another appeared to reforce them, though this mob was lead by a Nob. Nobz are about the same size to a Space Marine as a Marine is to a Guardsmen, they're huge! Nobz can move pretty damn quick, they have bullet proof armour as my bolt rounds were bouncing off them with sparks. In combat they slam Marines about and beat them with some kind of metal bar. Nobz are just not nice. I found the best way to beat a Nob was stun it and execute them, this resorted into a button bash dual as the Nob tried to beat off my chainsword as it cut into his metal beat stick - luckily for me the Nob lost and was cut to pieces.
During the game I got attacked by Squig Bombs, beware of these as they can take a lot of health and swarmed by a Gretchin ambush, Gretchin btw are about the same size as a 8 year old child and take as much punishment.
The game ended with a rendezvous of small Guardsmen in a factory, the Guardsmen reinforced the Space Marines against a onslaught of Orks (including three Nobz) with barrage of lasguns - which make a cracking sound, like a whip.
The demo overall probably took me about 15-20 minutes to complete and that's including dying twice. Controls are easy only thing I didn't like was attempting to run. All the weapons are extremely cool, I should also note I some how got a power axe and trust me this is like a trust power weapon - instant death to Ork Boyz with this and a massive stun radius. Orks themselves are pretty tough especially when they mob you. They also have some banter between fights but I expected the voices for the Orks to sound perhaps a little deeper. At the moment they sound like a teens whose balls haven't dropped.
Game overall I was impressed with. It not only brings to life the 40k universe from the noise of the guns, the voices of the characters and the 40k world but it's also a excellent shooting game. I greatly enjoyed it and will be purchasing the full game.
