Space-Combat

Warhammer 40k: Space Marine a Review

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By: A.B. Timothy

Five days ago, I started a new game called Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. Just two nights ago, I finished the campaign on hard difficulty. I can say without doubt that I had a lot of fun playing this game. I got frustrated, I quit playing for a night because I kept getting crushed by the same checkpoint, only to then beat it on the first try the next day, and I really enjoyed the story. Perhaps because I was playing on hard mode, every emotional beat felt earned, every word of encouragement from the 2nd Lt. Mira lifted my shoulders, and every challenge overcome felt well fought. If you are looking for a fun arcade-y run-and-gun sci-fi experience (and you’ve already beaten all the Doom games), this would be a great game for you.

Story

The story of Warhammer 40k: Space Marine takes place on an Imperial Forge World. These worlds are massive, planet-sized factories. Their purpose is to provide the Imperial Militarum with all of their tech, like guns, tanks, ships, and Imperator-class Titans. The initial purpose of the Space Marines’ arrival on the planet is to push back the invasion. The world has been overrun with Orks, and only a small contingent of human defenders fights on to secure a future.

You play as Captain Titus of the Ultramarines. This legendary chapter of Space Marines is only called upon in the most dire of straits. You fight through the Xenos horde and find your way to the last human officer on the planet, 2nd Lt. Mira. This woman is a no-nonsense, brass tax kind of lady, and she expects and gets the same from you. You are both there to do a duty. She gives you intel on how you can destroy the main anti-air battery the works have, which has been preventing the landing of the liberation fleet.

After destroying the battery, you get a distress call from a member of the Inquisition. You find him gravely wounded and near death. He needs your help recovering an experimental power source from somewhere deep in the factory. On the way, you pass by a War Titan, a massive machine, said to be a gift from the Machine God, which looms over you, a sleeping giant.

You collect the powersource and survive exposure to unfiltered warp energies. The Warp is basically hell, so you were able to withstand the forces of hell pouring into the room. Neither you nor the Inquisitor can explain this. You push on and find your way to the top of a tower, where you are meant to use the power source to wipe out the Ork hordes. But you are betrayed. The inquisitor had died after he made the distress call to you and was possessed by a daemon of the warp. He and his Daemon Primarch have been manipulating you and your battlebrothers this whole time. You manage to take the powersource back and eventually utilize it in the Titan to blow up the spire where the Daemon is trying to open a Warp Portal big enough to bring an entire fleet of Daemons here from the warp.

After the spire is destroyed and the Daemon’s plans thwarted. You embark on a quest with your battlebrothers to kill this Prince of Daemons once and for all. You do. But exposure to the warp and resistance to it is considered heresy. So, after all is said and done, instead of getting the girl (Lt. Mira), you are arrested by the Inquisition and hauled away in chains to be investigated. A tragic ending to an otherwise heroic story.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

4/5 stars. I would highly recommend this game for anyone who likes the Warhammer 40k setting or heroic stories with tragic twists.

Interstellar Dragons, Part 1

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

Matthew sat in his cockpit when the nails began scraping another chalkboard. Whilst he had been traveling faster than light, there was no problem, but now that he had slowed to a total stop orbiting the Dragons’ world with his flight, he was keeled over in the pain of ear-splitting screams. Before it was just a background, headache-inducing buzz, here he could make out actual screams of rage, and… they were getting closer? “They’re coming, prepare for combat, Joyriders, open wings, bombers, divert shield energy to cannons.” He called out the commands to his squad, proving that, even in the midst of the sheer agony, he could do this. Those commanders would be proud to have chosen him, not ashamed. Just as he predicted, the screams of anger roared to a new volume—no, volume was the wrong word, intensity? That was closer—at the same time, the squad started receiving proximity klaxons in their headsets. Sarah, Jonathan, and Fred all scrambled and began fighting for their lives. Fred called in the midst of it all, “How did they find us? Our cloaks are still up!” No one had an answer for him, except, perhaps, Matthew.

The young pilot pressed a button on his command module and hurled the remains of his breakfast into a blue plastic bag, before it was sealed shut and locked in the refuse container on his little flier. “Captain, look alive!” Matthew forced up his head, took the throttle in his hands, and steeled himself. He used every ounce of fortitude he could muster and threw the throttle forward in an attempt to join the fray. The engine roared with a mighty fire as it powered up to zoom forward.

“I’m-” Matthew began to say before he cut off alongside his engines. Something was very wrong. “Mayday!” He called, “Mayday, Fred! Circle-back Protocol! Take them and get out of here now!” Matthew was running through the ingrained ship-reboot protocols whilst he spoke.

He began to panic as he watched from his cockpit, his friends fold into the fray. Slithering beasts of immense proportions clashed with Y-shaped ships only half their size that they could not see. The pilots could not possibly win this, and it was his fault. Matthew’s connection to the dragons had been what warned them of his arrival. Their only chance was a plan that was compromised when they fell out of the hyperstream. One of his ship’s three engines flared to life, and he knew he had to do what he could. Flying through the invisible dogfight, he barrel-rolled and launched three dozen flares, at the same time deactivating his cloaking device. “Come and get some, you space-whales!” He cried.

“Welcome to the fight, sir!” Fred called triumphantly.

Matthew barely had time to respond amidst the hell of flame and acid he was flying through. “Circle-back Protocol! Fred, that was an order. Get out of here!” His distraction had worked, though. The sudden emergence of a visible target and the challenging flares had called most of the beasts and their riders from Matthew’s crew and onto him. More furious telepathic voices joined the song of rage, actively burning around the young man, and he shook his head. “Please! Live!”

The pilot pulled and twisted his stick, completing maneuvers he learned in basic. The maneuvers might have been basic, but the pilot behind them was anything but. The dragons converged and swarmed him like a host of bees defending their nest from a hornet; this hornet, however, had fangs, claws, and a stinger. Every psyonic voice he silenced was replaced by two more as he held his ship’s trigger. His viewport became black with reptilian blood as more and more died.

Matthew looked at his instruments. On the radar, he watched as the signals of his flight zipped into the hyperstream back in the direction they came. He was so engulfed by satisfaction that he almost did not react when the first claws pierced his hull. The claxons were background noise, the screams in his mind enveloped nearly every thought, and the air was sucked out of the cockpit. The last two thoughts he remembered having were that they got away and that they were safe.

The stars rose from the horde of dragons as he was vacuumed into space and above the mass that was ripping apart his ship. One voice in his mind rose above the rest. It spoke with words he could understand. “Rest now, warrior, prepare for what comes next.” As the words were finished, his entire world was engulfed by the void.