Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II continues Titus’ story in the thick of the 41st millennium’s permanent crisis. The Ultramarines are deployed into another nightmare warzone, this time against massive Tyranid swarms and Chaos elements, and you’re at the sharp end — a Primaris Space Marine built to be the last thing standing when everything else breaks.

The combat loop is simple, brutal, and honest: close distance, thin the horde with bolter fire, then dive into melee when the line threatens to buckle. Guns hit hard and read clearly — bolters, plasma, heavy weapons — but the game really comes alive when you chain gunfire into chainsword cleaves, shoulder charges, executions, and crowd-control swings. It’s a third-person shooter and hack & slash in equal measure, with hundreds of enemies on screen and almost no downtime between engagements.

You can tackle the campaign solo or in three-player co-op, and the systems are built to support both. Co-op keeps the spectacle intact while giving you space to coordinate roles — one player anchoring with heavy weapons, one diving into melee, one managing priority targets. Outside the story, PvE Operations and PvP modes let you step out of Titus’ armour and into a customisable Space Marine, choosing from multiple classes and loadouts to grind out cosmetics and builds across replayable missions.

Visually and tonally, Space Marine II is pure 40K: gothic industrial ruins, fortress-cities, ruined ships, and battlefields lit by muzzle flashes and bio-plasma. Armour feels heavy, enemies feel numerous, and the soundtrack leans into war drums and choral dread instead of generic action noise. The game isn’t subtle — it’s a hymn to excess and extermination, and that’s exactly why it works.

In the Vault, Space Marine II stands as the “this is what it should feel like to be a Space Marine” entry. When you want to show someone the 40K fantasy without a rulebook and a painting desk, this is the disc you hand them.