In the grim darkness of the far future, you will no longer be so violently annoyed with your Spicy Margerine battlebrothers Presidenton and Gadriel, as they will actually finish off the shivering, near-dead Tyranids rather than waiting for you to clean up. Sometimes playing Space Marine 2's campaign feels like I'm trying to direct untrained child actors from the orchestra pit. No don't look ISee Gadriel – Tyranid. He can only pretend to have a concussion for so long. Now hit him with your chain sword, I have a life there.
I understand that the idea behind Gadriel and Charion's reluctance to deliver the final blow is that they save the relevant armor restoration for you, the player, but that still doesn't dispel my disbelief, so I'm glad they did it. We changed bot behavior and much more in the latest Space Marine 2 update.
“Various blocking restrictions were removed, allowing bots to be more useful and effective, but still failed to outpace the game from a player perspective,” the patch notes explain. Notably, restrictions on robots finishing off enemies have been “greatly eased”, and robots are now allowed to assist Gargoyle targets (e.g. stopping them from sinking the antennas on that mission with planetary defense weapons). They'll also help you focus on shooting at zoanthropes, flying psychic vermin with shields that buff normal nids and beat you up with mind projectiles. I really hate zoanthropes, so this is all a relief.
Bots aside, the update includes a pretty comprehensive overhaul of the game's campaign, Operations mode, PvP offerings, and enemy behavior in general. When it comes to balancing, there's a mix of slimming and strengthening that looks pretty healthy on paper. For example, in the Veteran difficulty campaign, enemies are less aggressive, but player health has also been reduced slightly to compensate for this and some armor management updates. It is harder to stun all enemies with ranged attacks, but ranged enemies also have reduced accuracy when attacking from off-screen or shooting at players in melee combat.
Spawn kills in PvP will allegedly be “more difficult” thanks to tweaked spawn models, and what's up is that they've neutered the Vanguard's grapple launcher a bit – it will now stagger and slow the target rather than inflicting a full stun. I haven't played Vanguard in PvP, but I remember how drunk James was when I used the grapple to steal executions in co-op. I'm sure there are a fair share of class haters in competitive modes.
It's not all tweaks and fixes. The update also adds a sparring arena to the game's Battle Barge, allowing opposing Battle Brothers to pick pieces off each other without engaging in a mission. Accessible directly from Launch Bay. I liked the idea of Saber expanding the little world of the Battle Barge, a meticulously lore-packed hub area filled with castellated background conversations. It's a good place to reflect on my ongoing, somewhat improvised broader exploration of the Warhammer 40K universe, including the possibilities for Warhammer 40K factory games.
Beyond that, the game now has the long-requested ultrawide support on PC, as well as some new visual customization options, and there's a new special Ops mode that lets you play solo without being matched up with bots or a single friend, random people, and more. mission. Read the full patch notes here.