As a lifelong Warhammer 40,000 fan, I must confess that I was somewhat underwhelmed by the Space Marine 2 playable demo that was released around this time last year. Sabre Interactive's game looked more like it than any of the other 40k spin-offs, but the combat felt too clunky, even keeping in mind the fact that I was playing a giant transhuman youth in power armor. So I was happy when it was announced last November that the game would be postponed for a year in order to "polish the game properly."

Since then, the developers have had to deal with the fallout from the full build of the game leaking online (at least, it was long out of date) and, more recently, abandoned a planned public beta test in order to focus on further polishing. And this week, we bring you playable impressions: in fact, this is terrible.

This is certainly the view of our Robin Valentine preview: this feel of both the weight and power of Space Marine and the grim yet jovial atmosphere of Warhammer 40,000 is what we feared "Space Marine 2" might get wrong. It's what I was worried was wrong. This hands-on experience put those fears to rest." I consider Robin one of my most difficult editors, so this is really good news.

Riding that good wave, publisher Focus Entertainment released a seven-minute official multiplayer video this morning. The video includes action in the cooperative PvE mode "Operations," as well as Marine-on-Marine action in the PvP mode "Capture & Control" (embedded above). While competing against actual humans is not what I personally am looking for in Space Marine 2, I did enjoy watching Sabre faithfully model the Death Guard, World Eaters, and Alpha Legion heretics.

My excitement level for Space Marine 2 has been fully restored. If it succeeds, it feels like an inflection point that will lead to more big-budget 40k titles, and eventually to my dream of Respawn making an FPS set in the Horus Heresy era. In the meantime, if you want to see more of the purge, you can watch 30 minutes of 4K gameplay without commentary on the Punish channel. Embedded below, per the Czar's wishes.