Preview by: Brian Rowe

Video gamers owe a debt to Games Workshop and its series of tabletop games, whether they know it or not. Warhammer and its sci-fi counterpart, Warhammer 40,000, were the inspirations behind Blizzard's Warcraft and Starcraft. It's tragically ironic that, the Dawn of War series excluded, Warhammer has struggled to succeed in the realm of video games. After four hours of stomping through multiplayer matches in a suit of power armor, I believe that Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines has the grit to turn the tide.

The eight-versus-eight, team-based matches pit the indomitable Space Marines against their heretical counterparts, the Chaos Space Marines. Players assume the roles of three classes, including the standard Marines, Raptors/Assault Marines armed with jump packs and melee weapons, and the heavy weapon-toting Devastators/Havocs. The lack of Orks, Tau, Eldar, and other races of Warhammer 40k is unfortunate, but perfectly understandable. As any tabletop fan knows, taking on a Space Marine with a Tau Fire Warrior is like pitting a kitten against a rabid wolverine.

Space Marine features two types of matches, including the team-deathmatch of Annihilation, and Seize Ground, in which teams try to hold objectives to amass points. Do we really need more game-types to get the blood spilling? The four maps shown lacked the sort of characteristics and visual punch that sticks in your memory, but I appreciated the heavy mixture of confined hallways, open courtyards, catwalks, and towering perches. I had a few disoriented moments of running from battle instead of towards it, and "that big metal room" hardly counts as a location to call out, so here's hoping for additional visual cues to distinguish areas of the terrain.

I was impressed by Relic's incorporation of stats and rules from the tabletop game. Miniatures armed with heavy weapons, for example, must remain stationary for a turn in order to fire their beastly weapons. Likewise, their digital counterparts must spend two-three seconds bracing their footing or charging their weapons. Even the Gets Hot rule for plasma cannons carried over; charge the gun too long and it causes a suicidal explosion.