Sacrificing his body to save Mankind from his heretical “son”, Horus, the immortal Emperor of Mankind takes a dim view of treachery and sedition. In a stealth release overnight, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s Update 4.0 added a new difficulty, a fresh co-op Operation to undertake, and made sweeping balancing changes. But in a worrying sign that the honeymoon might be over, the inevitable first grumblings have begun, with developer Saber Interactive getting some pushback from heretics who have questioned this Imperial mandate, suffering a wave of negative user reviews as a result.
IGN delves more deeply into the specific, nerdy changes that some players don’t like, and much like Helldivers 2, a lot of the ire seems to be directed at the game getting harder. There’s the new Lethal difficulty (and the others have been tweaked), but crucially, the popular fencing class of weapon has had its generous, perfect parry window halved (melee weapons capable of blocking like the chainsword can’t perfect parry). In conjunction, the Tactical Marine’s Auspex Scan ability has had its bonus damage neutered by 30%, which will definitely make those already tough bosses much harder.
As you can see in the lovely graph below, it wasn’t enough to shift the needle, but Space Marine 2 received nearly 500 negative reviews overnight, and the vast majority of those we viewed mentioned Update 4.0 and Helldivers 2 specifically. On Reddit, players have been venting their collective spleen, leading to various colourful threads.
