Recent reviews by Rach

In Space Marine, you play as Captain Titus of the second company of the Ultramarines chapter. The Ultramarines are one of the nine loyalist space marine chapters in service to the galactic empire known as the Imperium of Mankind that act as elite shock troops that can turn the tide of any battle single-handedly. In this game, you will fight to secure one of the most potent weapons of the Imperium from the invading Orks: green-skinned, hunchbacked, bulky aliens that live to fight and fight to live. Helping you along your journey in some minor ways since the friendly AI isn't that useful and you will have to do all of the fighting yourself, are Veteran Sergeant Sidonus and pissboy Leandros. Sidonus is your longtime friend and stalwart companion, while Leandros spends the whole game complaining about everything and being annoying. Additionally, you will come across Lieutenant Mira of the Imperial Guard, who act as the main army of the Imperium. Your main interactions with her will be through cutscenes and walking while talking; the game doesn't give her much of a chance to be useless or detrimental to you in combat, thankfully.

This game features satisfying gun-play and melee combat, with a cooldown powerup that buffs you temporarily later in the game. This game has very little replayability outside of the multiplayer and if you haven't acquired all of the servo-skulls or gotten that one achievement where you have to kill 40,000 enemies. For context, by the end of my run, I killed 2,000. The multiplayer features three classes that you can customize and various game modes such as Capture the Flag. However, for the best experience in this regard, select the game mode Seize then Classic Map rotation, since that's where everybody resides nowadays. If you're a fan of the universe and like high-octane, third-person action games with violent combat, you should play this game.

Opposing Force provides a comparatively short and enjoyable experience to the base game. While the protagonist, Adrian Shepard, doesn't speak (similarly to Gordon Freeman), I think he exudes as much character just being who and what he is. The plot synopsis is that you, as a H.E.C.U. marine, don't receive your orders to kill the Black Mesa staff, thus being rendered ignorant to the real reason for being deployed there, and must navigate your way across the facility while your mission crumbles around you from the very beginning; I find this to be an interesting perspective on the metaplot, seeing as how the marines were strictly enemies in the base game.

With the exception of the poisonous ball-thing launcher, all of the new weapons are useful and are complementary to the standard weapon selection that carries over from the base game, especially the machine gun: the machine gun has a high rate-of-fire and high damage output, making it one of the most effective weapons that you can get in this expansion.

Periodically, you'll acquire squad members that make certain combat sequences much easier and can be used to move the story forward, like breaking down a steel door you couldn't otherwise get past.

Overall, this comes highly recommended, with the only caveat being that if you didn't like the base game, you probably won't like this.