Watch this new Space Marine 2 footage now, or your world will be exterminated.

As a long-time Warhammer 40,000 enthusiast, I must admit that the Space Marine 2 playable demo released around this time last year left me a little disappointed. Saber Interactive's 40k spin-off looked great, more so than any other. But the combat felt clunky. I was happy to hear that a year-long delay had been announced in November last year, so the game could be "properly polished".

The devs had to deal since then with the fallout of a full version of the game being leaked online (at least, it was out of date) and, more recently, abandoned a public beta test to focus on polish. This week we have a new round of playable reviews, and the verdict is: This rips.

This is certainly the view of Robin Valentine, who wrote a preview of Space Marine 2: "That feeling, both of weight and power of a Space Marine, and of Warhammer 40,000's grim yet hilarious ambience, was the thing I feared Space Marine 2 would be wrong," he wrote. "This hands-on put any fears to rest." This is great news for me because Robin is one of our most difficult editors to please.

Focus Entertainment released seven minutes of official multiplayer video this morning. The video features action from both the co-operative PvE Operation mode and the capture-and-control PvP modes. Space Marine 2's ability to play against real players isn't what I'm looking for, but I was impressed by how Saber modeled the heretics of Death Guard, World Eater, and Alpha Legion chapters.

My excitement for Space Marine 2 has been fully restored. If it's successful, we may see more big-budget 40k games, and eventually my dream of Respawn making an FPS set in the Horus Heresy. If you want to watch some more purging, you can find 30 minutes of 4K gameplay in the Punish channel. There is no commentary, so all you have to do is enjoy the well-written dialogue between Lieutenant Titus, his squad, and the xenos scum. I've embedded the video below, according to The Emperor's wishes.