Matt Wales
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A week after Saber Interactive promised a whole bunch of player-requested features and fixes for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, the first of these are now here – with the sci-fi shooter’s latest patch introducing “more helpful and effective” bots, private lobbies, and more.
Saber Interactive spent a fair bit of time discussing bots last week, acknowledging player complaints that the general ineffectiveness of teammate bots mades solo games “significantly harder”. And thus Patch 3.0, which lifts various “inhibiting restrictions” during the campaign to make bots more “helpful and effective, while still not beating the game for the player”.
Previous restrictions preventing bots from finishing off enemies have now been “heavily eased”, for instance, and bots can now help with Gargoyle objectives and focus-firing zoanthropes when they’re attacked by players. Additionally, enemy aggressiveness has been decreased on Veteran Difficulty to further improve the single-player experience, and, in order to balance out these changes, player health has been “slightly” reduced.
Elsewhere in Patch 3.0, Saber has introduced private lobbies for Operation mode, meaning players wanting to attempt an operation alone with bots or alongside one friend will no longer be forced into matchmaking with random players.
Additionally, players can now muck around in the new Sparring Arena, accessed via the Battle Barge’s Launch Bay, while in Operations or Eternal War mode. Here, they’ll receive weapons and grenades as if in a PvP match then have the opportunity to duke it out with their Battle-Brothers ahead of a mission.
Other notable additions include ultrawide support for PC and the option to reset custom colour presets, but Saber’s full patch notes are considerably more extensive. Patch 3.0 marks the first release in Space Marine 2’s previously detailed Year One roadmap, with the likes of new PvE missions, a new Lethal difficulty, new enemies, and more still to come before the end of 2024.
And if you haven’t done so already, Space Marine 2 is well worth checking out. Eurogamer contributor Rick Lane called it a “spectacular and mostly thrilling follow-up” in his four star review. “It’s the KFC party bucket of video games,” he wrote, “delightfully messy, almost certainly bad for you, and best shared with friends.”