With Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s Siege Mode in full swing, players are soldiering through waves of Thousand Sons and Tyranid forces as they bid to reach the highest level possible. But apart from frustrating connection issues and bugs that prevent progress, some players have a bigger problem: Chaos.
Siege Mode forces players to fight against waves of enemies from Space Marine 2’s two enemy factions: the Thousand Sons traitor legion, and the terrifying bug-like alien menace that is the Tyranids. There is no way to play against one faction only. Tyranid and Chaos waves will come separately.
That’s a problem for some Space Marine 2 players who feel like fighting the Tyranids is a lot more fun than playing against Chaos. A lot of this has to do with the different challenge each faction presents. The Tyranids are a swarm-type enemy type that packs the screen with a mix of smaller foes and much bigger, harder-hitting foes. There’s a bloody minded pleasure that comes from chewing through scores of Tyranid enemies as a Space Marine, sweeping your Power Sword through xenos flesh, parrying a strike that gives you a clean response, and — my personal favorite — punching those Tyranids in the face with my Power Fist.
In contrast, the Thousand Sons present a more measured challenge. You are, after all, going up against fellow Space Marines here and their daemonic forces; they’re supposed to be tough. When those Terminators spawn and spam their missile barrage, playing against Chaos can feel like pulling teeth. The Thousand Sons are less of a ‘switch your brain off and cleave through it’ proposition, and more of a, ‘if Space Marine 2 wanted to be a bit like Elden Ring, it would probably go a little like this.’
The effect is more pronounced the harder the difficulty you play Space Marine 2. At the easier difficulties, Tyranids and Chaos are much of a muchness in terms of challenge. But ramp the difficulty up — which you need to do for certain levels of progression in Space Marine 2 — and Chaos become an absolute bloody nightmare, whereas the Tyranids often still feel manageable.
It’s not as simple as saying ‘Tyranids easy, Chaos hard.’ The Tyranids as a foe work brilliantly in terms of recreating the faction feel from the lore and the tabletop upon which Space Marine 2 is based. Similarly, the Thousand Sons work as they should, as a traitor legion fueled by warp magic. They’re different because they’re supposed to be.
Still, Space Marine 2 players — and this has been a thing in the PvE Operations mode ever since the game’s record-breaking launch in September last year — often pop online to say they much prefer to fight the Tyranids. Some are even saying they back out of Siege mode whenever they get a Chaos wave.
“Is there a way to play Siege mode with Tyranids only?” asked Think_Fan_5943 recently on the Space Marine subreddit. “I really hate fighting Chaos and being forced to fight them sucks and I usually just drop out when the enemy switches. You can choose Tyranids only missions if you don’t like Chaos so why can’t we choose which enemy we face in Siege mode?”
No-one expects the developers at Saber Interactive to release a Tyranid-only version of Siege Mode; if they did, perhaps the Chaos version wouldn’t have enough players to form a healthy matchmaking pool, such is the preference for the Tyranids. It is what it is, I suppose. But the Tyranids vs Chaos debate in Space Marine 2 does spark fun conversations around the enemy factions we’re expecting to see in the already confirmed Space Marine 3.
What sort of challenge might the Necrons, which everyone expects will turn up, present the Ultramarines? Could a different type of traitor legion pose a more interesting challenge? What if the plague-ridden Death Guard were in the game, and players were forced to contend with skin-melting disease as well as bolter fire? And what if the Orks return after starring in Space Marine 1? Could they become the Tyranid-equivalent enemy faction everyone prefers to fight against?
For now, we’re left with the Tyranids and Chaos, and the ongoing challenge of having to contend with both in Siege mode whether we like it or not. Looking ahead, there’s a lot of exciting content coming to Space Marine 2. While Patch 9 will focus on balance changes only, Patch 10 adds a new Chaos vs Chaos PvP mode, the new Power Axe melee weapon, and the new Techmarine class. Check out all the Space Marine 2 Patch 10 details here.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
