We have contact: W40k Space Marine

It looks like THQ is really going to town on the Warhammer 40k license.

Rockpapershotgun found a video of the still-in-development 40k-meets-Gears of War-title.  Buzzwords aside, it looks to be an enjoyable experience so far.  I am worried about a few things, though, which I mentioned in the comments.  The video is definitely worth a watch, though.

Dumbing down the Intellectual Property is not a good idea.  Space Marines use bolters and bolt-pistols, which fire a lot of little exploding rockets.  This is not what the Space Marine had, in the video.  A commentor was right to call the autogun a torch.  I'm not quite certain why they would forsake ranged combat, anyway.  Yes, Space Marines have a tactical advantage over most opponants, in hand-to-hand.  That is not always the case.  Genestealers, for instance, tear them up.  Which is why being able to effectively fire is something which shouldn't be just arbitrarily stripped away.  Give it context- a lack of ammunition.  Hell, having a power sword - or better yet, lightning claws, which would remove the ability to fire at all whatsoever.

Naturally, I'd love it if you were able to pick and choose what kind of fighting style you'd prefer.  I'd love me some lightning claw based slaughtering.

I need to see more of the combat to be sure of this, but it looks a lot like the conventional 'one on one' group combat system that Legacy of Kain and God of War used.  There was that one scene where a chaos guardsman attacked the Marine while he was in a cinemaction, but I'm not sure how effective the damage was.  Even though there was a red bloodspray, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless the guardsman was wielding a phase-blade or something crazy.

Essentially, there needs to be more ricochets going on.  Power Armor is amazing, and should be treated as such.  Sparks flying from being shot at, instead of the shots missing you all the time.  That is how bad-ass Space Marines are.

The slow-motion 300-esque 'Cinemaction' kills are going to get old, and I hope they don't rely on them through the entire game.  Unless they change often enough to keep things fresh and neat.  Fallout 3 may have this problem, too, with their targeting system.

So far, Space Marine looks as visceral as 40k combat should be.  A lot of what we saw just needs to make sense, before it's released.  Hopefully THQ will have plenty of time to polish this baby into a quality title.