For a few moments, me and my two teammates stood on the edge of a building in sheer awe as we watched a horde of Tyranids besiege a stronghold. Hundreds of monsters stream across a long bridge – darting past the flaming debris of destroyed Astra Militarum tanks. Red lasers from positioned snipers glaze across waves of Termagants, futile in their numbers. 

While this sounds like some sort of epic endgame cinematic, it’s not – this is just one of the many epic set pieces presented during one of the Operations Mission in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II. On the surface, these additional three-player PvE missions could feel like ‘extra’ content to indulge in outside of the main story campaign – but what you’ll actually find here is a series of compelling standalone challenges, class choices, and an impressive progression system that makes Operations Mode feel like an entirely different game grafted onto the campaign we expected. 

The team at Xbox Wire are all big Warhammer 40,000 fans, and what better way to test our mettle as a trio than getting stuck into one of these missions?

In Operations Missions, you’ll be able to play as your own custom Space Marine, and choose from one of six classes: Tactical, Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark, Sniper, and Heavy, each offering unique loadouts, perks and an ultimate ability. The Vanguard, for example, comes with the Grapnel Launcher ability that lets you propel through the air towards an enemy and kick them, which feels just as cool as it sounds every time you do it. My teammates chose the Sniper and Heavy classes – the former’s ultimate ability is a Camo Cloak to allow powerful shots from afar, while the Heavy provides a powerful barrier that can shield the team from ranged damage.

Before you enter an Operation, the Battle Barge serves as a base for you to prepare for the mission ahead. The Armouring Hall offers a robust suite of customization options for your Space Marines. Here, you can make tweaks to your loadouts for each class and up to three weapon slots within them, comprising a main weapon, a sidearm and a melee option. Completing Operations will earn XP, which you can then use to unlock cooler weapons, add perks to customize your playstyle, and access new skills that’ll aid you in the more difficult battles to come.

Another wonderful detail is that even in an area that is essentially just a place for you to look through menus, the attention to detail in the design is incredible. The authenticity of the models, the idle animations of NPCs – units wandering about, repairing equipment, a Skiitari unit quietly blessing a pair of massive rockets in a corner. Everything feels built with attention and care, to create a believable and immersive Warhammer 40,000 setting. 

You can also unlock and create new cosmetic designs for each of your Marines across each class. Fans of the series will get to unlock and choose from multiple canon Chapters of Space Marines – but customization goes far deeper. Each individual section of armour can be tweaked to your heart’s desire. So, if like me, your IRL Space Marine army is painted purple, you’ll have all the tools to (re)create your dream units.

Organizing your loadout is key as, once you enter an Operation, you’ll find that these missions offer a serious challenge even on their easiest difficulty. The Tyranid swarms are relentless, frankly, so running classes and loadouts that complement one another will make for a much easier time on the battlefield. As you’d expect, there’s a lot of different enemy types to consider – you’ll blitz through squishy enemies with ease, but some of the bigger foes require a bigger beating and may favor different classes taking them on.

Stomping through the mission as a chunky Marine feels extremely satisfying, and the weapons on offer – from standard issue Bolt Rifles to numerous melee options, connect with all the brutality you’d expect and deserve from Space Marine II. That said, the gallery of finisher animations is where the combat really shines, offering intense, gory and downright awesome views of your Marine decapitating a horrible creature, vehemently beating it to a pulp with its own severed claw, among other ends that are almost too gruesome to describe.

The Operations themselves are far more varied than you might go in expecting – with multiple objectives in each one. At one stage, my team is ordered to stand our ground through waves of ferocious enemies before a Hive Tyrant emerges. Rather than gunning it down, we’re told to do something less expected – lay an explosive trap, and watch on in awe as a giant stone statue topples and crushes it. Once again, another epic spectacle that you’d expect as some sort of climax, but in Space Marine II, this eruptive scene is just the benchmark for spectacle.

The statue tactic is only part of the solution – the creature survives, and the mission culminates in a boss fight against the Tyrant. The fight feels exhausting in the best possible way, sprinting and dodging around waves of unrelenting attacks as you desperately chip away at its health bar in a multi-stage fight. Space Marine II does everything is possibly can to make you feel like a badass, but you’re also not invincible – these big bosses will make you struggle.

The sheer level of effort put into Operations is kind of a wonder to behold – you could feasibly expect this to be a whole other game, or a DLC expansion, but instead we’re being blessed by the Machine God with a second strand to Space Marine II that feels just as vital as its bombastic Campaign. And we haven’t even played the PvP multiplayer mode yet…

Assemble your squad and prepare to take on the horde in Space Marine II, launching September 9 for Xbox Series X|S.