PSA: Consider cranking up Space Marine 2's difficulty for co-op

Hey there, I won't keep you long: If you're playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2's campaign with some friends, are you finding it too easy? My friend and I reached that point after the first few missions. I was hosting the lobby and had difficulty set to "Normal" like I do in 90% of games.

During the introductory mission that you have to play alone, Normal felt just right, but as soon as another player joined, we noticed the Tyranids couldn't put up a decent fight. At risk of getting bored, we decided to step up to the second-highest campaign difficulty in Space Marine 2, Veteran. Turns out, Veteran isn't so much a step up from Normal as a massive standing leap: Not only were we downgraded from three armor pips to just two (essentially nerfing our survivability by a third), but enemies got way more aggressive.

In a matter of minutes, the Discord chat went from mostly dead air to a cacophony of "Oh crap," "Jeez he almost got me," and "F*ck I went down." I'd gotten used to mostly ignoring a horde of small aliens when a bigger enemy was around because they dealt very little chip damage, but on Veteran, Tyranid swarms can bleed me dry in seconds. Veteran difficulty also demands that I actually pay attention to and parry those melee attacks from higher-tier Tyranid warriors and Heresy snipers, because just two or three hits from those are enough to make me bite the dust.

There are four total difficulty levels for the campaign:

• Easy
• Normal
• Veteran
• Angel of Death

Once enemies were strong and smart enough to actually kill us, we realized just how frickin' brutal Space Marine 2's HP situation is. The only way to heal is to pop an exceedingly rare medical stim or execute an enemy in the seconds after losing health to earn it back. One exception: the host player controlling Titus, and only that player, has the power to gain health and recharge shields on a long cooldown—meanwhile my co-op buds are stuck with Chairon and Gadriel's abilities that I can't even remember because they aren't as useful.

Shields recharge, but it's not uncommon to run around for half the mission with twitching anxiety as you glance at the inch of health you have left. If anyone goes down three times the mission instantly fails, but thankfully, you come back at a checkpoint fully restored.

We haven't given the highest diffculty level, Angel of Death, a shot yet and I'm not sure we will. Veteran is tough enough to draw a sweat, but we're not actually dying very often, which I take as a good sign that we've hit a sweet spot for our group. If you give it a shot and everything immediately feels off, it's thankfully simple to switch back to whatever difficulty you want in the pause menu before the next mission (but only the host can do this).

It's also worth noting that difficulty levels for the co-op Operations mode are separate from the campaign parameters. We played an Operation last night on the lowest difficulty and it was as hard, if not harder, than campaign Veteran. So beware, and happy hunting.