Those who know Warhammer: 40.000 from previous encounters probably don’t need an introduction to this brutal universe, but for those who don’t here’s a quick introduction. You will play with the Ultra Marines, a group from the elite Space Marines who solely has the job of protecting the Empire of their emperor and vanquish anyone who opposes his rule. But a small group turned their back on their brethren and formed the Chaos Marines after they came in contact with the Chaos Gods. This happened many thousands years ago, but still they fight against the so called false emperor and wipe out world after world. Your job as an Ultra Marine to stop them from doing this to Ruhr III, the planet you will fight on.

The singleplayer of the game exists out of 15 levels who are tied together with beautiful cinematics. These short movies quickly show that they only way to survive is to fight and kill. While you are making progress in the campaign and vanquish enemies, you will unlock different units and weapons. You start with just the scouts, but after a couple of missions you will be able to use every unit from the Space Marines arsenal, including the Dreadnought and Land Raider. A downside is that you get pre-made groups and you can only change the weapons and ammunition. Another negative point is the anonymity of your units. Because they don’t have a name, you don’t start to grow a bond with them and when one of them dies you don’t really care.

Unlike Dawn of War on the PC, this game is not an RTS but a TBS. This means you will only be able to move your units in a limited way and have to wait until the enemy has finished his moves. Each units has a certain amount of points and depending on what you do some of these Action Points go off. This can happen because you’re shooting on an enemy or because you’re running towards cover. What you can also use is the so called Overwatch. You can leave a certain amount of points to your units and when the enemy units come in range while they are moving, your men will open fire on them. How big the damage will be depends on how many points your soldiers had.

Another addition are the destructible environments. An enemy is hiding behind a wall? No problem, just shoot some rockets at it! This is just one of the examples on how you will be able to use your surroundings in your favour. Of course the enemy will try to do the same to your units. The benefit of this feature is that you can’t just hang back and wait for the enemy to come. You need to be aggressive and use tactics to win the game. What can give some irritation after a while is the annoying camera. Because you see the battlefield in isometric perspective, you don’t always see if an enemy hides behind a wall.

Besides the singleplayer, you also have a multiplayer that supports up to eight players. You can play as the Space- and Chaos Marines and try to wipe each other out. A big difference with the campaign is that you have only a limited amount of time to make your moves. This is to make sure the game doesn’t stop because some player decided to go away for a while. You can play on nine different maps, but while there is some difference in setting they mostly look the same. Another downside is that there aren’t many strategy players on the PSP, so finding a quick match isn’t always easy.

On the area of graphics it only partially succeeded. While the units resemble the ones of the table top game perfectly, the areas you play in look a bit boring. You will see several of the same structures reappearing through out the game which isn’t really positive. With sound you have the same problem. The voice-overs of the units are perfect, but the music is not so great. It isn’t that bad that you’ll turn it off, but a bit more variation would’ve been nice.