Space Marines in the Warhammer 40,000 universe are awesome. They’re stronger than normal humans, better armed and more armored than regular soldiers. They also border on immortal since they age far slower than normal humans and are far harder to kill. Yet, when you get down to the characters in the stories, they still feel very human even though they most assuredly aren’t completely human.

There’s a whole wealth of usually ultraviolent directions with actual stories that a game based solely on this general faction of the universe can be. That’s why I was really excited when I first heard that there was a shooter that would be allowing you to play as a Space Marine.

Ultramarines follows a 12-man squad of Ultramarines as they are sent to respond to a distress call from an Imperial shrine that’s guarded by a different legion of space marine, the Imperial Fists. The squad is predominantly rookie-based and are looking for combat so that they can join the list of veterans in the Ultramarines. Soon some realize there is something wrong about this mission as they start running into the forces of Chaos that surround and, in some cases, infest the Imperial holy ground…

Flight of the Eisenstein was the first book in the Horus Heresy series to not follow the Luna Wolves. It also introduced a lot of great characters. Garro: Oath of Moment is an audiobook that follows one of the few survivors of loyalists that were in the traitor legions, who was also one of the main characters in FotE.

The release of the first Warhammer 40,000 feature-length straight-to-DVD movie, simply titled Ultramarines, is coming up. To be more precise, the movie’s worldwide release, according to the film’s website, will be November 29, 2010.

In the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, there is at least one pet group in the Imperial Guard, Chaos Marines and the Space Marines factions. While you look at the novels set in the franchise, there really isn’t much of a focus on any one group. However, once you get beyond the fiction and into the tabletop, console, handheld and computer games, the pet groups start getting attention.

At the moment, there are only a handful of Warhammer 40,000 games that feature Space Marines that don’t have the Ultramarines in there somewhere…

For the first time since Tales of Heresy, we are delving into a book of short stories that are following the legions of the Adeptus Astartes (better known as the Space Marines).

Space Marines are inherently fun. After all, they’re living walls of muscle and armor. They excel at causing complete death, destruction and mayhem on a battlefield and that’s before any of the really big guns (like Dreadnoughts) come into play.

However, there are things that make them harder to write about.

Not much information was given in terms of gameplay. What we do know are some of the ideas of classes that you could play and descriptions of each chapter that’s been revealed to be part of the game. Hopefully they reveal more about the gameplay. The possibility of being able to play as a space marine of any kind is well worth the wait. Either way, if the previous history of Warhammer 40,000 tabletop RPGs are any indicator, the game should have very similar gameplay mechanics to both Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.

Fans of the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 universes have heard about rumors of a Warhammer 40,000 movie for years. Soon, we may have something to look at if plans come to pass.

Now it seems there might be a straight-to-DVD motion-capture film titled Ultramarines.

The first sign of hope was when London-based production company Codex Pictures got the rights to the movie a few years ago. It was further solidified into an eventuality as it acquired Dan Abnett, veteran writer to the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 battlefields, as the screenwriter. The company also reported on the movie’s site that Martyn Pick would be the might-be movie’s director.

Title: The Horus Heresy: Battle for the AbyssAuthor: Ben CounterPublisher: The Black LibraryRelease Date: September 2008Price: $7.99Rating: One thumb up and one thumb sideways, 80/100, B-, *** out of five.Pros: It’s the first book that all events happen after Horus’s betrayal of the Imperium so it’s all new. The story never stops moving. The feel of the book is incredibly faithful to the feel of Dawn of War and Dark Heresy.Cons: Character development could be done better. It could also take more time to develop the events more.Overall: This book in a way is lackluster but it’s still pretty good and a lot of fun to read.

Battle for the Abyss in a way is an incredible installment of The Horus Heresy series. In other ways it could have been so much better.

Click through for the full review…