Whee! Dawn of War II has been released at last, and I’ve already reviewed it over here. Naturally we’ll be providing with an even more taut and cogent RPS opinion later in the week, but if you really must have a numeral attached to the game, then that’s your link. Still in a quandary? Then perhaps you should watch the Eldar action trailer, which we’ve conveniently embedded after the jump.
Are you going to purchase Dawn of War II?
Related Stories:
@RuySan
It’s not optional, and you can’t play offline at all. It requires you to login to Live to play the single player game. Oh and it has Steam as well. Yes Steam is DRM but at least you can play offline (when it works :P) and without a disk. But for this you MUST login to Live or you can not play the game at all in any way. Why, why, why have a game that has steam and live and needs you to use both?!
Hmm, this game had passed completely under my radar, but now I will seriously consider getting it. More RPG (though light), more story and more characters is always a plus for me.
RuySan: You must have had a different experience than most with GFWL…
In Gears of War PC (it was on sale for next to nothing, I wanted to see what the hoopla was all about), the install of the game ends with an error due to GFWL, and the automatic update of GFWL fails repeatedly in different ways and must be manually restarted many times over. I think it took me an hour from start of install until I could start playing the game.
Also, you have to be constantly logged in to GFWL or you can’t save your progress in GoW at all. If your network connection dies, you will have to stop playing and wait for it to work again – if you choose to continue playing you will have to replay the same sections next time you start.
And finally, it was so ineptly made that if the game crashes while saving a checkpoint, your single save game on the remote GFWL server risks getting corrupted, and you will have to restart the whole game from the beginning again! Happened to me 75% through the game…
> don’t know why everyone is always giving BJ’s to steam
Because it makes a huge collection of new and classic PC games conveniently available maybe?
@Azradesh
Fallout could be played without logging to Live. I had the choice. If you wanted achievments you had to be online. Steam, even if its offline, it’s still stupid DRM. When i but something, i like it to be ready to be used at anytime. Like a book or a DVD. Who can predict for certain that in 10 years Valve is still around or hasn’t been bought by another company?
Can’t quite resist linking this:
http://xkcd.com/546/
@Tei :
unfortunately that theory doesn’t pan out : the campaign units are completely different in strength, abilities etc compared to the multiplayer element. Relic has just been very lazy when it comes to the singleplayer maps.
I can however follow their reasoning for releasing the multiplayer aspect with only a few maps, and add more later after having analyzed the player feedback.
@Lars
I do find GfWL, completely useless, and i would prefer it to not exist at all. But like i said, my experience with Fallout 3 was harmless. Maybe it varies from game to game.
What i don’t like is this new tendency of forcing steam on people. If people want to buy games there, fine. But i prefer retail, so i’m annoyed that i have to have this extra app taking space on my computer, and having the game startup last a little longer.
Maybe is posible to install a snifer, like Ethereal, and analize the communication from your computer to the GFWL servers, and use some programmable proxy to mimick that communication, so the game become playable offline. But I doubt will be this easy, and I suspect I will cypher the communication in a way to stop people from using linux routers to hack the achievements and things of his consoles, and will share the same protocol. Anyway theres no harm to install ethereal and save few minutes of TCP to see what it shows…
“Steam, even if its offline, it’s still stupid DRM. When i but something, i like it to be ready to be used at anytime. Like a book or a DVD. Who can predict for certain that in 10 years Valve is still around or hasn’t been bought by another company?”
Aha. That old chestnut.
@RuySan
Fair enough. I DO share your worry that Steam will die one day and take a big chunk of our “gaming cultural heritage” with it, despite their assurances that they will somehow have the time and resources to make and publish a patch if they go under.
I’m also angry at publishers who regionally restrict online sales (see Bansama’s comment). Take Ubisoft for instance. I’ve wanted to play the classic Beyond Good and Evil for a long time and was overjoyed it was coming to steam, and cheaply too. But no, “Ubisoft games are not available on Steam in Europe”. :(
You know, now that I’ve thought about this… if DOW2 has GFWL AND Steam, I’ll probably pass on it.
@RuySan
Yes Fallout 3 can be played that way, I know, I have it. I’m not talking about Fallout 3, I’m talking about Dawn of War II. They did the right thing for Fallout 3, I’ve no idea why they went back to the same system they used in Gears of War on the PC.
@RuySan
Fallout3 has no multiplayer aspect so it can’t be compared with other GFWL titles on the PC. When it IS utilised by FO3 it proves itself to be utterly broken: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/01/27/fallout-3-new-content-adventures-in-gfwl/
GFWL has proven to be nothing other than an impediment to me, in DoW2 and GTAIV. I don’t need ANY of it’s services. I’ve been playing DoW quite happily with several friends in several countries using Hamachi but now will have to registry crack to get that working again only to face a 30ms maximum latency thanks to GFWL. WHY? what is the sense of this?
GFWL is an unnecessary layer of obfuscation.
Getting back on topic, I hear that the Tyranid mission and their impact on the campaign map are very exciting. I can’t wait to get home and work my way through the rest of the single-player.
MUCH later tonight will be experiments with co-op and multiplayer skirmishes… if we can get the multiplater to work, that is. YAY
“It’s not optional, and you can’t play offline at all. It requires you to login to Live to play the single player game.”
Whaaat? F**k THAT! Guess I’m not buying this game after all, then. :(
God, PC gaming circa 2008/9 sucks balls sometimes.
Bought it. playing the singleplayer right now.
Loving it so far
{small voice}I kinda like GFWL, but I think that’s because {even smaller voice}I’m an achievements whore{/even smaller voice}{/small voice}
Nah. Sorry, but if I want Diablo I’ll play Diablo games, if I want tactics games I’ll play tactics games and if I want RTS I’ll play RTS. I’m depressed rather than excited by trends toward what one person (here?) excellently dubbed Real-Time Babysitting.
Kudos to them for identifying a problem and blazing new trail to try to solve it. The lead designer’s interview with Tom Chick is fascinating and…pugnacious. I hope they pick up more new customers than they lose, but in they process they’ve lost my interest. Fortunately I’m not one of their core anyway; I picked up DoW somewhere along the way because I liked some bits of it, but I haven’t been really into a Relic game since Homeworld and sort of Homeworld 2.
@Paul
:D There are achievements on STEAM already
I’ve liked GFWL ever since I signed in and realised it had my 360 achievments in it. There. I’ve said it.
And I’ve managed to fix Steam, it appears, so will be playing this later.
Hi Jim,
I found it interesting that you chose to focus mainly on the single player campaign, so that your commentary on multiplayer was relatively brief. Especially since it sounds like they’re two completely different games.
Then again, anyone with a passing interest in the multiplayer component could have participated in the beta over the last month or so, so I can’t complain too loudly…
Already have it, that beta alone was worth the cash already.
Amazon delivered mine to my work this afternoon. I will most certainly be cracking GFWL right out of it as I’m about to move house and will probably lose my internet connection for a few weeks.
I played the beta a bunch but I’m passing on this one. I tend to focus on the competitive aspect of games whether I mean to or not, and I don’t have a lot of faith in Relic’s balancing.
In a single beta patch they took Eldar from a little OP if you had good micro to really tough to get any wins if you had really good micro skills. In the same patch Orks got a bunch of nerfs cause people said they were OP, but then after the patch Tyranids turned into being OP to the point of being a joke. They also did across the board damage drops for EVERYONE, and made huge changes to how the entire economy system works.
Balancing an RTS takes some time and finesse, and Relic changing the economy system and reversing the balance of the races does not win my vote of confidence. I don’t wanna spend $50 on a game that could play completely differently 6 months later. And way too high a percentage of the Eldar units are gun platforms..boorrinngg. Where mah harlequins and wraithguard at.
Well, after dragging my computer to work today to actually install the thing (and a bunch of other updates and games that require online activation), then home again….
I seem to be able to play the SP campaign fine… LIVE seems to work fine offline, as does steam… im able to stop and start as I wish, and im unlocking achievements – although it appears my access to the collectors edition stuff has been cut off.
Im not saying im happy with the system, just that its possible to work within it.
Mine also arrived from Amazon today. I did my duty as a playtester but I can’t say I enjoyed the game itself. I can only assume I bought it out of habit, as I play the original and CoH online with friends.
Hopefully it won’t be too long until a mod comes out which lets you delete turrets.
I want to wait until the Steam price becomes more reasonable.
You know, I’ve been waiting on this until I knew what the Europeans thought of it.
I played the beta a lot with friends, and it was excellent when it worked. The ‘when’ is the operative word here.
It was (is) flakey as hell, with 70% of the games I played ending with either someone crashing out, or the whole game locking up. Hard reboots galore!
If you have a AMD CPU apparently they didn’t think to test those!
Not to mention the dodgy matchmaking which would occasionally just leave you waiting for hours if you let it.
The claim is that all was going to be fixed for release, but I’ll wait for the MP demo to confirm this first.
It’ll probably take a couple of patches.
Also I’m in no rush so I’ll probably wait for a sale.
Oh, Play.com. You jokers, you! Hah. Hahaha.
AHAHAHA.
Already arrived, there’s no turning back now! Unless, um, I return it to Play.
Pre-ordered. Amazon Prime. £22.99. Steelbook. Arrived today.
Preordered it on Amazon, it’s on its way in the mail.
From the beta I could see that there was a good game here and I had some enjoyable games with it. However, the matchmaking was absolutely appalling in that it never would select the right level of player for me to take on. In 1v1 games I was initially put up against fairly easy opponents. After a few games this quickly flipped to the complete opposite and I was taking on level 14 players. One time this even happened on my first attempt to use Eldar. 3v3s had a similar problem which was exacerbated with randoms not playing as a team (think playing L4D with randoms but even worse.)
Single player looked interesting, but the review hints that it quickly becomes repetitive. Lack of requiring different strategies is really disheartening, and I expect that this may follow through to the multiplayer in some ways too.
I’m not so bothered by taking away the importance of base building, but I feel that Company of Heroes struck the better balance, both with the base themselves and the defensive build options on offer. The fact that points had to be linked is also something that I preferred, as DOW2 you seem to be darting around after the points and with fewer units it becomes a nuisance. Instead, COH had a shifting front-line where the combat took place.
I expect it will be a bargain bin buy for me.
I don’t think i am going to buy it, Relic has moved into a determined direction with this game, which is more far away of my tastes.
Pity, two of my favorites games are from them: Homeworld an CoH.
My net scrubbed out on me last night so I was unable to register my key code, which was a bit of crap. Today I should be able to play it, otherwise it will continue to sit uselessly on my shelf beckoning to me.
Doesn’t feel like 40K to me, and I wasn’t impressed by the beta. Think I’ll wait for the inevitable expansions and possibly pick it up when it hits gold edition.
Just to clarify – you don’t have to be connected to the internet for single player, you can create an offline profile (appears I can’t connect to GFWL through my uni firewall). Lacks achievements, but it works.
The single player campaign thus far (my guy is level 16 now) is quite enjoyable- I’m very fond of the random loot drops, although less so of variability in resupply drops- I get bored if i can’t use det packs on mobs. And the repeated incursions on the same crappy diamond map are putting me off the game. There’s always a boss at the end, which is fine. What’s less fine is the boss summoning 500 smaller beasties in a style that while quintessentially Tyranid is not really cricket, when the big guy himself decides to turn invisible and invincible every 5 seconds while summoning more little bastards and laughing off the hits like I do in the early parts of the level :(
*doh?* The question on the point is: Why dont use Relic the same online-/ key- / buddysystem like in Company of Heroes? Works very well (when the master servers are stable). I don´t understand the change to GfW (Steam is fine for me).
I’ve been playing it for two days. It feels fun at first then you realize their design philosophy here:
Keep everything that is fun and easy to get into about a tactical game.
This means: suppressing fire, rallies, enemies breaking morale when overpowered, orbital strikes, lots of fancy buff options at all times.
It also means: take every tactical repercussion out: line of fire (seriously, your commander rushes in close range in the line of fire and none of his dudes hit him a single bit? What, are bolters coded to avoid Blood Angel Red? Someone with actual WH40K lore knowledge tell me if this is how the tabletop game is also played), morale of your dudes never breaks (SPACE MARINES! RR! FEARLESS!! RR!!! Again, tabletop lore, what’s the call? I can at least understand if this is the case) and countless other little things that would make sense being there but are left out to make the game easier.
It seems like an uncomplicated single player game. Enemies don’t tactically expand. They’re just mobs waiting to be aggroed. They don’t attempt to recapture nodes. There are no enemy commanders besides ‘end bosses’. (What sort of commander doesn’t enter the field until all his units are dead?!)This isn’t a strategy game really.
What I felt playing it was that it’s fun to see everything go explodey and stuff, but it also is cheap that I don’t actually have to formulate tactics and I don’t get any repercussions for bad tactics. It’s just a loadout min-maxing thing primarily and the rest is click click click until everything dies.
More bad design options: when you lose a map, you don’t lose the game, you keep the level ups and do the map again. This isn’t even explained away some some token technobabble oh we extracted you on the brink of death with our warp teleporters, try again. You just respawn at the ship.
So, besides multiplayer which I haven’t played, the single player seems to be broken. It’s fun to watch and somewhat fun to play in the beginning few hours, but it’s not a deep game and it doesn’t reward tactics. If a WH40K game isn’t deep and tactical, what good is it?
Also, since I might not have played the tabletop version of the game but I’ve been around people that have for a decade and I’ve also read a lot of comics and white dwarfs and stuff about it, is it just me or is the aesthetic style completely misrepresented here? The better illustrations on codexes and comics and mags of the WH40K universe were pretty horrifying and baroque and generally foreboding. The game actually looks very friendly and the units are cute more than anything.
Steam: €49.99
Random Belgian Retailer: €44.99
Play.com: €29.99
Steam is so ridiculously overpriced I don’t get why *anyone* would buy from it.
Preordered, downloaded, played, loved. Does seem a little sparse, but I’m holding Relic to their promises of TF2-style content releases.
Not exactly surprised by the negative comments, though I can’t imagine myself sharing any of the sentiments. We all knew months ago that this game would be divisive. Tiny little problems nag at me from time to time, but the fact is that I can’t remember precisely what they are at the moment. I’m having a little too much of that… whatsit. Starts with an F?
Matter of fact, I’m gonna go back to it right now.
BarkingDog> That dangerously reminds me of stupid WoW dungeons, with console-style boss tactics.
Didn’t like the beta at all so skipping it, despite having DoW and COH with all the expansion packs. The gameplay change is a change too far.
Helm>
“It seems like an uncomplicated single player game. Enemies don’t tactically expand. They’re just mobs waiting to be aggroed. They don’t attempt to recapture nodes. There are no enemy commanders besides ‘end bosses’. (What sort of commander doesn’t enter the field until all his units are dead?!)This isn’t a strategy game really.”
This doesn’t make any sense. The missions in DoW2 singleplayer campaign show a linear progress, not cyclic or circular or however one may define a multiplayer map. IT’s simply not what they wanted for the SP, probably (end of HELM’s answer) because in that case single player would have felt like a boring useless tutorial for the multiplayer campaigns, and that’s NEVER GOOD, cause it diminishes the beauty of a story and a unique non-competitive interaction
Give me a Turn Based 40k game where I can recreate my Tyranid army and actually go turn based and I’m all there. Maybe I’m just a dullard, but RTS doesn’t allow my slow brain the same joy I get from moving my little figures around when it’s my turn…
A Pity too. I’ve heard great things about this. I may pick it up just for the SP campaign, but I can’t see myself really MPing it up at all, lest I want to just get destroyed over and over until I’m so frustrated I have to buy another mouse.
Hmm, I mostly agree with Jim’s review, but the biggest gripe i have with the game so far is still the fact that Space Marines no longer have English accents.
DoW2 lost me as a customer due to the awfulness of GFWL and the seeming dumbing-down of the game whilst I was hoping for it to be given the depth of Company of Heroes.
The game is so reliant on twitch micro-play but with so little actual tactical options that Relic have pro-actively invited horrid balance issues. Orks have never been over-powered and an Ork player was lucky to win unless opponents disconnected or were beginners, but STILL they were nerfed for reasons unexplicable.
The racial diversity is GONE. In DoW: Orks were for massing, Space Marines were the all-rounders with the best morale, Eldar had speed and specialists, Chaos was extremely strategic. Races added in expansions were mostly unique too. In DoW 2, the most diversity is simply putting similiar units with similiar functions on a different level of the tech tree and there is so few of them with so few abilities, except the flavour of the month race(never Orks).
DoW was very simplistic compared with CoH, so I was glad to hear the news that DoW 2 would be taking a lot from CoH. It hasn’t though, if anything it’s even more dumbed down than the original DoW which I heartily reccomend fans stick to if they want a reasonably fair game and less griefing twats with voice chat.
“Relic tech support don’t tend to be pricks. Try again.”
Here’s my problem, it took them the whole of the beta not to help, now it is over and I can’t test if it will work without buying the game, which I’m not going to do incase they can’t fix it. See my issue?
I picture Jim saying “YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED!” in his best Stallone impression before submitting EG reviews.
GFWL really, really pissed me off in the beta. (I don’t have an Xbox, so dealing with a random MS service was even more ridiculous.)
@Helm: Regarding the tabletop rules, Space Marines are fearless. As in, specifically “Fearless;” the tendency of squads to panic and fleeing from the field of battle is a mechanic in the game, and is something Space Marines have a specific protection against.
I wouldn’t hold out much hope for patch support even though they promised to do better. DoW was a total mess as the balance got shot to hell every expansion.