By Alec Meer on February 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm.
Dawn of War II, sequel to Relic’s much-expanded Warhammer 40,000 RTS, was released to shelves and fat pipes just a few days ago. After a long weekend snuggling up to it, here’s wot I think of its explodey delights.
According to the Sacred Creed of games writers who genuinely care about games writing, it is not the done thing to dedicate several paragraphs of a review to a game’s graphics and sound. Books shall not be judged by covers, pop bands not by their singers’ facial hair and a man not by what socks he is wearing. When it comes to Dawn of War II however, it’s incredibly difficult not to dwell obsessively on its excellent aesthetics. Once in a while, it’s fine to be shallow.
Dawn of War II is one of very few (perhaps even the only) strategy games I’ve played in which I could swear blind those little guys are truly fighting. They’re not just going through the motions, falling over at the right moments and flailing with intangible swords at a handful of pixels somewhere near their target. This is proper, meaty carnage. Melee troops collide with bone-crunching thuds, grenades scatter corpses outward in an orbiting ring of death that smashes through walls and vegetation, while dozens of subtle,tiny animations grant your troops a visible grim resolve: men fighting and responding to the fight, rather than robotically awaiting your instruction. Its graphics are not especially high-tech – instead they’re precise, artful, thoughtful and absolutely Warhammer 40,000.
Even when playing the fortieth near-identical mission in DOW2’s oddball but extraordinarily compulsive singleplayer game, the ennui was kept at bay by the simple, giddy joy of coolly cueing up and then watching the stunning slaughter. This is a game that lives up to the auto-mythology of Space Marines: the brutality and invulnerability the fiction has always claimed of these quasi-religious, ultra-militaristic warrior-fanatics, but that they’ve so rarely displayed in any game adaption, whether on the tabletop or on the screen.
In DOW2’s single player, a small handful of Blood Ravens can manfully hold off a veritable horde of Orks or Tyranids: in the course of one level, your dozen-odd men will decimate hundreds. While in DOW1 they were common, dispoable grunts, here each and everyone one of them is Schwarzenegger in power-armour. Or Terminators in Terminator armour, to recklessly mix a couple of fictions.
In multiplayer, they’re much closer to their more lightweight DOW1 incarnation. That they’re such powerhouses in singleplayer is key to how that mode works and suceeds, and how it differs from both DOW1 and from the rest of the genre to which it in theory belongs. The Diablo comparison has come up often, but it’s perhaps a little closer to Dungeon Siege. You’ve a party rather than a character, and there’s a reasonable degree of autonomy to them. Not that they’ll win the day left to their own devices, but each of your four squads (chosen each mission from a pool of six) can generally hold the line until you hop over to them and activate one of their joyously devastating special attacks.
It’ll be interesting to hear what favourite units you lot settled on: it seems to me that the spectacular allure of the rocket-jumping Assault Marines (wooosh-BAM!) and, eventually, the gloriously cataclysmic Dreadnought is so much that, like me, you’ll find yourself neglecting some perfectly capable but less exciting squads. Thanks to canny balancing, each squad is of equal usefulness of the field – the snipey, frail Scouts are as lethal as several tons of armoured mech if you use ‘em right – so it really does come down to playing favourites.
Not that it matters. The reason to play is to entertain yourself, and ascertaining the attack combinations that both deal out the most damage in the quickest time and most delight your eyes is the lynchpin of that. In singleplayer it is an action-RPG more than it is an RTS, but surprisingly the desire for more experience points and loot isn’t its backbone. Part of that is that you know in advance what the main reward for each mission will be. This neatly removes the obsessive hunt for stuff during the mission. You know full well you’re going to get that shiny prize anyway, so you can relax and enjoy the fighting that much more.
Bar a few attempts at scripted boldness in the game’s twilight hours, that every mission plays out the same is a glaring and baffling problem. Carve through a swarm of Eldar, Orks or Tyranids, restocking on special attack ammo and fallen troops en route, then fight a boss creature with a ton of hitpoints and a couple of area of effect abilities. Again and again. It only works because it looks and feels so splendidly visceral. Basically, it’s appealing to the same part of the brain that makes otherwise clever people watch 24: things get killed, stuff goes boom and there’s always some new menace waiting in the wings. But while Kiefer Sutherland has arguably outstayed his frowning welcome after seven years of torturing foreigners, this is lean enough to get away with what’s otherwise really short-sighted design. Inevitably there’ll be an expansion pack, but Relic simply cannot get away with another campaign along the same lines.
As it is, the nearly tactictless singleplayer mode is going to outrage anyone who appreciated DOW1 for its strategy rather than its fiction. You’ll fall into a pattern of special attacks (wooosh-BAM!) so devastating that there’s really no need to experiment with anything else. It’s a real shame you can’t change the difficulty between missions; partway through, Medium was generally a bit too easy for me, but I didn’t want to start over and thus abandon all the cool kit I’d collected. It’d work a bit better if, rather than being 15-odd hours of progression, it was something you could drop into to have a capsule Warhammer 40,000 experience whenever you wanted and on the terms and difficulty you wanted. Something like Left 4 Dead, really. Today I want a hardcore challenge, but tomorrow I might just want to blitz through for giggles.
The multiplayer itself I found to be weirdly less engaging. It’s a curious hybrid of DOW2’s enjoyably shallow and simplistic singleplayer and DOW1’s traditional commanding and conquering, and comes up a bit lacking on both counts. It shares the singleplayer’s wondrous explosiveness, but not the invincibility you feel when you’re decking dozens of AI Tyranids. The Company of Heroes-derived cover system, something that’s often entirely optional in singleplayer, grows in importance hugely, and vehicles enter the fray properly, so it’s bound to be a big hit in online-land. It’s just that, with the limited troop numbers and types and the hugely reduced base-building, it feels so short on scale after DOW1’s cruder but titanic mass-clashes.
I do enjoy the multiplayer, and especially that it’s so setup for co-op play, but I’m simply not compelled to play it as I am the singleplayer. It feels so obviously compromised, as though it’s not where the developers passions lay. The singleplayer suggest Relic are keen to expand their hitherto strategy-only repertoire, to make something new and different, but the multiplayer feels almost like grudging fan service. Again, the approach the expansions take will be fascinating. Simply more factions will be the obvious approach (the Imperial Guard make a few cameos late in the singleplayer, incidentally), but a smarter one may be to grow the game as a whole.
Dawn of War II is equal parts success and failure. The former ends up winning through by a comfortable margin: it may be as shallow as High School Musical, but just like that it knows it, and moreover exactly what it’s doing. In short, sharp doses it’s as outright entertaining as either any RTS or any Diablolike has ever been. Often, it’s more so: wooosh-BAM! never gets old.
It’s also the best realisation of Warhammer 40,000’s maximalist dark sci-fi I’ve ever had the pleasure to clap geeky eyes upon. Incredibly well-presented, brief cutscenes and talking heads consistently remind you of the war-torn universe you’re frolicking in, and the narrowed focus and scale compared to DOW1 makes it seem like a genuine slice of 40K lore. Its predecessor, by comparison, always seemed like a Greatest Hits of Warhammer 40,000: plenty of colour and variety, but weirdly out of context, our favourite units dancing for us artificially. This, however is pure 40k. In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future there is only War. And wooosh-BAM!
23/02/2009 at 12:38 Echo says:
“In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future there is only War. And wooosh-BAM!”
Love it.
23/02/2009 at 12:39 cyrenic says:
I actually thought the multiplayer was fantastic. But then I hate too much basebuilding and I’m terrible at micro managing lots of troops. So maybe it was right up my alley :).
23/02/2009 at 12:43 fulis says:
makes me want a new Myth game
23/02/2009 at 12:43 ChaosSmurf says:
Thanks Alec, you pretty much said what I’ve been trying to. And a little more positively. It probably didn’t help that the version I played seemed to be bugged in that there came a point where every day I would have to defend 3 territories and thus could not complete the campaign (or I didn’t get it and I wasn’t supposed to defend everything possible).
And the multiplayer … god it’s complex eh? I mean jesus. Did they add a tutorial in the retail or is it as utterly baffling as the beta?
23/02/2009 at 12:44 Feet says:
See, now I’ve read this and KGs EG review and you both discribe the SP as more a Diablo style RPG than an RTS, I’ll probably pick this up once I upgrade the PC. I’m rubbish at realtime strategy, but if this is more Diablo than C&C then I’m definately interested.
And I find that you communicate the impression the game gave you excellently Alec. A pleasure to read, so thanks for that. :)
23/02/2009 at 12:49 Mike says:
At first, I did feel that the MP was a little underscaled. But a good Tyranid opponent can still cook up something visually impressive. And a 3v3 with one team composed entirely of Tyranids is utterly amazing.
23/02/2009 at 12:50 Dude says:
On the SP, frankly it seems that you played on a too easy difficulty Alec, I play captain I think (just below Primarch) and the challenge is their, no instant “I win” special effect as they are not game winner and marines do not seems to be that tough as you describe if you don’t pay attention.
As this “The Company of Heroes-derived cover system, something that’s often entirely optional in singleplayer” well, if you ignore it in SP on captain level you will have some (bad) surprises, like your devastator squad dying all too quickly.
Favorit unit, hum I like the assault but they efficiency is greatly reduce against the tyranids, scouts I love for their sniper ability, one shoot to kill synapse, squad leader, annoying grav platform is always good.
I want to like the tac marines but so far they are not as good as they wish they could be, I used them as a tossing grenade, absorb damage squad… Ho the FC is great!
I haven’t got the dread yet but I am pretty sure it will be an auto include once I get him!
23/02/2009 at 12:54 Red Yama says:
I must say, if you play the campaing on Primarch difficulty it’s a lot more rewarding tactically. Lethality is high across the board, you need to use cover and all your abilites to make it through. The assault squads and dreadnaught are much less useful, as they get cut down shortly after a jump or charge. Scouting, demo charges, blinding and suppression are the way forward.
23/02/2009 at 12:55 Steve says:
I thought the multiplayer was pretty terrible from the beta.
23/02/2009 at 12:59 Subject 706 says:
I actually think the SP is not at all shallow if you play on harder difficulty levels. Play it on primarch (I do) and cover becomes super important. So does utilizing each of your squads together. Agree with dude that tac marines seem strangely underpowered though.
23/02/2009 at 13:07 mrmud says:
The multiplayer is wonderful. The fact that there is no basebuilding is refreshing as it allows you to spend more time doing what is actually fun, fighting!
It is also significantly less easy on the harder difficulty levels.
23/02/2009 at 13:09 Alex says:
And still bolters sound an behave like autoguns. No Pop-Swoosh-Boom… just dakka-dakka-dakka. But I´m definately looking forward to playing this, as I love shallow single player gameplay… just the right thing for my puny brain.
23/02/2009 at 13:09 Red Yama says:
Tac marines don’t do much damage until you get better gear for them, I tend to use them as meatshields to draw fire while the FC/scouts/devastators do the killing. With lots of points in health/energy they take a lot of hits, even on primarch.
23/02/2009 at 13:16 Dominic White says:
I rememeber when every RTS largely stuck to the same formula, and their evolution was more a process of updates with shinier graphics and more unit variety.
We’re past that now. DoW2 isn’t a logical incremental upgrade over the previous game, or even easy to fit into the current genre as we know it. It is going to (and already is, from a cursory glance around the internet), going to piss a lot of people off. I’ve seen almost equal amounts of ‘This is the most horrible thing ever and it made me piss blood out of my eyes’ and ‘This is exactly what the RTS genre needed’ out of the multiplayer beta.
Videogames are, like it or not, getting more subjective and focused. Game reviewers are going to have to adapt.
23/02/2009 at 13:17 Dan Harris says:
Guaranteed to make me swear loudly:
“Devastators engaged in melee!”
23/02/2009 at 13:18 bansama says:
*sigh* I’d love to buy this game. I’d import it, but I don’t want to risk THQ pulling another SR2 and regionally locking the CD keys (same reason I don’t want to risk having it gifted over Steam, until someone can confirm it’d actually be playable). Oh well, ****ed by yet another publisher who apparently doesn’t want access to my abundant supply of money.
23/02/2009 at 13:25 unique_identifier says:
i wasted quite a few hours on the multiplayer beta… alas, the campaign just doesn’t grab me. stumble into clumps of passive foecritters, start some horrid wow-like boss fight, curse because you forgot to press 1-m in time (the strategy!), get a poor score.
maybe i’ll have to wait for the next diablo iteration for that next mouse-breaking mindless single player romp
23/02/2009 at 13:27 c-Row says:
I will wait for a demo version to try it before. Stripping everything I loved the first DOW for doesn’t sound like a good idea, and even after watching various videos online, I am still not convinced.
And is it just me or did some of the earlier screenshots of the city battlefields look much better than the actual footage does now?
23/02/2009 at 13:27 Alec Meer says:
Yes, I’m going to go back to it on a higher difficulty. As I say, I would have really liked to be able to bump up the challenge mid-campaign
23/02/2009 at 13:29 Okami says:
In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future there is only wooosh-BAM! should totally be Warhammer 40.000′s new marketing phrase!
23/02/2009 at 13:40 AK says:
>aesthetics. Once in a while, it’s fine to be shallow.
pish. Gameplay over gfx is a reasonable but increasingly outdated reaction to the long drought of the nineties. We have indie games for gameplay now. Aesthetics are important. No-one rubbishes ‘Barry Lyndon’ for being all about the look of the thing. No-one not stupid.
Anyway you’re spot-on about the gfx. Their unflashiness makes them easy to overlook. I played the beta enough to get used to them, and then I went back to DoW I last night because I missed its more measured atmosphere. At first I thought the video settings must be out or something. It looked painfully primitive by comparison.
23/02/2009 at 13:42 AK says:
If the Blood Ravens are all about the secret knowledge, how come none of the silly fuckers bar Cyrus know what Tyranids are? Too many blows to the head?
23/02/2009 at 13:49 Dominic White says:
It wouldn’t be secret knowledge if they went and told everyone, would it?
23/02/2009 at 13:52 Alex says:
@AK… An open mind is like a fortress, with its gates left unbarred and unguarded. You know too much, you´ll either get killed by some high-ranked Imperial guy or you lose your mind and retreat to a deep wet hole to gibber the rest of your unfortunate life. So… better be igorant, or you die.
23/02/2009 at 13:55 Andrew says:
Absolutely loving the singleplayer, the repetition of which isn’t bothering me too much. I’m on Captain difficulty and am very near the end of it, I think, though I didn’t do that many optional missions. I just attempted a mission where I have to take down an Avatar of Khaine, but Jesus! That thing has 250,000hp! I mean, really? I whittled him down to 169,000, after using all my call-in artillery stuff including orbital bombardment, over the course of about 10 minutes, then quit because fuck that shit. First time I’ve felt the game was just… untested. I’ll do another less crazy mission perhaps.
I love the multiplayer too. I wish there were more maps, but it doesn’t feel underdeveloped at all – the sides are genuinely different and it all works really well. Also even in a game that I lose, I tend to have fewer casualties as space marines than in the harder campaign missions. 30 losses is a high number of a space marine player in multiplayer, they’re just as tough as they are in the campaign (fewer special abilities tough).
23/02/2009 at 14:01 Charlie says:
Yeah I found them unbelievably naive. I mean I only have a slight knowledge of 40k really but they know less than I do! Anyway it seems to easy to me too so if anyone does know of a way to crank up the difficulty without restarting it would be much appreciated.
Also, tac marines seem a lot more useful with terminator armour and a flamer :D. They mow through tyranids.
23/02/2009 at 14:02 PHeMoX says:
“makes me want a new Myth game” Yeah, that 3rd screen with the skeletons reminds me of it as well. Myth was awesome… Bungie used to be awesome, before Microsoft snagged them and forced them to make 3 Halo games. I want another Oni game as well, but I fear chances are slim it’ll ever get made.
23/02/2009 at 14:09 Andrew says:
Oh, and my favourite units are the Tactical Marines, Devastators, and Scouts. They come on most missions. The Assaults can be useful but die VERY quickly in the wrong situations particularly as they’re often not in cover when such a situation arises. The dreadnought is powerful but a single enemy anti-vehicle unit makes it useless until the AV has been neutralised so I haven’t used it much.
23/02/2009 at 14:11 CakeAddict says:
I really love the singleplayer with those rpg elements, the only shame I find is that you play the same 6 maps over and over and over.
I’ve only played 1 skirmish so far it was okay not like the dawn of war 1 but I kinda like this sort of simplicity and I’ll be able to drag some more friends into this game.
Favourite units? The bolter squad, I simply love heavy weapons that you need to set up. (like the mg’s in CoH)
And Woosh-Bam for their jump attack and they are quite lethal.. although they tend to die the most to.
Haven’t got the dreadnought yet although I’m sure I’ll use it most of the time since I liked them a lot in dawn of war1 simply because of how they killed.
23/02/2009 at 14:19 Echo4Mike says:
I found that the combat in single player was more accurately a set of unique set pieces, and made me finish missions much more slowly than the XP screen at the end of missions would prescribe. Especially the first few Tyranid missions – I’d wipe something out, step back, regroup, and plot out the next – to the point where I was getting the same rewarding rush that I got in Mass Effect combat. (It might have been that Mass Effect was making combat more fun by making the rest of the game so damn boring)
And to the commenter that wanted another Myth – oh hell yeah. Black Company FTW!
23/02/2009 at 14:19 SwiftRanger says:
The repitition and some odd mission difficulty spikes in the second half of the campaign (Captain difficulty) is wearing me down atm but it’s been very good fun already. They should build on this rather than the DC/SS campaign setup.
I loved the multiplayer in beta but I like the campaign a lot more now. If Relic manage to tie the multiplayer (which IS enjoyable and well worked out in pure gameplay terms, and who doesn’t like those addictive metallic Army Painter colours? :) ) to more than just rankings/small visual rewards, let’s say to a persistent ‘conquer the universe’ mode, then they’ll be on to something.
23/02/2009 at 14:29 Iain says:
I don’t think DoW2 is really any more repetitive than the original was – perhaps it’s more noticeable in DoW2 because you have more missions to play and because they’re only 10-20 minutes long, rather than requiring an hour or more at a time.
Personally, I like the new mission structure, as it lets me just dip in and out when I have the odd half hour spare and still feel like I’m making some progress, and only having a few squads to play with makes the combat much more involving, as in the original DoW I’d inevitably just build up to the level cap and then send out two huge hordes of units swarming across the map, mopping up the AI.
I also like that Relic were brave enough to make a game that was different to the original, not just DoW with Tyranids and slightly shinier graphics. Anything that’s likely to offend genre purists and fanboys gets my vote.
And yes, I totally agree about the Assault Marines. They’re my favourite unit in the game by far.
23/02/2009 at 14:47 Morph says:
40k? Easy difficulty? Short levels? Tyranids? This sounds brill. Let’s just hope my old PC can run it.
23/02/2009 at 14:50 Red Yama says:
My favorites are the scout marines by far. While quite weedy at the start, once they get blind grenades and shotguns/flamers they really start to rock. You can stun a whole swarm of enemy, drop a satchel on their head and then mop up the survivors. The remote demo packs are even more spectacular, they kill anything smaller than a carnifex in one go. It’s a shame the corpses aren’t persistent like in DoW1 (though if I recall correctly they weren’t at launch, and htat was patched in), otherwise the maps would be full of xeno bits.
23/02/2009 at 14:50 Flappybat says:
I really dislike the game, it removed everything I enjoyed from DoW 1 and CoH and didn’t add anything I liked. It’s got really mixed opinions with my friends too.
23/02/2009 at 15:02 I am beginning to understand this comment system says:
Yet another review that doesn’t mention that the game ships with only 8 multiplayer/skirmish maps.
Then again, I approach these games from a multiplayer perspective, single player can be a nice distraction, but multiplayer is where the meat of these games lies for me. I get the sense most RTS reviews are written from the opposite perspective.
The core gameplay of DOW2 is awesome, but everything else about this title screams rush job. 8 multiplayer maps and a co-op campaign that feels tacked on and consists only of the single player campaign with one player controlling some of the units and the other person taking the rest.
Relic has real talent, unfortunately the majority of their games feel half-baked. I would love see what they would do with the lengthy development cycles in the style of Blizzard.
23/02/2009 at 15:32 Turin Turambar says:
Shacknews review said something along the lines of being a mix of DoW, CoH, Diablo and Syndicate. I think it’s a good description, the difference is that i didn’t like it so much. It’s a mix of all that but imo it feels inferior to every individual title which was an inspiration.
23/02/2009 at 15:34 Sam Combs says:
Are 8 maps really that few? Most of the time it seems most everyone is playing the same one or two maps in most games (dust in Counterstrike is what comes to mind), so isn’t making more kind of a waste of time if very few people are going to play them? I can’t remember where I saw this, but some developer has used this argument before.
That and DoW came with pretty powerful mapping tools, and if DoW II has the same, there should be at least a few good community maps.
23/02/2009 at 15:40 Hoernchen says:
DoW1 had a story, it really felt like burn the heretic kill the mutant purge the unclean, while DoW2 is more like “oh, it’s map nr 3 again, just go left, advance to magic respawn point 1, 2, then go finish the big ugly shit err boss”. DoW2 could have been great, but then someone pushed them to release it too soon.
23/02/2009 at 15:43 mrmud says:
Turin Turambar:
With the exception of DoW(1) those are some of the best games of all time so not being quite as good as them isnt damning in my mind. However I do think DoW2 is better than the original Dawn of War, a game that I felt its redeeming feature was the atmosphere and general awesomeness of its WH40K rendition. And that particular part DoW2 does far better.
23/02/2009 at 15:44 Dave says:
Has anyone tried co-op? Worth playing? Single player on medium is getting to be a bit of a grind, but I have no desire to start over at a higher difficultly, like some here are suggesting. Co-op would add some replayability at least.
I find myself thinking “this will be great after an expansion” which is not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.
23/02/2009 at 15:50 JonFitt says:
I thought the multiplayer beta was really good.
I’m rubbish at multi-tasking and have always avoided online RTSs because of it. I play single player campaigns like a WW1 offensive: build troops get them all in position and then push.
With so few troops I could easily handle juggling all of them, their upgrades and special abilities.
23/02/2009 at 15:52 Jeremy says:
I am really enjoying the single player of DoW 2. Like Alec said, it really captures the fact that these guys are centuries old genetically enhanced super soldiers (although sometimes they can’t seem to shoot an Ork stuck on a wall 2 inches away). It really fits into the single player campaign well, and I think after some mission tweaking and storyline changes, an expansion could be something spectacular. Multiplayer was far less impressive to me, it doesn’t capture the big battle insanity which I think is almost requisite for multiplayer. To me, it wasn’t the lack of base building that kinda killed the MP experience, it was the reduction of scope and intensity. It is just gratifying to take a huge army and roll over the competition, but then again, maybe I just don’t “get it”. This isn’t about a huge scale battle, it’s about tactically holding points on a map. Maybe it just isn’t for me and I’ll have to wait for SC2 to get a MP package I’ll enjoy :)
3 units that go on every mission, Assault Marine, Tac Marines and of course the Hero himself. After that I’ll rotate the Scouts and Devastator depending on the mission type. I don’t really have use for the Dreadnought unfortunately, for a heavily armored death machine, he’s not very resilient and doesn’t really get a place in my squad unless I’m supposed to kill a Hive Tyrant.
23/02/2009 at 15:54 Bobby says:
@AK
The chapter as a structure does, but the current marines don’t necessarily. Secret knowledge has a way of getting piled up on old shelves. Once they identify the problem they do look up Tyranids references in their archives and it goes fine
23/02/2009 at 15:59 Ids says:
One thing i didn’t like is that tatical squads didn’t have option to upgrade 7 people all ways 4. I feel like i was cheated in way. I hope through patching there be some improvements but it was great single player. It feels for point of view that made a great single player and kind of bad and good muliti player game. My favorite unit is heavy bolter squad
23/02/2009 at 15:59 The Sombrero Kid says:
i found the multiplayer as revolutionary as the singleplayer tbh, such a literal base building and resource gathering concept that was a genre staple until now was a poor fit for both and i’m glad to see the back of them.
23/02/2009 at 16:04 Ginger Yellow says:
I’ve got to say, having anticipated this game hugely, I’ve been quite put off by the reviews and my impressions from the beta. I find it hard to put my finger on it, but the beta just didn’t click in the same way that DoW1 and (especially) CoH did, and the reviews don’t give me much confidence that the singleplayer will either. Besides, I’ve got lots of games to catch up on from Christmas (and Streetfighter IV now), so it can wait till the next Steam sale.
23/02/2009 at 16:13 Zyrusticae says:
I’ve liked the campaign, as shallow as it obviously is at times. I disagree with the idea that cover and tactics are not important, however. At least on Primarch difficulty, you cannot get away with being reckless or repeating the same tactics over and over again; often you will find yourself bereft of good cover to take advantage of, and often you will find yourself forced to use caution and forego the use of the Wooosh-BAM!, as sending them in unsupported results in INSTANT DEATH.
Actually, I can’t stand Primarch difficulty. It feels awfully artificial in the way it just decreases the stats of your space marines while increasing the stats of everything else. I suppose there’s little else they could have done to make it more difficult, but I think some increased unit variety and perhaps bosses with faster-firing abilities would have been more interesting than warriors with venom cannons that OHKO even your toughest troops (seriously, what?). I guess it does make the sense of accomplishment that much better, but like Alec said, sometimes I just want to be able to sit back and enjoy the carnage, which is unfortunately impossible at that difficulty no matter how well-decked-out your space marines are.
I’m thinking of trying a campaign on Sergeant (“normal”?) difficulty just to see how much more badass the space marines are. I’d probably even be capable of pretty reckless tactics on Captain considering all the crap I’ve gone through on Primarch…
Also, I find I prefer the multiplayer side over that of CoH or DoW 1. Mostly because it isn’t overwhelming like those two games, what with the base and tech management and the sheer number of units involved and all that. Also, I find I quickly miss the easy squad access on the right side of the screen. Most wonderful UI innovation ever. EVAH.
23/02/2009 at 16:28 Dude says:
@AK and Bobby
I think Cyrus does refer an early encounter with Tyranids when he was serving in the deathwatch, a special unit composed of marines from all chapter potentially, its tasks being to track down xenos… So that’s probably why. At first I thought he was referring to the death company (for blood angel gone crazy) but it makes more sense now.
23/02/2009 at 16:31 Primar says:
Although I’m enjoying the SP campaign in co-op so far, the main problem relates to the difficulty. Since me and my friend were playing the MP beta since a couple of days after it came out, we’ve had to put it on Primarch difficulty in order to get any kind of challenge out of it.
While this mostly works fine during most missions, it gets really silly during end-of-mission boss fights, due to the fact that the bosses tend to 1 or 2-hit units. It’s silly to the point where there’s no tactics involved, we just have to send our squads in, do a bit of damage, then either mash retreat or use our Scouts to rez our squads, do a little bit of damage again, repeat.
15 minutes of this irritated me no end, but any easier and we’d almost certainly just walk over anything that isn’t a boss without having to think.
Multiplayer, I’m enjoying as usual. I’ve never been a big fan of “build a massive army then attack-move at their base” style of playing, so I find the small number of squads perfect. It’s all about getting the most out of your squads while making sure they survive, and cover/unit placement/unit counters play a much bigger role than they otherwise might.
I personally like the VP-control system a lot more than the “stomp their base” system, since it practically forces players to engage in combat, as opposed to turtle in their base behind a wall of turrets then just throw superweapons at people. One complaint that puzzled me was about people retreating squads when they’re losing a battle – surely that’s the point? You’ve gained territory/the point, allowing you to push forward and expand.
23/02/2009 at 16:48 groovychainsaw says:
oooh – someone mentioned syndicate – thats what it feels a bit like – one group of guys able to dominate the area. Personally, i like it, i struggle to micromanage all the abilities anyway, so medium is fine for me, I’m a loot whore, so any RPGness sells me. It could do with more meat/variety, but i suspect its only because i played for about 8 hours solid yesterday that it started feeling repetitous :-)
(Caveat – I still long for a ‘proper’ 40k games thats turn based and closer to the ‘real’ thing, but only the old epic 40k game ever gave us that. it was brill tho)
23/02/2009 at 17:16 Jeremy says:
I do agree that the VP-control system does force people out of their base to fight or whatever, but all that really does is make average players realize the importance of engaging early instead of trying to (unsuccessfully) turtle, as in RTS games of yore. Let’s be honest, turtling, in any RTS game, has never been a successful tactic, it’s just that Relic games are forcing the concept of expansion to it’s players. So now it’s “revolutionary” to not sit in your base and wait for a good player to crush you.
23/02/2009 at 17:32 Theory says:
I thought the MP beta was astounding. Without any of the usual RTS cruft it’s possible to really get the most out of the tools at your disposal, which is far preferable to churning and endless stream of meaningless little men into a meat grinder.
I think DOW2 is RTS growing up. Into adolescence maybe, but nevertheless older and wiser.
SP sounds less interesting unfortunately.
23/02/2009 at 17:38 El_MUERkO says:
I’ve been playing this since beta was released (being an owner of DoW: Soulstorm after buying the 40k:DoW pack on Steam)
I can honestly say “I LOVE MULTI-PLAYER” there is a level of depth in it that I cant get enough of and unlike the first game 99% of the time I’m in the middle of the action looking at the mayhem.
I play exclusively 3-v-3 multiplayer and mostly with a couple of mates from my old Planetside outfit using TS for maximum WAAARGH!
I’m only a handful of missions into the single-player campaign but have wracked up a lot of time on this game already, damn you Steam statistics, there is no hiding my shame!
I know the multiplayer is not everyone’s cup of tea at first but persistence and experimentation pay off, try the different race and heroes and you will find one to suit your style of play, myself I started on marines but now I’m and Ork Warboss and generally the meatshield in any fight with far more units lost than my teammates but I have won way more games than I’ve lost and been surprised many times by the range of tactics people can come up with.
Sometimes I feel the game can be too unforgiving at times with all your units wiped out by a mistake or a moments hesitation but I cant fault Relics efforts beyond that.
I could well be playing my Game of the Year in February :D
23/02/2009 at 17:40 Frosty840 says:
The singleplayer campaign is utterly phoned in; from the Central Casting voice-acting to the embarrassing mix of new and reused sound clips to the use, reuse, over-reuse, taking-the-piss-reuse and god-I’m-tired-of-this of the maps.
The multiplayer… Well, it has its moments, especially when deployed guns manage to turn on their own, but everything just seems to be held together by twiglets. CoH is by far the better game, with its wildly differing playing styles. The thing you lose most with the lack of base-building is the ability to create those vast differences between the sides.
Add to that the fact that the expansion is utterly inevitable, and you also start to notice the gaps in the sides’ lineups, which will be filled in after you’ve paid Relic more money. Poor show. CoH and DoW1 expansions added to an already-complete unit roster. DoW2′s expansion will fill in some gaping holes.
23/02/2009 at 18:39 matte_k says:
I’m sure one of the squad captains voices is the same chap who voiced the player’s wizard in Sacrifice- he’s pretty much the only one that doesn’t sound like he’s trying too hard to be a badass in the cutscenes :) Aside from that though, quite enjoying DOW 2, especially “Arrgh! Too much dakka!!!” from suppressed Orks.
23/02/2009 at 18:51 Taillefer says:
I feel the RTS and tactical squad mechanics conflict somewhat. It’s like playing a UFO tactical mission on a little Command & Conquer map. So we’re restricted to moving on a single plane instead of multi-layered maps. Instead of nice scale buildings to explore, we get the silly RTS miniature buildings which squads jump in and out of. We get an overview of the map with fog of war instead of the line of sight of the marines, and so on. But, then, I suppose with such things included it would just be a new game and not Dawn of War.
Overall though, it’s a game I’m enjoying when I’m playing it, despite complaints when I’m not. Sniping a synapse creature, launching assault marines into the disorientated tyranids which then knocks them flying into the line of fire of your devastator marines is still awesome.
I really wish the maps weren’t so boring. And the speed rating continues to mock me, especially since I have to get 100% kills.
23/02/2009 at 19:12 drewski says:
groovychainsaw – get a hold of Chaos Gate if you can find it anywhere. It’s ancient (98) but it’s about as faithful a conversion of the tabletop rules as you could ever imagine.
I finished it twice and I never, ever, ever finish games other that 4X games more than once.
There are some issues getting it to work on newer OSs than 2K but there’s a guide in the wikipedia article that helps.
23/02/2009 at 19:53 Leeks! says:
After reading Jim’s EG review, I was sold enough by the RTS+Diablo thing that I picked it up. And man. Man. I don’t think I’ve ever been this enthusiastic about an RTS before.
On unit choices: While I found the scouts useful and the Dreadnaught, well, awesome, I ended up going with the boring ol’ loadout of Tac, Dev and Assault marines. I was also hugely entertained by Woosh-BAMing entrenched enemies, though I’ll admit a giddy sense of megalomania overtook me when Zap-SMASHING once Thaddeus was equipped with Terminator Armor. Oh, are you surprised to see Thaddeus and his friends? I’d coo, darkly. You didn’t invite them to your party, and now they’re very upset. Very upset. And then, once all the Xenos had been purged, I might add, as calmly as possible: Boosh.
23/02/2009 at 19:59 Danarchist says:
Absolutely splendiferous. (shut up spellcheck i know that’s not a word!) oh…did you know spellcheck isn’t a word either but spellchecker is? odd….
Anyways back to the game….
The one thing in the SP that no one has commented on is that you can “trash” unneeded and outgrown equipment for xp. This is a FABULOUS idea as I always seem to find my force commander about 5 xp from his next level and that shinier, toothier chainsword. The downside is, shortly after “dusting” some odd dreadnaught bits I had laying around to get my scout squad that one extra level I got my dreadnaught >< not intentional I didnt know I had a finite number of talent points to spend. I just finished a mission that gave my hero a jump pack though, which has really upped the survivability of my assault squad. They tended to get eaten up really bad by themselves sometimes. With him there to lob blind or frag grenades its allot easier.
Combo of note: FC+jump pack+flamer=tyranid gibbets
I have enjoyed one thing in particular, I have noticed the ranged ai enemies doing some incredibly intelligent things, snare grenades on my melee and falling back to deeper cover for one. Warp spiders moving past my rank and file and engaging my heavy guns right away. I hope this improves even more!
Great. game. period.
I still get geeked badly in MP. I am NOT a fast clicker.
23/02/2009 at 20:01 Danarchist says:
woh…whole section of text poofed on me there when i posted hehe. No edit, sorry its disjointed
23/02/2009 at 20:04 undead dolphin hacker says:
Here’s what I don’t get. Why does every reviewer either love the single player and rag on the multi, or vice versa?
I mean I read:
Which is almost farcical in the sense that it’s nearly the exact same sentence as in half of the other reviews, except it’s reversed the sub-strings “single” and “multi.”
Take Tom Chick’s review, which is glowing up until these lines:
23/02/2009 at 20:06 undead dolphin hacker says:
I really hate this comment system and lack of an edit feature. The part starting with “wat? Or perhaps, wot?” is all mine.
23/02/2009 at 20:21 Erlam says:
It’s weird, I hear so many complaints that this ‘small scale’ combat isnt 40K style, but insofar as I know, this is as close to the tabletop game as any iteration has been (possible exception: Warhammer Chaos Gate).
I liked the beta a lot, but I found the AI to be so gamebreaking at times it was frustrating.
I’m currently torn on whether to get this, or FEAR 2, as I love both so dearly.
23/02/2009 at 20:42 Gassalasca says:
I’ve just finished the campaign, and I must say I agree with each and every word of the review. Especially the wooosh-BAM! part.
23/02/2009 at 21:21 Doctor_Hellsturm says:
Really tried liking this, but i’m going on the “they took all the stuff that worked well in COH and made it less good”. Close, but still far away from what i hoped for.
23/02/2009 at 22:32 A-Scale says:
Really? Wot?
23/02/2009 at 22:41 AK says:
A-Scale, we were voices in the wilderness. Let us retire to our rocking chairs.
23/02/2009 at 23:43 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Still not sure whether I’ll buy this one. Then again, I am still plenty busy and satisfied with its predecessor so thats fine.
24/02/2009 at 00:08 Flappybat says:
I think it’s clear Relic have finally invented gaming marmite.
24/02/2009 at 00:15 Psychopomp says:
As far as I’m concerned, this is the RTS equivelant of TF2. Everything from the original that got in the way of the core of the game has been removed, creating a deep, focused game, with tons of character.
24/02/2009 at 01:00 Nick says:
A-scale – really? Really? You actually just did that? Stop being a tube.
24/02/2009 at 01:52 malkav11 says:
I just want a nice compelling RPG-esque campaign mode for Orks, Eldar, and Tyranids before they start throwing in more sides to not play in singleplayer.
Oh, and please, once races do get added, let’s not start with the Imperial Guard again? C’mon now.
24/02/2009 at 02:27 Radiant says:
The system requirements are a god damn lie!
This game brought my pc to its knees; made it cry the tears of technology that knows it’s about to be shot in the face and replaced.
24/02/2009 at 02:34 Anon says:
I didn’t find the dreadnought all that useful in SP. Wasting an accessory slot just for a healing item for it is in my opinion a huge waste of awesome splodey things I can carry instead. Maybe once I get some new upgrades I might try to reintroduce him. Animations are awesome though.
Thus far I’ve ditched the scouts. Even though they do have a bunch of accesory slots, I just couldn’t stand reviving em the whole time. The sniper rifle and shotguns sound fun, but overall they just don’t do much and the team requires too much micro for my liking.
The most useful thus far are the devastators. Set up, let ‘er rip and watch everything die suppressed in a hail of bolter fire. Plus he can carry a missile launcher or plasma gun thingy if the intel says I might use it. Same goes for the tac marines.
Whoosh+bam plus chainswords gives the FC great backup in mosh-pits that tend to erupt all the time.
I kept the FC as a melee unit with a rally banner and (get this) stun grenades. Takes me out of tight spots a lot so I can push out of it.
Waaagh!
24/02/2009 at 02:49 Andrew says:
High powered shots from the scouts’ sniper rifle are invaluable for me. Against any enemy, but especially Tyranids, they let you one-shot the most dangerous xenos with generally no risk. Where otherwise you’d need to engage that Warrior and probably take some losses as it leaps towards you, or suppresses you with its barbed strangler, with the scouts it’s just one campaign and it’s down. And all the gaunts around it are writhing on the ground in pain and attacking their fellows.
24/02/2009 at 05:25 Aphotique says:
Though I’m sure given enough time (and perhaps some map tools down the road, as my friends and I loved DoW I for base defense maps) I’ll come to love DoW II’s MP, but for now the sheer visceral enjoyment I get out of SP will suffice. Co-op Primarch is absolutely amazing, barking out orders to one another as yet another Tyranid swarm falls upon us. Though I’m aware of the repetition, it doesn’t bother me. From playing the same 5 TF2 maps, the same CS:S maps, the same 2 SupCom maps, etc. it just doesn’t phase me. Repetition is a part of the genre, much like any map based FPS, you develop your most and least liked and play them over and over again.
As awesome and as challenging as Primarch can be, there is something to be said about the easiest difficulty as well. I have yet to find anything more satisfying in any game thus far then my FC (I love Rally) cutting swath after swath through Tyranid hordes only to end with him destroying a Carnifex single-handedly. Its pure ecstasy.
So yeah, favorite units: Devastators on Primarch. FC on Easy.
Least favorite: Dreadnaught. It destroys all my valuable cover!
24/02/2009 at 06:47 Moot says:
Not a huge fan of the genre, I never dreamed that an RTS (lite?) could provide such visceral thrills.
Having just completed the single player campaign, I still giggle like a schoolgirl each and every time I unleash my Dreadnought’s maxed-out cannon barrage.
*brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat*
Xeno’s, trees and buildings just wither way in an thrilling hail of exploding lead.
I reckon the game was worth the asking price just for that.
24/02/2009 at 09:43 BarkingDog says:
I just love throwing det packs at blind-grenaded enemies. And the triggered det packs on defence missions are sexy times- uncovers fog of war and makes a fantastic Fountain o’ Viscera when a large and tempting group walks anywhere near it. Also, one of those will take off half the health of a boss on a defence mission.
24/02/2009 at 11:35 RedBeard says:
I’m loving this game. Honestly. And I’m a big fan of DoW1 so I was expecting this to be a big pile of steaming poo.
Just click your heels together three times while saying “it’s not an RTS” and you’ll be fine.
Is no-one going to complain about the Games for Windows Live aspect?
Has that been done already somewhere else?
I mean seriously, it requires Steam *as well* as GfWL.
How many things do I have to register with to play the damn game?
When I was installing the game, I had to install GfWL, apply a hotfix to windows, and restart the PC. The game already required Steam ffs.
Then I see that GfWL is all intrusive on the game with it’s blinky ’20G TROPHY FOR STUFF’ window in the top right during play. I can’t emphasise enough how much I don’t care about yet another trophy system (I’m a non xbox owner btw).
Oh, wait
/me sarcastically slaps forehead
there’s one in Steam. Why no achievements for Steam? They could double up and just be the same as the trophies for GFWL for all I care. I actually use my steam account, unlike GfWL.
Ok, Ima stop ranting now.
I’ll pretend to understand why they went with two online service providers, but I’m still mad that they implemented it badly.
24/02/2009 at 11:45 SwiftRanger says:
The Dreadnought isn’t too good once you first get it but put a gun on it (and get that explosive shelves trait, nearly insta-kills Carnifexes) and you have one hell of a ranged swarm stopper, you really start to appreciate him more that way, as Moot said as wel. Watch out for Warriors with Venom Cannons though (well, everyone should watch out for those actually :) ).
25/02/2009 at 01:22 Crispy says:
“Are 8 maps really that few?” – Yes.
Valve used this argument before with TF2. And their argument -in my eyes- failed. If you look at the ones they released initially, half of them are detested by most TF2 players (2Fort, Hydro and to a lesser extent Granary). Only the maps they brought out after the initial poor release have kept TF2 alive (the Payload maps, Badlands and the community maps), and 3 of these maps are made by non-Valve employees and cost Valve very little to add into the game. Even after the initial maps were released not all of the new ones have been crowd-pleasers (just look at the CTF version of Well and the Arena maps, that barely anyone plays). So what this proves is that it is nigh-on impossible to cater for everyone, and it’s still very difficult to predict what will be a popular map at the point of conception. So make more maps to keep players occupied during the honeymoon period, learn lessons from which of those get played and design more in that style.
For DoW2. there were 5 maps in the MP beta; three 3v3 maps and two 1v1 maps. You could play 1v1 on the 3v3 maps but you couldn’t play 3v3 on the 1v1 maps. All of the maps played very well and had clearly been tested well, although most were more or less pure mirror maps. I couldn’t see great evidence of them being particularly difficult to construct, and I think the community will be able to produce a lot of good content very quickly. That still begs the question why only 8 maps made it to release. It’s pretty pathetic, imo – considering these maps are easier to make than FPS multiplayer maps.
That means the full game has only 3 more maps than the beta. I preferred not to play the 1v1 maps in Beta because the matchmaking system would consistently pair me up with godlike players while I was still trying to learn the game.
Alec clearly hasn’t played much of the multiplayer in this or he would have mentioned the matchmaking system. In the multiplayer beta, I’d be kept waiting in excess of 5 minutes just to get put into a 3v3 ranked match (it would frequently take 3 minutes or more just to find a single opponant). So after this wait you’d hope it’s worth it, but you’d still get lumped with retarded teams like:
ranks 1/3/5 vs. ranks 2/4/18
Then when I tried 1v1 (which is a lot tougher because every mistake you make is a small victory for the other player) as a rank 1 I was getting put up against ranks 5, 12, 14, 19, and 24.
So you were often destined to lose your matches before you begun, which is fine if you’re not a competitive-minded person and you’re just there for the fun, but if you choose to play a ranked match instead of a custom match, it really should be making things fair, or at least attempting to find a suitable ‘match’ for you.
There isn’t even any way for you to tell the rank of the opponant you’re playing in ranked games. So it’s only after the first 5 minutes where you realise you’re getting completely obliterated no matter how hard you try, that you realise the other player is simply better and more experienced than you.
This makes a complete mockery of the ranking system because it’s all down to a diceroll. There is no evidence of any attempt whatsoever to match players of equal ability.
Furthermore, every few ranks you will gain a persistent upgrade for your army (e.g. Rank 5 for Space Marines is some armour upgrade). This means not only will a rank 10 be better than a rank 1 in terms of knowledge and ability, but in terms of raw resources at his fingertips. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if there was absolutely no way for a rank 10 to be set loose on a rank 1, but sadly this was not the case with the matchmaker in the Beta.
But there was one part it could have got right for matchmaking and it still failed on that count. There was no consistency regarding pairing up players from similar geographical locations to decrease the average player latency in a game. This clearly isn’t a functional matchmaking system, and I won’t be picking up DoW2 until they put some effort into making it work.
25/02/2009 at 01:35 Crispy says:
oh and:
System Requirements
I ran the demo fine on lowest settings (which still look pretty good) on a single-core Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4GHz), 3GB Corsair paired (i.e. good quality and solid performance) DDR RAM and X1900 GT. There’s a LOT of pretties to be had with a better GFX card, but it seems to do ok on a single-core.
I can’t guarantee that’ll run single-player, but it did fine for multiplayer. I even hosted a few 3v3 games.
25/02/2009 at 06:43 Crispy says:
P.S. http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1074
That interview mentions that they will be adding 2 more maps soonafter release based on the reception of the multiplayer Beta. It’s also quite a good interview.
25/02/2009 at 07:43 Crispy says:
Sorry for quadruple post, but I’ve been looking into this all day.
Correction:
The army upgrades given as you rank up in multiplayer are only visual upgrades.
Source: http://dowcodex.com/Info:Ranks
On matchmaking:
Source: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/
But if you follow that link you’ll see that it talks about “the degree of uncertainty in the gamer’s skill”, which is apparently why it likes to put rank 1s up against rank 24s (because it doesn’t have suffficient trend information to rule out the possibility they might draw, even if it looks highly likely the new guy will get shat on). The system doesn’t seem to have any cutoff to protect rank newbies from being forced to play battle-hardened veterans. A bit of a glaring flaw in the Microsoft GfW TrueSkill calculation, I’d say.
26/02/2009 at 16:04 Jeremy says:
I think 8 maps is a fine start when you consider the difference in play style between DoW1 and DoW2. In the original, you didn’t have to worry about cover and things like that, it was more about choke points and defense. DoW2 plays out more like a FPS in terms of MP, a lot more action and pushing back and forth, quick matches, etc. A lot more probably goes into each map as you have to place cover, buildings, etc. How many maps should have been released? 15? 20? Why?
26/02/2009 at 22:57 DarkAstartes says:
I played on the Primarch setting first time through so I’m really not getting any of this ”you feel so powerful” and ”space marines are as tough as they’re supposed to be” stuff flying around, although admittedly that’s my fault. On the hardest setting a level 15 force commander with a power fist, blue armour and an iron Halo gets his ass whooped in melee by 2 banshees and assault marines get butchered by slugga boys in melee without getting a single kill.
I think your insights about the multiplayer are extremely accurate. It feels tacked on, like an afterthought. What the game is really about is the singleplayer but the singleplayer model wouldn’t work online so they had to come with with something else. The inclusion of a castrated form of the rpg elements seen in singleplayer makes this painfully obvious
27/02/2009 at 13:31 Jerricho says:
My housemate, who also pre-ordered along with me, asked me the other night if the difficulty increased as I played on. my answer was “No, but the awesome is greatly improved.” More Dakka means shorter missions so it breaks even, I guess. It didn’t last quite long enough for the tedium to get to me.
I look forward to playing again on Primarch difficulty. I basically walked across the last third of the game without any great use of tactics, just lots of heavy weapons and a commander who regenerated health as fast as he lost it.
Also I look forward to playing multiplayer with my Solid Silver Hive Tyrant. It’s greatest weapon is it’s mighty BLOOM!
01/03/2009 at 15:37 gryffinp says:
My first complaint about the Dawn of War II single player campaign: There was not more of it.
Yeah, that’s right. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I’m a pretty big RPG and FPS gamer, and this is really the first RTS I’ve played since Rise of Legends. I loved the HELL out of the campaign. I LOVED having my guys mow down hordes upon hordes of little guys, then one big guy, so that I can get some stuff that lets them kill MORE of them. I am also a huge fan of the Warhammer 40K universe and my god they got it perfect. My problem was that I felt it was too short, I would have loved to see an Ork or Eldar campaign. Hopefully the inevitable expansion(s) will add more of that. I do feel like the missions got a bit repetitive at the end, but I was having far too much fun to care by that point.
Now one of the things keeping me away from the RTS genre was the way that multiplayer matches were determined not by who used their units better but by who made more units. Thus changing the game from a strategy game to an economy simulator where when you’re done you can throw your bits at the other guy’s bits and see who won. I am sure that there’s oh so much more to it and all that, but I highly doubt that more starcraft games have been won with brilliant tactical play rather than obsessive micromanagment.
Dawn of War fixes that. And it is beautiful. you get more resources the more of the map you control! You have one building! You upgrade it twice! the game becomes about countering your opponent’s strategies and maintaining a well-balanced offense.
There’s another thing I’m liking about this game: It seems pretty well balanced. Perhaps the community just hasn’t found the gamebreaker yet, but it seems like you really don’t want to find one or two units and make a bunch of them I also respect Relic’s decision to completely separate the multilayer and single player balance. preferring instead to have the races be equal in multiplayer, and having the space marines become walking gods in single player (Depending on difficulty.)
The complaint I do have about multiplayer is inertia. From what I’ve seen, if one player starts winning, they’re going to win. There are exceptions, but seems to be the trend. Maybe I’m just not good enough to turn the tide.
I do wish that Games for Windows had nothing to do with this otherwise excellent game. I suppose the hope is that Relic will compare their experience with Steam to GFW and make the decision. But that seems unlikely.
Also: The Orks are hilarious. Half the reason I play as them is for comedic value.
“We got it Boss! We got it! Wotcha want wit it?”
03/03/2009 at 22:45 Funky Badger says:
Nearest thing to a next-gen XCOM. Not quite got the complexity of the meta-game, but adds a dash of Hostile Waters-esque personality to the unit leaders (Avitus = Ransom?) and the mini-movies.
Top stuff. And the Dreadnaught reveal? Awesome.
04/03/2009 at 11:41 Sunjammer says:
I think it’s one of the coolest games i’ve played in a very long time. I’m a big ol’ 40k fanboy, i loved DOW to bits, and this feels much, much closer to tabletop 40k than DOW did. Also, It’s just really cool. COOL. I think it’s odd how rarely i use that word about a game. I’ll use fun or awesome or whatever, but cool takes on a special meaning. Things like the uniformly dedicated voice cast, how it isn’t afraid to show what xenophobes the space marines are (Avitus in general is the best racist to come along since Eastwoods Gran Torino), how the heavy bolters sound like a broken tractor when you hit focus fire.. There’s just a long list of stuff i think is utterly COOL. I’ve heard people describe the tyranids as “not numerous enough”, but i think, in the campaign, they expertly walk the line between simply overwhelming you and being perfectly managable. I’m having a total blast fighting them, which i didn’t expect.
I do miss the orks. Nowhere near enough of them in the campaign. And the boss fights don’t really feel that amazing when all you do is whittle down a health bar by setting up tac marines and devastators and try to keep the dude occupied in their field of fire with your commander or whatever.
But damn. Cool!
My favorite unit is easily the devastators. I always loved the heavy bolters, tabletop, DOW, wherever. And watching those dudes set up and just hold a field of enemies down never gets old to me. SUPPRESSED SUPPRESSED. Hell yeah.
24/04/2009 at 06:38 tds says:
Great game, the single player reminds me of Commandos series and the multiplayer is intense and never a dull moment, great job relic :D
26/05/2009 at 07:46 Val says:
Yeah, I loved it.
It was an interesting and refreshing taste on the RTS “genre.”
And, shallow as it is, you pleasantly described what kept me at it. I played on Primarch, so it was even MORE satisfying to eliminate so much units (I’ve heard it’s more than on the other difficulties) with a small squad.
The game was brilliant, and yes, it felt much better than “attack animation x8, death animation x1″ like other RTS games. Your chainsword gets lodged in their skulls, their squad health goes down because one of them HAS A CHAINSAW LODGED IN THEIR HEAD, your Force Commander’s finishing moves are spectacular, regardless of the weapon he has equipped.
The destructible environment could have been more destructible, but I loved it anyway, and honestly, my scout squad was the most important until later on in the game when the dreadnought took its spot over (but even then, sometimes I would drop Tarkus’ squad for Cyrus on defense missions.)
On primarch, his snipe one-hit kill thing is very helpful, as is being able to use demo packs while cloaked. I once did an entire level using only Cyrus and his squad, and it was a pretty fun time, especially the end boss fight.