PEOPLE LIKE X-BLADES?

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“I played through on the difficulty above normal and was rather distressed to find that the cover system is essentially broken, seeing as every weapon seems to be able to destroy it. Terminator armour, especially, seeing as that can just walk through cover.”

Surely this adds depth to the game? If an opponant keeps taking advantage of a particular piece of cover you can simply erase it and force them to up their game. You cannot erase it until you have the tech to do so, which is effectively punishment for them sitting back and letting you turtle-tech instead of moving up and pressurising you.

Also I don’t know what you mean about buildings. I don’t think they are destructible. Units inside are vulnerable to certain types of attack, such as explosives and possibly flamers and plasmas. I do agree that units inside a few specific buildings seem to be less effective at shooting enemies than if they were standing outside, but this is not the majority of cases.

I don’t see what the big fuss about this game is. Although I’ll admit to not having played the single-player. It is a good game which only falls down on three counts for me:

#1 is GfW LIVE, or at least the way its ‘TrueSkill’ matchmaking system has been implemented. This simply doesn’t work to pit you against players of equal skill and experience. They should honestly have it work off the in-game ranking system instead because that seems to be a far more reliable benchmarking system.

#2 is that it’s still not certain if Relic know how to balance the game for high-end multiplayer. The maps are well balanced but the factions don’t stack up. Tyranids are OP by virtue of the fact they have almost no squad tech powers to research/micro (most is automatic for some reason) and their units deal equal damage to infantry and tanks. This is quite a fundamental problem that can’t simply be solved by nerfing or buffing a few units, it’s to do with the army being easier to control across the board.

#3 is that 8 maps is too little, and represents an under-developed and under-appreciated multiplayer mode. Relic have said they plan 2 more maps to follow soonafter release, which, depending on the type of maps, might make the MP worth it. I seem to be in the minority of player who prefer variety to repetition when it comes to MP maps.

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But I can’t blame them for trying something different.

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I’m glad that designers are willing to abandon or significantly modify the Starcraft/Age of Empire model that has defined the genre for a decade. (At least from the mainstream perspective.)

DoWII’s critics remind me of TF2′s: both are upset that the respective sequels got rid of what they think made the original games fun in the first place (nades, conc jumps, base building, etc)

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Anyway, I think genres in general are a bit fishy. Who’s to say what a RTS is or is not? DoW2 might be a RTS if you define the genre sufficiently broadly.

But eh, I tend to agree with you, it’s not what I’d consider a “real” RTS. But it’s not something I feel sufficiently strongly about to get into any arguments over. ;)

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I played through on the difficulty above normal and was rather distressed to find that the cover system is essentially broken, seeing as every weapon seems to be able to destroy it. Terminator armour, especially, seeing as that can just walk through cover.

You don’t generally destroy yellow cover though. And if you want to use cover, you may want to consider not walking through it with your terminators. ;)

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