Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Online petitions! I love the way they don’t ever change anything. But still, let’s give it a shot. There’s an online effort to convince THQ/Relic to release their upcoming Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine shooter on PC as well as on console. It makes sense, given I’d guesstimate there’s a bit more commonality between PC gamers and Games Workshop players than between console gamers and the latter, but then that is an entirely baseless sweeping generalisation.

And, as it turns out, Relic aren’t dismissing the idea of a PC version out of hand.
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It’s been out for a while, but I’ve only just gotten around to trying out the free Last Stand update for Dawn Of War 2. Chatting to one of the game’s producers a while back, he posited it as almost a third game – alongside the already dramatically different single and multiplayer aspects of it. The plan for it is to create a way for more casual/hithero singleplayer-focused chaps to play online, to enjoy the social aspects of multiplayer gaming, without being put off by the fear of a near-instant spanking by someone who knows the game intimately. Does it work?
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Well, 10-and-a-bit. We’re a couple of days late with this, but that’s only so we can look fashionably nonchalant. Landmark strategy game is a decade old, you say? Yeah, whatever. We’re too busy listening to Dizzee Rascal records and calling LaRoux the new Dido.

No, of course we’re just tardy – Homeworld is a game to be celebrated if ever there was one. Ten bloody years! Yet it still seems so fresh and modern in many ways. And, thanks to its creators, it looks as though it’s not going away just yet. (That isn’t a tease for Homeworld 3, I’m afraid – but the news is still good, honest guv).
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There’s been rumours around, but it’s finally been confirmed in our old comrades at the PC Gamer* podcast. Talking about their forthcoming issue where they reveal that the first Dawn of War 2 add-on pack will feature chaos. And it’s called Chaos Rising. It’s welcome, but not exactly an enormous surprise – I thought Chaos would be one of the most-likely factions to be in the original game. There’s little more in the podcast – expect more to come when the subs copies arrive with their readers shortly.

*UK. As in, the original one. Yeah, you heard.

Friday nights are for playing Champions Online for far too long with Messrs Gillen and Cameron while waiting in vain for grumbly John Walker to join us, instead of getting my posts for RPS done and packing for a camping trip in the wilds of Sussex. Sigh. At least I am cheered by news of an impending update for Dawn of War II, which adds a promising-sounding new mode to the game. It even gets its own chest-pounding WAR IS NOBLE AND MANLY CGI video…
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Relic are meanies! Meanies! They go and make an exciting-sounding MMO-esque follow-up to Company of Heroes, complete with persistent online characters and ranks, and then they only go and restrict it to China. Meanies!

Oh, wait. They’ve just revealed a way for us Western-types to have a crack at it, and for free too. Cuddlies!
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The latest update for Dawn Of War 2, There Is Only War, is now up on Steam. Instructions for how to activate it are here. The update comes with the “world builder” level editing tools, and there’s a PDF instruction document for that here. We’re totally expecting an RPS community map. The full list of other changes included in the patch is here, and boy, that is a lot of changes. The beta runs to 14th July, when it will go live for the retail game.

The shootiest RTS of all time, Dawn Of War II, has just had a monster update, and should patch automatically when you start the game up. The update includes the 2v2 game mode we were all clamouring for when the game originally came out, as well as a bunch of other surface stuff such as new death animations. There’s also two new four-player maps, a benchmarking app, and push to talk for voice chat. There’s also some serious bug fixing and an overhaul of the AI. Full details of patch below. We’ll probably have a poke around on those new maps later today, but let us know below if you have any thoughts on this update, or the current state of DoWII.
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Well, this is terribly gracious. The complete score for Relic’s divisive RTS sequel can now be had for no pennies. I can’t say it struck me as either wonderful or terrible whilst I played the game, but the track names are certainly spectacular – f’rinstance “There Is Only War“, “They Come In Waves And We Push Them Back” and – oh yes – “Show Me What Passes For Music Among Your Misbegotten Kind“. The world would be a better place if all songs were called that, frankly.
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I mean you can download it from other sources, but you’d still need Steam to play it. So you might as well download it on Steam. Of course that only really matters if you haven’t already bought and played DoWII anyway, which I know a few of you haven’t, because at least one of you has been asking me whether the single player is really worth full-price game money. You’d have hoped our extensive judgments on the game might have counted for something, but this demo now means you can decide for yourself with 333mb of Marines vs Orks.

What do you think, RTS veterans, should Andrew buy Dawn Of War II? (If he hasn’t already.)