Dawn of war 2; not Dawn of War - The sequel
Ahhh, Dawn of War 2, if there is one game I really was waiting for then it has to be this game (well, except maybe for Oblivion that is). I expected it to be something like the original DoW, with a better graphical engine, the physics of Company of Heroes and even more cool Warhammer 40K-creatures. How disappointed I was as I was first playing the game… It had a major fail on the first objective ie the only thing it has in common with the original DoW is the universe. Although disappointed and mentally broken, I carried on and discovered not all was lost. I hereby bring you the tales of a disillusioned DoW junkie.
Day 1: It all started the 17th of February: the local games store sold the game one day earlier than the official release date, so I bought it. At home I installed it but when I wanted to play it asked for Steam to be installed. Yes, that is STEAM you read, your eyeballs are allowed to vomit… As a short deviation I hereby brings thou the tales of STEAM. After installing steam I tried to start the game but it seemed Steam only follows the official release dates, so I had to wait until midnight to play it… At midnight, you can guess, the server was "too busy". Arghhh!
Day 2: Finally I get to launch the game. First thing that pops up: Windows live account… This is getting quite annoying… I created a live account and finally got to play the game. Instinctively I searched for the "skirmish" button, but alas, it is gone. Desperate for some blood and gore I start the campaign, and after the loading screen I get to see my first battlefield. It has to be said, the graphics are breathtakingly gorgeous. It's filled with little details like rocks, grass, fuel tanks,… the general terrain is made up of bigger chunks of rock, (ruined) buildings, broken tanks, small lakes and rivers, tank traps, barbed wire, impact craters,… And everything still looks neat, not overdone and it's not drawing away your attention or making the game more difficult. Kudos to Relic, for making such a beautiful game with standard system requirements.
But I'm getting carried away. In the first mission you get to learn the basic fluff: moving, shooting, taking cover, capturing strategic points (more about them later on) and using skills. You start with your captain and with a squad of tactical marines. As you play more mission devastators, scouts and assault marines will become available. You get all of these in the first few missions. Later on some special unit(s) will join you, but I'll leave that to the reader.
All of these units have their own function: the tactical marines are nice all-rounders, the devastators are the heavy-weapons-dudes, the scouts are...eeh…scouts and the assault marines are close-combat warriors. Nothing forces you to stick to these predefined functions though: units have a level, and they gain experience from killing enemies (everyone gets his share with every kill) and at the end of a level your units gain experience according to how well you did. Along the road you will also find items. After each level you get to spend your unit's skill points on statistics ("stamina", "shooting", "strength", and something "energy"-like). As you put points in each statistic you unlock certain skills (like the option for your assault marines to equip power weapons).
In this screen you also get to equip your units with the items you found along the way, this goes from weapons to armor and from healing packs to turrets and an invulnerability-item. If you have items left you can't use, you can trade them for some extra experience.
But back to the mission: During the mission there are certain objectives to complete. Each of these objectives is marked on your minimap and you can choose in which order to complete them. Also marked on the map are the strategic points. These points can be captured by your units and you can use them to reinforce your squads. After completing all of the objectives the mission automatically stops. You get to see your statistics and then you are back on your ship where you can spend skillpoints and equip items.
Most of the missions have the same objective: kill an enemy leader, although some are quite different (but once again, that's up to you to discover). You get to fight three different enemies: Orks, which are only usefull once they get into close combat; Eldar, which are all elite units (although some are slightly too elite to be good imo) and Tyranids aka "you WILL get swamped, chewed, stomped, digested and shred to pieces".
The only downside of the campaign is that you can only play it with the blood ravens. Ahh, how I would have enjoyed it to take over entire worlds as a hive tyrant… But alas, relic keeps up its name of "campaigns with only one race".
I didn't get to try the "co-op" mode, so I won't consider it in the review.
Day 3: I have no internet connection as I am not at home. Steam says:" F*** YOU; no internet, no games… " And I payed 50bucks for that…
Day 4: Being pissed at Steam I play some Civ4.
Day 5: up to the multiplayer-testing. First things first: create a multiplayer Windows-live account.
After creating the account I restart my search for the "skirmish" button, but as expected it still isn't there. After some testing I found that multiplayer -> local leads to a single-player battle. Here you have the option to pick any of the four races. Also you can pick one of three leaders (for spacemarines these are the apothecary, force commander and techmarine). Each of the leaders has different special skills (The warp spider exarch (Eldar) can summon units of warp spiders, the techmarine a unit of terminators) which need a special resource that is obtained by killing enemy units. Once you get enough of this resource you can activate the skill. You can also capture a special strategic point which is used in a "conquest" like victory condition (you both start with 500 points, and by holding more strategic points than you enemy you lower his points). The other victory-condition is elimination.
But how to train units? In the multiplayer battles you actually have an HQ that you can use to train all of your units. The HQ can be upgraded so you can train more powerful units. To train units you need requisite and power. Both are obtained by capturing strategic points (one for power and one for requisite, and you can expand the power-point by buying more generators). These points cannot be fortified (although you can build something on top of the power-points) so they are easily recaptured by the enemy.
By limiting you with 100 population relic has made it that you can never have enough units to guard every point with a decent force, so if the enemy launches an assault you have to decide to get more units from different points or to try and defend the point with the units present. Just as in the campaign your units gain levels, but besides getting more health nothing else happens. Your commander can be equipped with an array of items, making it more fit for a certain battlefield-role.
In total I feel somewhat disappointed by the multiplayer mode: no basebuilding, no customizable space-marine units, … Still I can imagine some people will love this kind of intense multiplayer fighting.
Day 6: The final verdict:
The good things:
- A lovely RPG-like campaign with a high replay value
- intense multiplayer battles
- awesome graphics
- the tyranids are implemented very well
The bad things:
- no basebuilding
- Steam…
- Steam…
- only one race to play the campaign
- Steam…
- slightly unbalanced elder (in the campaign that is)
- limited amount of multiplayer maps
As you might have noticed, most of the "bad" things aren't really "bad", but as I said I expected Dawn of War, the sequel; but instead DOW2 turns out to be a completely different game. So if you bought the original DoW and expect to find the same here, you probably won't. Still, it's an awesome game with a nice refreshing look on RTS campaigns and intense multiplayer. If you have internet and nerves of steel (otherwise they might snap while using Steam) go ahead and buy this game, you won't be disappointed.