Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
March 18, 2009 - In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. However, in 2009, there’s only Dawn of War II, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The Games Workshop world of space marines, daemons, heroic aliens and humans alike has been around for years, but it was only recently they entered the virtual world to replicate the tabletop conflicts that have become so popular, courtesy of Relic.
If you’re looking for a solid, dependable strategy title after years of Starcraft, the Total War series and Civilisation, you’re going to hit something of a wall with this title.
This isn’t strategy as you know it, with bases akin to a vast forest, filled with scuttling resource collectors and barracks training hundreds of troops for the next zerg into the enemy base.
This is more of an adventure into micromanagement on the scale of the everyman, the average soldier and the various directions he takes to defeat his opponent.
The thing with DoW II is that it’s actually split into two very different games: campaign, and multi-player. Of course, it’s arguable that most strategy titles, if not most games in general have this foreseen split in game play mechanics when it comes to playing other people. But the entire game changes here, from the ground up.
The campaign is a fickle beast: you can pick up “loot” items off the odd enemy and “boss” enemies at the end of each map, equipping your character as they level up, much akin to the Warcraft hero system. However, where this title differs, is the way in which your unit levels up. You’re given five squads, and allowed to use four at a time.
This seems small, but when you consider that a single space marine is the military equivalent of hundreds if not thousands of men, it becomes more enjoyable. Heavy weapons, infiltrators, leader units… they’re all here, and you can level them up through investing in different talents depending on your play style.
Some players will experiment, but this seems like a wasted agenda, as by simply putting points in the aggressive talent trees, the game’s missions are rendered down to button-mashing.
You’re given an objective in every mission, played out across three planets, and you’re allowed to pick which mission you’re going to attempt yet through an inspired open-plan storyline that only progresses once you’ve sated your appetite for side-missions (whether for extra experience, loot, or simply for more storyline).
Sadly, every mission ends in killing a mob larger and angrier than all the others, and this feels somewhat anticlimactic by the tenth mission in a row. The bosses are designed to encourage the use of tactics: using your fast, nimble scouts to kite the boss around the area while your heavies wear him down with suppressive fire.
However, you could just as easily beef them up through grinding, stick them in front of the boss and spam healing items until your antagonist bites the dust. The problem with Dawn of War II’s leveling system is that, controversially, it makes things very simple, very quickly.
It’s enjoyable enough to watch four squads of super-human soldiers wipe out five hundred troops in ten minutes and Relic does a great job of giving you that god-like edge we crave so much in the form of Master Chief, COG soldiers and other questionably macho protagonists, but it feels unfair.
However god-like space marines are, you’d better hope your computer is more so. This game runs at a minimum requirement of a desktop 128mb graphics card, and that will barely manage a stutter-filled slide-show of visuals with everything on low. The detail is superb, but unless you’re one of the dual-SLI card fanatics who hyped Crysis to the un-leet masses, prepare to have to put your sliders a fair way down in the graphics options screen.
Even then, this game is astonishingly well-rendered. Gone are the chunky green-skinned monsters of Warcraft: you can zoom in on Orks here, and see everything from their pupils to the plaque on their teeth, and it’s an impressively high-tech experience, though if you’re playing online, expect the game to mutate into Microsoft PowerPoint if someone else hasn’t got the specs or the connection speed.
The online multi-player component of this title is, in my opinion, the future Starcraft of the professional RTS enthusiasts who make a living playing in Korea. The leveling and gear system disappears, leaving you with a base, and nodes to capture to fund more troops.
It becomes something of a Rainbow Six experience: squads leading enemy squads into killing grounds and choke points, using every aspect of the map simply because attacking bases is pointless, as there is no real base, simply a glorified spawn point for your army and occasionally a few generators.
A “true-skill” matchmaking system makes short work of finding someone at your level of difficulty, but expect to be pitted against a lot of people who aren’t what their skill levels represent, as I’m sure you’re familiar with by now through titles like Halo 3, matchmaking networks take months, if not years, to get everyone settled into a comfortable skill slot.
You’re welcome to play duel-esque matches of one on one, or tear into huge armies with a few friends, but either way, you’re going to enjoy yourself as you’re no longer limited to the space marines as you were in campaign. Experiment with the Tyranids (the original Zerg. That’s right, I said it), Orks, and Eldar, painting and customizing your army much as I spent my teenage years doing in Games Workshop stores around the UK.
Dawn of War II is a hard game to work down into a review. It overturns tables of tradition in bases and siege game-play, and it engages the player on a personal level via matchmaking and units geared towards the player’s method of taking on the opposition.
Something of a prophetic experience, Dawn of War II is refreshing, sharp in graphics and game play, and if you’re a fan of the Warhammer 40’000 universe, something you’re going to want to keep playing when your models are back in their case.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Chaos Rising Review
As smoke billows from craters beneath, fire encapsulates a dropship barrelling towards the planet. A cacophony of plasma fire and lascannon shots ring out as the..
Dead Space Extraction, Fact Sheet
Built from the ground up and developed exclusively for the Nintendo Wii, Dead Space Extraction is a prequel that reveals the events leading up to..
Patrick Warburton and Cheryl Hines in Space Chimps Game
In the Space Chimps game, players follow the adventures of pioneering primates on a mission into outer space. Cheryl Hines as Luna, is a by..
Dead Space Extraction “Prequel” announced for Wii
It has been revealed by EA that a new Dead Space game is on the horizon which will be a prequel to the Xbox 360..
Warhawk downloadable pack coming to PSN this December
The battle began this August when Warhawk went online on PS3. Since then, the fighting has spanned the globe as PS3 gamers of all nationalities..
