Was a bit disappointed it didn’t ship on Monday. It’s been put off until the 19th it seems. Still, only a couple of days. Anyone else anticipating this game? for my part it’s one of the 2 or 3 games I’m really looking forward to this year.
-XT
To be honest, although I’m really looking forward to it, I’m going to wait to see what the reviews say.
Yeah…that’s probably a good idea as it seems that DOW II is a pretty big departure from the previous version. Myself, I’m going to take the chance…from what I’ve read so far it seems like it’s something I’ll like. I sure hope so…I loved the first series, until the last few expansions at least.
Besides, it seems to me that this year is going to be pretty barren of games that I will enjoy playing. The expansion of Sins has been pushed back, which is actually a good thing as this is one of the games I’m looking forward too. Other than that I have the new Total War Empire game and that’s pretty much it. Maybe Diablo III and a few others I can’t remember off the top of my head.
-XT
I played the steam beta, and as someone who loved DoW1, I really didn’t like it.
They took out base building entirely, scaled the amount of units (both on the field at once and variety) and upgrades back drastically and made the maps a lot more closed quarters (but somehow ALSO made points harder to defend at the same time). Points uncap in about .3 seconds so you need to be ridiculously vigilant, and you can’t build listening posts or towers to reinforce them. On one hand it makes comebacks easier, on the other hand… meh.
My friend loved it though, so I guess it’s a love/hate things.
Yea…all that sounds bad to really bad. I’m actually kinda at a loss of excitement here. I need to see what the reviews say, but at this point I’m leaning towards not picking it up and just waiting until Empire: Total War.
I don’t know…it might be refreshing to not have such a focus on base building (as just about every other RTS game has for the last few decades) and more on small unit tactical combat. I enjoyed the Company of Hero’s games that this was based off of. This sounds very similar to me.
-XT
IGN has a review of the game out already (before it ships interestingly enough, though I noticed you can get it from Direct2Drive now):
-XT
Hrmmm… I might have to pick it up after all. Reviews on metacritic are solidly in the mid to high 80’s.
Going to pick up my copy at GameStop on the way home tonight. Will let you guys know what I think once I get it loaded, FWIW. From what I’ve read this sounds pretty good…a little like the CoH games. More small unit tactics than base building and tank rush…which will be fine by me.
-XT
The developers have also stated that they “re-vamped” their single player campaign based on early reviews. Steam enables them to do that. So many of the print reviews from a few weeks ago aren’t necessarily based on the final release of the game.
The IGN review was the first one to take into account the “re-vamped” SP campaign, from what I gather.
Hrmmmmmm…
Thanks for that, I wasn’t aware of it.
Although, as I just re-subbed my alt EVE Online account, I think I’ll probably play that for a bit and wait until DoW II is selling for a bit less on EBay, or what have you.
If reviews were all solidly above 90 it might’ve been a different matter.
Yeah, it’s tough when you are involved in an MMO to have time for RL AND for additional games. And I’ve heard Eve is a real time sink.
-XT
As far as RTS goes, I’m looking forward to Halo Wars.
Huh…I thought Halo Wars was going to be a FPS type multi-player game. I guess I missed that one.
-XT
Definitely. It’s RTS, but there’s no economy to handle. It sounds like what Dawn of War is trying to do.
Very cool…I’ll certainly check it out then since I always liked the Halo universe as well.
-XT
GameSpy’s review gives it 4.5 out of 5 stars.
-XT
I’m planning to get it - Relic’s take on Warhammer 40K got me into the franchise, I love it now and still play Dark Crusade regularly. This game, in fact, might be the one I decide to christen my new PC with once it’s delivered, because my old one sure as hell can’t run it.
It’s pretty damn decent. I can’t really comment on the multiplayer experience, since I’m an offline kind of guy, but I love the singleplayer at least.
The storyline is pretty decent fare with a good pay-off towards the end, though it’s all meat and little enough sizzle. The factions you’re up against feel and look different enough to distinguish them from each other, though because of your low options of customization you’ve pretty much got one-size-fits-all tactics.
The RPG elements are solidly done. They don’t really allow for a big changeover in how the characters are meant to be played, but they let you at least shore up the obvious weak sides. (For a spoilery example: The Force Commander can’t really be played as a ranged character without crippling him, since you can only upgrade his “ranged” combat tree about half of what you can upgrade his “melée” tree.)
It doesn’t really get annoying, but the lack of distinctly meaningful customization choices does kind of hamper the replayability. (I can understand specialized bi-characters being deadlocked into their paths, but I’d appreciate being able to customize “my” character a bit more.)
The missions are many and the maps they’re played on are well designed. The only annoyance here is that all your non-special (story) missions are played on the same 9 maps (3 for each planet), which does get repetetive after a while. Greater variance here would be starling. And the mission types could have also used some variance. (Either attack the commanding alien on the other side of the map or defend your point from 4 waves of attacks.)
The game really shines in it’s combat mechanics, though. Cover is well spread out, graded red (flimsy), yellow (sturdy) and green (solid) and your squads will automatically look for cover if given a stop command while moving to another area. The AI is pretty decent at trying to smoke you out of entrenched cover, using grenades, explosives, gas and (in some cases) using special abilities to zip past your meatshield melée types and go straight for the weaker ranged characters.
Your own characters have a formidable repertoire of abilities and weapons, as well. Ranging from grenades, demolition pack, orbital bombardment, flash grenades and deployable turrets to help your defense, these are the bread and butter of your tactical choices. A ranged character may well be a nine foot tall bull armed in frigate-class plate, but he’s going to look awfully dumb with that pistol when faced with a tank. So you can gear him up with Melta bombs, artillery beacons, anti-tank weaponry or just give him a oversized pistol and tell him to take his time, you’re not going anywhere.
Time is, however, of an essence. After each mission, your performance will be ranked after 3 qualifiers: Fury (% of enemies killed), Resilience (How many of your squad leaders were kept alive throughout the entire mission) and Speed (Time it took to accomplish the main objective). These statistics get integrated in a World statistic that nets you an accomplishment title at the end of it, depending on how successful you have been during the game. Additionally, receiving a high score also gives you an XP bonus towards your levels, and these also apply to squads that weren’t with you on the mission.
It’s a good system that kind of forces you to choose a tactic, because the time demand is pretty strict, there’s a lot of enemies around and not all of your squads are easy to keep alive. Someone on the DOW2 forums put it: Thorough, quick or safe - pick two and stick to them. Personally, I played it quick and safe, sending a stealthed scout ahead of me to avoid the major clusters of enemies and calling down artillery to soften them up if I first had to fight. But, just for kicks, I decided that the aliens on a certain planet had said sexually inappropriate things about my mother and embarked on a planet-wide campaign of total extermination. Because I could.
This has become very rambling, but there’s a few more things that are worth mentioning. You’ve got six squads (of which you can field 4 at a time), basically divided 3/3 between melée spec and ranged spec. 2 are generic, 2 are specialized and 2 are wholly dedicated to their combat branch.
Mild spoilers regarding character divide:
Thaddeus: Melée, generic. (Assault Marines - I.e. Jump Packs and pistol/chainswords)
Force Commander: Melée, specialized. (Initially pistol/chainsword, goes on to bigger toys after a while.)
Thule/Dreadnought: Melée, dedicated. (Big robot. Big robot. With rotating, spiked hands and a flame thrower.)
Tarkus: Ranged, generic. (Tactical Marine squads, ranged first, close combat second. Can soak a lot of damage and tanks well, but the damage output is initially negligible.)
Avitus: Ranged, specialized. (Devastator Marines; heavy ranged weaponry. Chain-gun wielding backliners, excellent when deployed on top of hills, rubbish up close.)
Cyrus: Ranged, dedicated. (Scouts. Can stealth and wield sniper rifles or shotguns. Frail, delicate thing but with the ability to sneak up close and call down artillery fire and remain unseen, or pick off the bigger baddies at a distance, he can be crucial when used right. Just don’t leave him hanging around when his stealth field is about to expire.)
The graphics are also very nice, but not a big step up on Dawn of War itself. The animations are the highlight, of course, though they have become somewhat less gruesome.
All in all, a solid 8/10 game. Could have been 9/10 if the maps were more varied, but I think it would had to have had a major rewamp of the storyline and map variancy to become a 10/10. At least, that’s the single-player. I can’t vouch for multi.
(And sorry, this was all written in the middle of the night)
Patches allow them to do that - you don’t need thrice-accursed Steam to release updates.
What excuses are these? They are xenos, that’s more than enough reason to burn them all.