Kill the alien, burn the heretic, purge the unclean.
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.
Hm…I honestly don’t know what to think of this game. I had the day off today, and since I was just sitting in my hotel anyway I played through the entire campaign. It was fun but there were a few things that I’m not sure about. One is…I can’t see why I’d play it again unless I was interested in the multiplayer PvP…which I’m not. While fun, unless I’m missing something playing the campaign again would just be the exact same thing. Can’t play any of the other races, can’t continue to play my own guys (they are capped out at 20 in any case), so there doesn’t seem much point.
Another thing I didn’t like was the saved game feature. I guess I can see why they did what they did, but I really didn’t like it much.
Finally I absolutely hate Steam/Windows Live type stuff. It’s highly annoying when I have to wait for 45 minutes to play a stand alone game I’ve purchased while it runs through whatever it’s running through there (I assume authentication and patching stuff). Also, Steam blew up when I tried to put in my codes for special armor that I got with the purchase of the game…and kept trying to get me to put in a credit card number for some odd reason.
Over all I enjoyed the game. While some of the optional missions were repetitive, the actual missions in the game thread were pretty fun and the story was interesting. Some of the by play among characters got a bit annoying, but then some of the characters were SUPPOSED to be annoying, and I can relate to some of them from my own time in service…there are simply times you want to strangle some of your service mates, and there were certainly times I would have happily strangled some of these guys too. I actually kind of liked the no base building part of the game, but I have to say that I’m not seeing the point in limiting the squads so much. I ended up using the same 3 squads for everything. It was kind of a bummer because while the assault squad (Thaddeus I believe) was fairly useless the scout squad (Cyrus) was fairly useful…but I ended up mostly leaving it at home once the I got the terminator armor for the marine tactical squad and the Dreadnought.
Also, I was a bit disappointed that I never got to see things like the Predator tank or the mobile artillery (don’t remember what it’s called), the Apothecary, Librarian (well, I they were in the story but never got to control one) or Psyker. The game seemed a bit unfinished without that stuff (I’m sure it’s in the multiplayer but I’m really not into multiplayer RTS games).
At any rate it was fun to play but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone right now. Wait until it’s in the bargain bin would be my suggestion.
-XT
Whirlwind.
Librarians are psykers. Is there a seperate unit in the game? If so, is it a Space Marine or a human?
Thanks much!
Here’s hoping that Empire: Total War is worth it.
Exactly. The big tank thing with all the turrets hangin off it…that didn’t make an appearance either. In fact the game was really bare bones…though there were a LOT of Tyranids.
From memory, in the first game there were Librarians and psykers…and a bunch of other moral building type add on units. Well, none of them are in the game except as characters during the dialogue parts. There was a character that was a Tech Marine, there were Tech Priests and of course Librarians…but none of them were playable, at least not as far as I could tell. Might be different in the multiplayer. There were also Imperial Guard units in the game but you couldn’t play those either.
Yeah, I hope so. I’ve heard a lot of bitching about the demo, but I haven’t downloaded it yet myself. Most likely it’s a single battle demo though and it’s probably not optimized…so that’s probably why it’s getting so much flack. Still…I hope this one is a winner since obviously I won’t be playing DoWII until March at this rate. Oh well…at least I have my copy of MTWII with me…just need to put the Stainless Steel mod on there and I’m good to go for the week until I get back home.
-XT
Hrm… a Whirlwind should just be a hull with maybe a hull mounted Heavy Bolter and the main weapon of a multiple rocket launcher system. A big tank with multiple turrets is probably either the Land Raider or, if it’s even bigger, you’re talking about the Imperial Guard’s Baneblade.
It looks like a very, very bad year for gaming. 
Having read a few reviews of the game and now xtisme’s own I’m thinking I’m going to pass on it until it’s available more cheaply. I like strategy games but I’m not that keen on RPGs, and whilst the reviews I’ve read stress that the game does combine the best elements of both I don’t think this game caters to the parts I really enjoy. My favourite iteration of DOW so far was Dark Crusade because of the strategy and massive replayability, which all sounds fairly lacking in this game.
That said the original DOW game had very similar reviews - interesting model of gameplay, great use of the IP but a bit limited. Personally I see this as the launching of the new gameplay engine and with the inevitable expansions it will grow into something really great. Also Relic is very good at responding to feedback so improvements will undoubtedly be made based on the recurring themes from all the reviews.
I have to agree. DC was, by far, the best expansion pack. I may actually reinstall it at some point soon to get mah 40K fix. And I supose this is slightly heretical, but I really, really liked base building. I’m a Turtler by nature, and the ability to build up massive rows of turrets at chokepoints was simply awesome. Not to mention strategic benefits to capturing certain sectors, tactical concerns of which location to attack next, and so on.
I’d had very, very high hopes for DOW II, but no way in hell am I spending that much cash on a game that can be beaten in 12 hours and which (despite all the bells and whistles) sounds a lot like extended skirmish mode. Sure, without a doubt I want a chance to play my 'nids in multiplayer, but I can wait a long time.
I liked the original DoW, but I also waited for that to hit the bargain bin at Walmart. The campaign, nifty as it was, simply wasn’t worth the full price of admission. Neither was Winter Assault, IMO. It wasn’t until Dark Crusade that the series really hit its stride… and then lost it with Soulstorm. I’ve already posted about that abortion of a game, and I guess I should have figured that after Soulstorm, the franchise itself was in a bit of trouble.
Quite possibly. It may make sense to wait to buy DoW II until it’s bundled with its expansion pack and you can play the basic campaign for just a bit of fun, while they have an expanded campaign with real strategic elements as part of the expansion pack.
I’m a turtle player as well and definitely miss this aspect of the game. It’s even worse when you look at how the scenarios play out in DoW II. In general you either have an assault mission where you have to capture either radio uplink thingies or temple/manufacturing buildings (which don’t actually manufacture anything, just give you reinforcements) or defense scenarios where you have to defend the generators of temple/manufacturing buildings. Oh, the story line scenarios are a bit different (and some of them are a hell of a lot of fun, especially when the Tyranid hosts are looking to over run your position, and the radio calls are frantic and it looks like all is lost), but essentially you either fight your way across the board to fight the scenario boss or fight off 3 waves of attacks to fight the scenario boss.
I also had high hopes for this game. Maybe multiplayer is where the game shines.
Soulstorm was, simply put, terrible. One of the worst games I’ve ever bought. I think I gave up on the game after an hour and it’s been on the shelf ever since.
-XT
To be fair, I warned you about Soulstorm. 
You did and I didn’t listen. :smack: I’m stubborn that way. Also, a lot of times I disagree with people regarding games, books, movies, etc…I’ve found in the past that my own view doesn’t go along with most people’s assessments of such things. However, I should have listened to you on that one!
-XT
Well I did listen to the dire warnings about Soul Storm and didn’t expose myself to it. Reading your post I’m very glad about this. 
Yes and no. Patches are only effective if you can get the word out to all your customers in order to install them. I don’t know what the statistics are, but I’m betting a sizeable portion of the owners of single-player games never bother to check on the internet to see if one is available before starting the game(if ever). And if you’re only going to reach, for example, half of your total users via the normal “patching” process, there is much less incentive to actually patch the thing in the first place. Additionally, many gaming sites and magazines have policies in which they purposely ignore patches when reviewing the game for the same reason- they want to give an accurate score for anyone who simply opened the box and installed the game.
Requiring a connection to Steam to finish installing the game ensures that everyone that bought a boxed copy has an updated game. Thus it doesn’t really matter if what’s on the disk is unfinished, complete crap, or totally blank, as long as the finished content is on Steam by release day.
Capping them at 20 is done purposely so that you’re only going to have a little more than half of your skill branches maxed by the end of the game- if you want to build your character another way, and see what those other two skill branches do, you have to go through the game again. I think stuff like that adds to the replayability (in the same way that you couldn’t build Necron warriors as a space marine in Dark Crusade- going to have to replay the campaign if you want to see those guys).
Now, granted, some of the skills did look like crap (why am I going to waste a lot of skill points to enable my force commander to use heavy bolters, when he is obviously geared towards melee in the first place?), but there were still quite a few skills that did look nice that I never got the first time around.
The lesson that everybody should take away from this is that I am right, always, in all circumstances.
Also they should send me money.
It was more than moderately horrible. THIS game isn’t nearly as bad…it just lacks a lot of replay value, to me at least. Has anyone tried out the multiplayer yet? From the GameSpy review I understand that this is where the game supposedly shines.
-XT
Can you say “extrapolation too far”?