Dawn of War 2
Okay, so there has been a lull in posting, but not for the reason you may have suspected. Not lack of writing, but lack of being able to. You see my prayers were answered and delivered by the gaming developer Relic. Dawn of War 2 is here, and freaking awesome.
I base that statement on that it has pretty been my only game played since it’s release Thursday. I will admit I had my fears. I was not particularly happy with the last DoW installment, Soulstorm. I thought that the game was really just filler and a stopgap, maybe even a weather gauge to what may come. But enough of that I’ll post later about what I thought stunk and what did not. For now let’s discuss the latest and greatest.
First thing you may notice is the movie opener for the game, really really well done, and does what it was supposed to, make you totally want to play the game. As the DoW series has gone on you may have noticed the cinematics take a nosedive on quality a the expansions rolled on. I’m not sure if it was just laziness or some ditz in accounting trying to be cost effective, but whatever it was, it is corrected. The cinematic is well rendered and beautiful with a good pace and cinema feel, like a real film loving person sat and went “what would I like to see the Space Marines doing?” and how best can we make it feel appropriately badass.
After that the setup process takes a bajillion hours. About the games only real negative in my humble furry opinion. It is a game for Windows Live and makes no bones about making you jump through the hoops to get the game going. After the process gets going though…..
First thing, I freaking love the naming your hero. I’m a big fan about the story and immersion in games. Leave the safety belt off, Im a big bear now, tell me the whole story and let me feel like a part of it. Coming from a background huge in fantasy like Dragonlance novels in middle school, Dungeons and Dragons while overseas and Warhammer for the last decade, I think I can take it. I love the instant tying and caring about my toon that happens just because I named him.
The little tutorial parts are easy and well planned out, even skippable really if you’ve ever played an RTS before. But I do recommend at least looking at the tips as some are really helpful. I notice first that the usual build a base then grind and build a huge freaking army is gone. Everything is done with squads and I actually find myself liking it ever chapter that goes by. They really drive home the Space Marines being the unstoppable force they are by showing what a squad can do. One thing that I always found interesting int eh lore is the part they play as the speartip of the emperor and being such a force of war that a hundred of them is worth thousands of any other force. It never really felt that way before in the series as the game had the flaw of trying to make all forces kinda equal. Note that I have not tried multiplayer online yet. Many years of MMO and other social activities have more than enough shown me reason to be leery of the faceless gamer and the sheer amount of stupid that flows from their mouths because of the Internet Theory elegantly explained here. So that will have to wait. Probably till I have my faith renewed in humanity or I die in a fire. hmmm may take a while.
Anyhoo. The rest is really done well. I can’t really pick much apart, the level design is great the destructible environments and cover for squads is well done. I never played the previous game Company of Heroes that apparently all this is built on, I really have been extraordinarily tired of World War 2 games. Not really a shortage of them. On a fanboy level I really like the art direction in the game, from cutscenes to loading intros all very well done and true to the canon. I really don’t like the Cyrus guy on my team, the Scout sergeant. His hair bothers me.
The game makes a new twist in that every mission you aren’t building up a sprawling base from scratch every time. You deploy from your strike carrier and it really makes a change in the game, not only play wise but in keeping to the material. You load out your squad picking out who goes and who stays to make tea. You can get arms and equipment from kills you make and they are equipped on your sergeants really adding flavor and ability to them. I really really can’t say enough about how much this added to the game. Wargear rocks.
The different planets you visit and war upon are done exactly how I imagined it when Soulstorm first talked about it and botched it up. Not just set to a particular world and starting point you travel between them and pick your war zone, striking from above in drop pods, just like the “angels of death” are supposed to. When I first looked at the battle over multiple worlds thing listed on the game bullet points of features, I really thought to not even get the game so disappointed by the last DoW game to feature that, I am really glad they finally got it right.
So in a nutshell, I really recommend this game. If you are a Sci Fi fan, RTS gamer, or Warhammer enthusiast; do yourself a favor.
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