Screenshots :.
Dawn of War 2
PC
Jay
06-03-2009
"Nice... armour."
"Your usual grizzled marine type."
"Blimey, that's a heck of a lot of blood."
Generally speaking it's quite difficult to find other strategy lovers idling about the place, itching for a good game of top-down strategic war. It was with some luck that we all found our place to live within Dawn of War. The game offered something for everyone; a strong set of races, a lot of strategy, unit and resource management and something people tend to overlook – the ability to build.
We've played Dawn of War on and off probably since it came out and never really tired of it. Sure, all games have their little bugs and imbalances, but on the whole it was a very strong title. It was therefore, with some surprise, we learnt that Dawn of War 2 was going to focus primarily on unit management (that being less of them) and strategy, and less on building.
I wasn't sure I liked this turn of events.
The general synopsis for DoW2 is that you play an up-and-coming Space Marine who joins his brothers in facing one of the biggest threats they've ever known – the Tyranids. These Zerg-like aliens choose strength in number as their main asset, and destruction of every living thing on the planets they visit as their agenda. Hmm, that sounds familiar... 6.5 billion population, consume every natural resource, expand somewhere else to fill that with pointless junk – hey that's us!
The single-player campaign has that whole risk style layout again. You get a certain number of deployments and have fight battles based on sections of the planet you're currently hovering over. While on the planet you get to capture strategic locations that will further aid you in the fights to come. Although, per drop you can only capture one of these buildings and so you can choose based on your personal preference. Before jumping down to the planet's surface you get to load out not only which group of troops (nice ring to it) will be joining, but what equipment they'll be using, from armour and weapons to their accessories too.
Once on the surface you'll roam around looking for bad guys, utilising cover and garrisoning buildings that are available. Each set of units has their own strengths and weaknesses as well as having their own special abilities that can be harnessed well in certain situations. Each level will also contain a super unit or boss battle to fight, which for me is actually a really nice addition. You don't tend to get boss situations in strategies and so I wasn't sure how it would play out. Strangely it works really well, even if you face the tedium of facing one each time you deploy and not just annihilating everything in the map to win. It effectively makes you start taking advantage of these encounters to obtain better equipment and level your dudes up.
Levelling up each team is an easy process that you'll probably end up doing each time you're back at your ship. Each team has a category they can level up in. “Stamina” gives your team better health and health regeneration. “Ranged” gives the team better damage as well as access to better categories of ranged weapons. “Strength” up's the melee damage as well as improving the unit in question's ability to perform special attacks. “Will” is the type of energy consumed by your units performing special attacks, which can have points spent to increase the regeneration and amount a unit has.
So, all-in-all the angle that Dawn of War 2 has taken by creating a hybrid of RPG and Squad-Based Strategy is certainly a change over it's predecessor. It was perhaps with this in mind when I found that while the multiplayer was put together as well as I might have come to expect, it still wasn't DoW. Without buildings it has effectively taken away one element of a game that already existed to create a new one with updated graphics. However, saying that the game is very well put together, and so if you, like us are perhaps addicted to playing the original Dawn of War (OK, with expansions sure), you're likely to enjoy DoW2 but just not in the same way. It's not a replacement, it's a different game. So much so that I might argue that this game should've been given a different name and not lead to the assumption that it was going to be identical to it's predecessor but with a new engine.
For those of you who are looking for a strong strategy and aren't set in your ways or have any anal hangups (that's an odd phrase), then you should really enjoy Dawn of War 2. It's certainly worth checking out.
We've played Dawn of War on and off probably since it came out and never really tired of it. Sure, all games have their little bugs and imbalances, but on the whole it was a very strong title. It was therefore, with some surprise, we learnt that Dawn of War 2 was going to focus primarily on unit management (that being less of them) and strategy, and less on building.
I wasn't sure I liked this turn of events.
The general synopsis for DoW2 is that you play an up-and-coming Space Marine who joins his brothers in facing one of the biggest threats they've ever known – the Tyranids. These Zerg-like aliens choose strength in number as their main asset, and destruction of every living thing on the planets they visit as their agenda. Hmm, that sounds familiar... 6.5 billion population, consume every natural resource, expand somewhere else to fill that with pointless junk – hey that's us!
The single-player campaign has that whole risk style layout again. You get a certain number of deployments and have fight battles based on sections of the planet you're currently hovering over. While on the planet you get to capture strategic locations that will further aid you in the fights to come. Although, per drop you can only capture one of these buildings and so you can choose based on your personal preference. Before jumping down to the planet's surface you get to load out not only which group of troops (nice ring to it) will be joining, but what equipment they'll be using, from armour and weapons to their accessories too.
Once on the surface you'll roam around looking for bad guys, utilising cover and garrisoning buildings that are available. Each set of units has their own strengths and weaknesses as well as having their own special abilities that can be harnessed well in certain situations. Each level will also contain a super unit or boss battle to fight, which for me is actually a really nice addition. You don't tend to get boss situations in strategies and so I wasn't sure how it would play out. Strangely it works really well, even if you face the tedium of facing one each time you deploy and not just annihilating everything in the map to win. It effectively makes you start taking advantage of these encounters to obtain better equipment and level your dudes up.
Levelling up each team is an easy process that you'll probably end up doing each time you're back at your ship. Each team has a category they can level up in. “Stamina” gives your team better health and health regeneration. “Ranged” gives the team better damage as well as access to better categories of ranged weapons. “Strength” up's the melee damage as well as improving the unit in question's ability to perform special attacks. “Will” is the type of energy consumed by your units performing special attacks, which can have points spent to increase the regeneration and amount a unit has.
So, all-in-all the angle that Dawn of War 2 has taken by creating a hybrid of RPG and Squad-Based Strategy is certainly a change over it's predecessor. It was perhaps with this in mind when I found that while the multiplayer was put together as well as I might have come to expect, it still wasn't DoW. Without buildings it has effectively taken away one element of a game that already existed to create a new one with updated graphics. However, saying that the game is very well put together, and so if you, like us are perhaps addicted to playing the original Dawn of War (OK, with expansions sure), you're likely to enjoy DoW2 but just not in the same way. It's not a replacement, it's a different game. So much so that I might argue that this game should've been given a different name and not lead to the assumption that it was going to be identical to it's predecessor but with a new engine.
For those of you who are looking for a strong strategy and aren't set in your ways or have any anal hangups (that's an odd phrase), then you should really enjoy Dawn of War 2. It's certainly worth checking out.
8/10
