Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II

Gaming For Geezers

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising

Summary: Good real time strategy (RTS) game, but not great. We were spoiled by the games with similar depth of choice for actual tactical play, but the strategy aspect leaves us asking for more. Land, shoot, win. Thus missing the strategy part of the real time strategy genre. We give this a sucks rating. Do not buy it.[1]

Overview: You start out as a space marine in the future, you have massive weaponry and the archetypical space armor that is present on all humans in the science fiction compendium. You are alerted to an invasion of the Zerg and must defeat them. Zerg? Oh yeah, this isn’t Starcraft, but it wants to be.

Warhammer’s game model is a tactics heavy real time strategy game. And it is a very good tactical game. But if you are looking for a real time strategy game where global planning is just as important as who to send on point, then this is not the game for you.

You begin as the hero/recruit and wait…wait…wait for it. You are a 6 foot white guy. As the play begins you defend a planet against space orcs, but in this game they call them orks. Another tired framework opponent. You will see the space elves, or the Eldar, as they are known in the Warhammer Universe, and the Tyrannids, otherwise known as a more evolved version of the creature from alien.

The game play is quite good. Your hero leads the Blood Ravens/space marines. Your individual character is a hero who operates alone in his unit. You have the choice of several other squads to bring with you, up to four. There is the scout squad (Cyrus), heavy machine gun squad (Avitus), utility squad (Tarkus) and later in the game, Davian Thule (mech war type soldier). You only get to bring three with you when you launch a mission, which is the one of the few strategic decisions you will make in the game. Unfortunately you do not get much information to direct your decision making, so it isn’t a very meaningful decision unless you start over.

Once your people land you usually have to travel to an objective and shoot everyone there, thus winning. This is where the game shines because you have to make good tactical decisions to be fully rewarded. Your game play maps are all square, but usually have many obstacles requiring you to travel on one of a few paths to your objective. You have some decisions to make here because there are usually one or two side objectives consisting of taking over a temple or a factory. These are important because the allow you to use some powers more often. They are also spread out to the far corners of the map. You can also choose a direct path and miss this bonus element. The tradeoff is that you achieve more experience points the quicker you achieve the primary objective. This need for speed is also balanced by the reward of achieving the objective without your unit leaders becoming harmed to the point they become unconscious and need reviving. Finally, you achieve points if you kill most of the opponents.

The actual combat is quite good as well. You can mix up your tactics and play anything from a traditional combat patrol where your snipers flush out your enemies and draw them into a field of fire where your heavy machine gunners wear them down to a full frontal assault. You can even flank some enemies by splitting up your squad to perform a pincer movement. The combat even gets hard from time to time so you have to plan out good tactics.

Leveling up was just as interesting as the tactical combat element of the game. You choose between your health, ranged weapon, melee, and energy skills. Periodic bonuses at certain levels of these four skills forced you to choose wisely and spread out your strengths among your units. Weapon choice was equally enjoyable. During your combat missions you pick up multiple weapons, armor and other bonus items such as health packs, characteristics modifiers etc. You spend some interesting minutes selecting the right weapons for your team and then you can sell them for experience points thereby exchanging short term gains in levels for the missed opportunity to use a weapon later on a mission that could benefit from its presence.

That concludes our description of the superior elements of this game. Much of the game is punctuated by a dialogue between your unit leaders, the governors of the planets you are ridding of pests, and your own command structure. I stopped listening to all this blather about a day into the game because the communication didn’t add anything to the game. It was just filler. The global strategic elements were sorely lacking too. The only global decision you were wise to make was whether to travel to a planetary system that indicated that the Tyrannids/Aliens were overwhelming. This decision was easy however because a big red light shows up at the planet, and being the strategic genius you are, you select that planet to invade next.

Multiplayer not very interesting.

There was nothing creative in the multiplayer options. There was one novel aspect of the game play, but you would quickly tire of it and we will only mention it briefly.

Multiplayer consists of joining a game, picking a map type, always square, and the number of opponents. There is nothing creative about this, just pure tactical map play. Do you head straight for the opponent’s base as a feint? Or do you slowly build up your forces and creep across the map? Do you concentrate your limited resources on recruiting a heavy machine gun army? Or do you balance it with snipers? We have all played this game before and the main difference is that there is a “K” where we usually expect to see a “C” in the work Orc. This is still a good multiplayer experience, but nothing we haven’t seen before, and nothing that will keep your interest for very long with all the choices on line today.

“The Last Stand” was a separate multiplayer experience where you and a few other on line companions start out on a disc shaped structure with four gates on each side of the disc. It kind of reeks of a Terry Gilliam set from Time Bandits, and makes about as much sense. You then attempt to survive as long as possible as wave after wave of Zerg/Tyrannid/Aliens/Orcs/SpaceElves/Eldars come at you. You eventually die, but then you can play again! Then wave after wave of Zerg/Tyrannid/Aliens/Orcs/SpaceElves/Eldars come at you. You eventually die, but then you can play again! You get the idea.

Methodology Summary:

Excellent On Line Gaming Experience: No

Success in game play through teamwork and smarts: Yes

Complementary Single Player Experience: Yes

Involves Shooting Someone: Yes

Can be played over and over: No

Playable by a geezer who has a life and other obligations? Yes

Conclusion: Elements of this game are quite well done, but the game lacks the strategy we have come to expect in this sub genre of the on line game. Tactical game play is superior, but we have seen it before. And this good does not outweigh the bad in this sequel to a successful franchise. This game sucks, don’t buy this game.

Publisher: THQ for Microsoft Windows

Developer: Relic Entertainment

Release Date: February 2009

Best FAQ/Guide Site: IGN at http://guides.ign.com/guides/14243516/page_2.html

Price as of this Article: $26.42

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[1] Please note that our recommendations pivot on whether or not you should buy a game. You would enjoy this game, and many others in our reviews, but not if you paid full retail. If someone gives you this game, by all means play it.