I allowed a little too much time to pass since the last time i wrote on this little blog of mine, mostly because the economical crysis hit us consultants just as much as the videogaming market, forcing me to work twice as much to stay afloat, but even because, well, there were too many great games to be played, and my "to play" pile was swelling a tad too much beyond what I felt confortable with. This without even mentioning the adventures of my Knight of the Blazing Sun in Warhammer Online, and my now slightly fading escapades in EVE Online (In the end I decided to try it, but it's starting to bore me, so I might actually shelve it soon while I wait for the revolution that the Ambulation patch should bring).
Anyway, I'm back, after completing the single player campaign of Dawn of War II (yes, I did take my sweet time). The ones that are used to read my blog already know how much I was looking forward to this game, partly because my love for Warhammer 40000 is even stronger for the one I have for the Warhammer Fantasy franchise.
In the last few days we saw the news trickling in about how DOW2 literally dominated the worldwide sales charts for PC games, but how good the game really is?
First of all, here's a premise: I can comment just on the single player campaign, I didn't touch the multiplayer yet, and I probably wouldn't be able to write a good report on it anyway, mostly because yes, I suck at multiplayer RTSs. There isn't much i can or could do about it.
In any case, you know what kind of importance a good story has for me in any kind of videogames, and this most definitely play a great role in RTSs, that are pretty much an offspring of the same mold, with little variation of innovation to set them apart from one another, besides the story behind them. That is why i was greatly pleased by Dawn of War and by it's first expansion Winter Assault, which sported a quite great story, and equally displeased by the next two expansions (Dark Crusade and Soulstorm), that in the end sacrificed the story a lot to implement a fairly disappointing dynamic campaign that wasn't really engaging or interesting.
Luckily Relic realized that such an approach deprieved the players of enjoying the rich background of the Warhammer 40000 franchise, and they decided to go back to the scripted campaign, that, while not being as freeform as the dynamic one, and allowing just one playable race (the Blood Raven space marines, even if further campaigns for other races have been hinted at as downloadable contents), prompts for a much more involved plot and a better use of the several characters involved in order to evolve the story.
The story itself is definately nice. It picks up the Blood Ravens chapter after the events that occurred in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm, and includes sevral references to the original Dawn of War (we finally see the return of Gabriel Angelos, even if not as the main character anymore). Revolving around the Tyranid invasion (and believe me, the Tyranid are scary, they ain't some fluffy Zerg) of the system Aurelia, recruitement cradle for the chapter, it's seen by the collective point of view of several characters.
One of the main new features in Down of War II is, in fact, that you'll be given command of a limited number of marines squad (four) and your main character. Each of the squad leaders will be carried over from mission to mission, and will have his own prsonality, background and different viewpoint on the struggle for survival that he will have to face.
From the fatalist veteran to the rash rookie, all the most common shades of the spectrum are be covered, enhancing the connection with the player, even thanks to the good (even if normally not stellar) voice acting. Even some of the secondary characters end up being quite interesting. Administrator Derosa, one of the few ladies you'll meet during the campaign, ends up a quite interesting character, and an emblematic one of the warhammer 40000 universe.
The gameplay itself is simply fantastic. The few squads you'll have to work with are easy to take care of, and quite intuitive, but the most interesting factor are the evident RPG elements, that will see your characters level up and progress during the game, not to mention the loot collection, that will allow you to chose the wargear that you prefer for each mission, and even customize the look of your Space Marines. In the end you will find yourself playing an absolutely delightful hybrid between an RTS and an RPG, with a great story and a long, fun campaign to play.
Is it a perfect game? Of course no. The multiplayer still seems to suffer from some stray bug carried over from the beta (or introeduced by the release), but I'm not really concerned. By the time I'll stop sucking, it'll be already long perfected and forgotten. One of my biggest gripes is the fact that Relic decided to bow to the Microsoft monster and enter the Games for Windows Live hell, which basically removed one of the best aspects of the first Dawn of War. It's deep moddability and the room for a lot of User Created content. Since Microsoft wants it's gaming environment to be family friendly (despite the fact that DOW2 has an M rating in the US and a 16+ one in Europe), the creativity of the rich DOW modding community has been severely curbed. One of the worst parts of it is that the player can't even create and upload his own personalized badges anymore. This means that we can forget creating and playing with the wide variety of space marine chapters hat populate the Warhammer 40000 universe. We're limited to the excruciatingly few included in the game by default, and the ones that have been given out as preorder bonuses (Which means that if you didn't have access to the preorder from the shop that gave away your chapter of choice, it simply sucks to be you, you'll have to find another). Hopefully they will introduce new available chapters with the announced downloadable contents, but it's still very disappointing to see one of the best features of PC gaming (moddability and user created content) nulled by the will of keeping an M rated game kid-friendly. Seriously, quite a let-down.
In any case, despite this evident rant on what's (according to me), the worst flaw on Dawn of War II, I'd advise everyone that likes the genre (and even the ones that don't) to give it a try. It's worth it, and, in my opinion. it's plenty to give Starcraft II a run for it's money. After all, we all know where Starcraft came from. There's no reason to play the imitation when you can have the original.
Monday, March 9, 2009
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