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Product Description
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
transports players into Games Workshop's vast
Warhammer 40,000
universe, where an intergalactic war between ancient
races has raged on for countless millennia.
Featuring vicious front-line combat, destructible environments, a fully
cooperative multiplayer mode, four unique playable
races and an epic single-player campaign,
Warhammer
40,000: Dawn of War II delivers the ultimate sci-fi fantasy
Real-Time Strategy (RTS) experience.
Wage
large-scale numerical war.
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Take
on frightening baddies.
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Exploit
tactical advantages.
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Utilize
complementary units.
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Call
in strikes from above.
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Play
as one of four factions.
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The
Story Continues
It is the distant future and the Imperium
of Man has spread across the entire galaxy. But our days of expansion
are long past. Once, when the Emperor of Man led us in battle, we were
unstoppable, but no longer. The Emperor has withdrawn to Earth to rule
from his Golden Throne, leaving us to fight a thousand wars of attrition
in his name where our defenders die by the billions. We have little
hope for support from Earth and we are losing the battle for human
survival. Our only chance lies with the Space Marines, genetically
modified warriors of superhuman ability and the pinnacle of human
potential. But the Space Marines are few, the galaxy is large and our
enemies are countless. The situation is most dire in Sub-Sector Aurelia.
It is from this cluster of worlds on the very edge of the Imperium that
came the Blood Ravens, a chapter of the Emperor's own Space Marines.
Now savage aliens seek to overrun the sector, and break the Blood Ravens
once and for all. Captain Davian Thule and a handful of Space Marines
lead the raw recruits defending these worlds. Yet, another Space Marine
prepares to join this desperate battle, a newly promoted Commander,
ready to lead in our darkest hour. You are this Space Marine.
Playable
Factions
 | Space Marines
Genetically
modified warriors of superhuman ability, Space Marines are the pinnacle
of human potential, but there are fewer and fewer left in an expansive
galaxy full of enemies. |
 | The Eldar
Deadly
warriors, The Eldar are masters of psychic power and sophisticated
technology. One-time masters of the galaxy, but now few in number they
would sacrifice billions of humans to save a handful of their own. |
 | The Ork Menace
Savage
and bloodthirsty, barbaric and brutal, Orks infest the galaxy from end
to end. These aliens are brutal combatants and an uprising in their
ranks that can topple entire systems if not stamped out quickly. |
 | The Tyranids
From
beyond the edge of the galaxy and guided by a communal hive
intelligence, the Tyranids exist solely to strip the universe bare to
feed their endless appetites. They are without number, without fear and
without mercy. |
Key Game Features:
- Simplified
Entry Point - Whether you're new to the genre or a seasoned
veteran, Dawn of War II gets you into the action quickly and
easily. Learn the game at your own pace and get ready to save the
galaxy.
- Brutal Frontline Action & Tactics -
Get straight into the action and experience intense melee &
devastating ranged combat. Use vicious melee sync-kills to obliterate
your enemies. Outsmart your opponents - using dynamic and destructible
environments to suppress, flank and destroy your foes.
- Epic
Single Player Campaign - Command an elite strike force,
developing the skills and abilities of your squads and commander as you
progress through the game.
- Persistent Long-Term Goals
- Customize your Space Marines with persistent leveling and unlockable
special abilities. Equip them with the hundreds of unique weapons and
items you earn through mission rewards and battlefield drops.
- Co-Op
Multiplayer - Play through the entire single player campaign
co-operatively with a friend, at any point in the game, anytime.
- Next
Generation RTS Engine - Utilizing Relic's proprietary Essence
Engine 2.0 to deliver cinematic visuals, detailed graphics & special
effects.
Gameplay
Dawn of War II
is split between campaign-based gameplay playable as a Space Marine,
supporting singleplayer and co-op action, and skirmish gameplay in which
players can play as any of the four playable factions in singleplayer
or multiplayer battles. In the case of these multiplayer conflicts,
gameplay and matchmaking is supported via the Games for Windows LIVE
gaming service. In addition, unlike previous
Dawn of War games
or expansions,
Dawn of War II features an increased and more
realistic acknowledgment of the importance of cover. To that end players
will notice that some environments in-game are now fully or partly
destructible by certain units in their arsenal, adding to the
battlefield carnage and the need for players to plan their strategy and
choose their playable units and battlefields wisely.
System
Requirements:
|
| Minimum Specifications: | Recommended Specifications: |
| OS: | Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or Windows XP
Service Pack 2 |
| Processor: | P4 3.2
GHz (single core) or any Dual Core processor | AMD
Athlon 64×2 4400+ or any Intel Core 2 Duo |
| RAM: | 1.0 GB (Windows XP) 1.5 GB (Windows Vista) | 2.0 GB (Windows XP and Vista) |
| Video
Card: | 128 MB Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT / 128 MB ATI
X1600, or equivalent | 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 7800
GT / 256 MB ATI X1900, or equivalent |
| Sound Card: | 100% DirectX 9.0c compliant card |
| Hard
Drive Space: | 5.5 GB of free space |
| Other: | Internet connection required for multiplayer |
Customer Reviews
Fun, innovative, but repetitive and steam+GFWL
The game is fun, but it had
the potential to be amazing, and fell short. Originally I said to wait
before buying, but the bugs have been ironed out, and now it's a good
time, specially at the discounted prices.
Things to know:
-
Requires Games For Windows Live (GFWL) account
- Steam installation
and account required
- No base building (departs from traditional
RTS)
=== SUMMARY ===
I just realized the review has gotten
pretty long as I've added other information, so I wanted to write
something for those people who want a quick overview:
If you don't
mind few units, Steam, Games For Windows Live and lack of base building,
you will enjoy the game a lot. The loot/items, unique characters,
combat right from the start, persistent troops throughout the single
player campaign, and an engaging and different 4 races make this game a
great departure from traditional RTS. All wrapped up with great
graphics, sound and animation to boot. The single player campaign does
become very very repetitive after mission 30 or so. (there are probably
80 plus missions - I'm on 75 and counting)
=== THE BAD STUFF
===
- Steam (more details below)
- You need to be connected to the
internet to play the single player campaign.
- You need to be logged
in to Windows Live to play the game... ugh...
- [[EDIT February 27:
While the game crashed quite a bit when I first got it, it has been very
stable with the last 2 patches, improving things dramatically. I only
have 1 BSOD right after a February 23 major patch. So it looks like the
crashing issues have been ironed out. But it was a serious issue at
first]]
- Single player campaign ONLY for marines... This is just
plainly a bad decision. There are 4 fun and distinct races, with
multiple heroes each, and they just do 1 (albeit quite long) campaign
with only 1 faction, involving just 1 hero. Very disappointed. I hope
they add more campaigns for cheap, like 9.99 for a long campaign for the
Eldar or Tyranids.
- Can't restart a mission. Got distracted and
lost your units? Too bad, you can't restart it to get that reward you
wanted. The game goes on even if you fail, which means you have to
always be careful of what you're doing.
- [[Edit: My wireless
internet connection dropped while I was playing, and the game didn't
stopped, just a little pop-up came up for a second letting me know the
connection to GFWL was dropped - this is just a sigh of relief, as I
didn't really know what would happen]]
== Steam (why I don't like
it) ==
1. No resale value. Period. The software is attached to your
steam account upon installation, and you cannot transfer the software or
your steam account per the agreement you need to accept. (Kills the
second game market - also a word of warning: Do not buy this game used -
if someone is selling you one, it either won't work, or it's somehow a
cracked version.)
2. You have to log in to Steam to play the game.
(offline mode is there but pointless for the game, since you need to log
in to windows live anyhow, still needs to run steam though, even in
offline mode).
3. SLOW. Opening a game takes forever, since it first
has to load up steam, then it needs to connect to steam online, then it
starts launching the game. (At least 5 times as long as non-steam
games.)
4. You can't play your games if the server is busy (unless
you do the walk around every boot up to set it to offline mode). This
was a most unpleasant surprise, I did not know Steam would actually go
that far, and honestly I cannot think of a worse thing, not even DRM is
that annoying. I click on my game, then after about 30 seconds trying to
connect to steam, it just tells you something like: "Our servers are
busy, try again later"... I could go on and on about how dumb this
decision is, but I digress. How hard can it be for them to do implement
the logic: "If server is busy, launch the game in offline mode". Note,
this wasn't for a minute, I couldn't play it for about half an hour of
trying to connect to their servers. Also, if there is a patch, you
cannot run your game. My internet connection is not blazing fast so a
150MB patch also leaves you without playing until that's done.... This
is unacceptable, period. It is a single player game installed in my
local computer, I don't want your server to tell me when I can play it
or not.
Note: Steam is not securom or a rootkit or malware like
some reviewers are suggesting. It's just an extra software layer, some
people love it (you can buy games online, it keeps track of your
friends, so you can see who is online and play with them, etc. So there
is stuff to like about Steam.
=== THE GOOD STUFF ===
- Co-op
single player campaign. You can progress through the campaign online
with a friend.
- Graphics are really good, animation is great.
-
Loot. (there are white, green and purple 'drops' to powerup the crews
from the campaign. So you can customize your characters with new
weapons.
- Leveling. You level up both in the single player and the
multiplayer games. In the campaign you even get to enhance your stats by
spreading those points around. In multiplayer it just increases your
attributes, making a veteran squad much more powerful than a new one.
-
Tactics are all about combat. (Even though I like base building, it was
nice to depart from it - more info below).
- Smaller number of units
- (you cannot just outnumber your opponent to victory, you need to plan
and use your units accordingly)
- 3 levels of cover (standing behind
rocks makes you harder to hit/damage at a maximum level, while standing
behind say, a fence gives you only a medium level of cover protection.
-
Destructible environment
- The 4 races play very differently, making
the game more unique.
- Even though I am disappointed the campaign
is only for the Marines, I have to commend the developers, because it's
actually a long campaign. I haven't finished it yet, and played through
at least 35 missions, if not more. Granted you have the option of
finishing it sooner, but I am doing all the optional missions too.
===
NO BASE BUILDING ===
Since these 3 items are new for RTS games, I
wanted to expand on Relic's implementation as far as the single player
campaign goes:
- I have come to really, really enjoy not having a
base. It works superbly along with the small number of units. In typical
RTS I found myself building a well defended base, while "teching" so I
could unload lots of powerful units and overwhelm the enemy. So
basically, it took a while to complete a mission, and most of the time
was spent building defenses and teching up, while the actual battle took
very little, since the enemy was outmatched. In this game, you start
fighting right away.
=== SMALL NUMBER OF UNITS ===
Most of the
time you control 4 squads (in single player, multiplayer is 100 units
per race, which depending on the unit type can be 12-15 squads)
What I
like about it:
- You learn to care more about your units. (you
cannot afford to lose squads in an important battle) You get to
experience each squad's personality through their leader, and they are
always with you - they are with you through the entire campaign.
-
War tactics become most important. Using cover wisely, using the special
items wisely (like a grenade to quickly clear units inside a structure)
-
And what I like the most: I know my squads 1 - 4 hot keyed, so I can
call upon each squad when I need them. I am not managing 100 units where
I just select all and click attack - in order to be successful, you
need to plan out your attack, heal your quads when needed, and basically
be able to quickly call upon any squad when the need arises. (My sniper
squad is being attacked by stronger melee units, I need to quickly hit
the hot key of my jump squad to jump there and save them)
===
LEVELING ===
Commenting only on the single player campaign.
Do I
want my hero to be melee based, or do I want him to be a range damage
type? (through the levels and experience points you can choose a path).
Do I want my all purpose squad to be stronger in melee? Or do I want to
make it into a range squad? Do I want my sniper team for this mission,
or should I go with my melee team?
=== BOSS FIGHTS ===
They
are fun, and a lot of them really hard. They can quickly wipe out your
squad if you are not careful. They drop powerful items some times, which
you can then use to bolster your squad. I think they did this very
well, since bosses have special abilities, all the boss fights (so far)
have been different from each other.
=== LOOT ===
I like
having to make decisions as to how to equip the squad, which squad
should get which powerups, which armor is better suited for x, y or z.
However, it also suffers the same problems of most loot systems:
- An
item will drop that I can't use for 2 more levels (which could take
about 4 missions to do at the latter stages).
- Right now I have 6
extra pretty good armor drops level 6-9 green drops (sit unused, or
switched in for some missions). While my commander has a level 0 gun,
and a level 4 sword (there just haven't been good weapon drops for me).
My supression squad meanwhile has like 4-5 great guns to choose from.
Basically, it is what it is with random drops. I just wish my hero had
better weapons at this point, my sniper team is also pretty weak in the
weapons department, as is my all-purpose squad.
- The reward items
for completing missions stink at first (white items, and the random
drops from the mission are better). In the latter stages the reward
items become very powerful. On a side note, a lot of blue drops seem
worse than green drops...
- One annoyance is changing the armor of a
unit. Sometimes when changing the armor, all your equipped accessories
get taken out as well. So you need to re-equip them, which means sorting
those 3 items among the 20 others you have in your inventory.
===
CONCLUSION ===
Overall the game is very fun, their departures from
traditional RTS games work surprisingly well, but I do wish they had
made a single player campaign for the 4 races, as well as polish the
game, so the crashes (even after various patches) wouldn't be present.
Obviously, no steam or GFWL would be much appreciated.
=== EDIT
February 24th ===
Relic released a big patch in hopes of solving the
game crashes yesterday. While I was encouraged at first, I actually
experienced the worse crash I've had after the patch. Before the game
would freeze, and Windows would be active, so you could submit the error
to Relic. The crash after the patch was a full blown BSOD (blue screen
of death) - and I had never seen one in Vista before. I will update
after a week with this patch to see how the game crashes are going. (see
March 2nd edit below)
=== EDIT February 25th ===
I have
edited several sections and added others. Some things have already been
fixed by Relic, so they were no longer applicable. I plan on updating
this review as patches are released, so it reflects the current game.
===
EDIT March 2nd ===
The game has been rock solid stable as of late.
No crashes or anything of that sort. So they did fix the issue with the
large patch.
== NOTE ==
If I missed a topic, or you have a
particular question, make a post in the comments section, I will be
checking those periodically and will give you my honest answer/opinion.
A new direction but still good.
I was skeptical when I bought
this game. It was not so much Dawn of War 2 as it was its own new game.
The only thing it held in common with the original was the setting and
the developer. If you can get past the fact that this isn't the original
with better graphics then you should really enjoy this game.
Single
Player, the campaign was very enjoyable. The story was a little lacking
compared to say Starcraft but it was much better then Dark Crusade or
Soul Storm. The RPG element gives replayablity and is really fun to
collect different weapons.
Multiplayer, is fast paced and really
enjoyable. 3v3 is where its at and you can have games that swing back
and forth. The coop campaign is a huge bonus.
It does require an
internet connection, windows live and steam. But I personally have
experienced no problems with this and I find it to be a better option
compared to others.
The future, this game has tons of options for
the future. I really hope relic sticks to their promise of supporting
this game, because it could be one of the greats.
If it ain't broke...
Contrary the developers'
opinion, this game does not combine the best of Company of Heroes and
Dawn of War; rather, it is CoH translated into a Warhammer 40k storyline
-- and a lot gets lost in translation.
First off, the experience
of installing this game -- simply getting to PLAY it for the first time
-- was something I would not wish upon my worst enemy. Downloading and
registering for three separate Big Name online platforms is just the
beginning; then there's Steam to deal with and the fact that THQ are not
thrifty with their update download sizes. Plus there's no way you can
run the game if Steam even gets a whiff of an update that it wants. For
someone with unlimited broadband access this is no problem; us plebs
outside the US and Europe, however, usually have a download cap, which
Steam apparently has no sympathy for.
The game itself has an
amusing, if monotonous, single player campaign, which is apparently
touted as having great replay value. I was personally very disappointed
with the RPG elements brought into the multiplayer, since this is
exactly what Blizzard did to ruin WarCraft II when they made WarCraft
III. Aside from the fact that armies are now considerably smaller than
they used to be in DoW -- there goes another star off the rating -- the
gameplay itself feels much more sluggish and unwieldy. Frankly this
cover idea becomes annoying after the novelty has worn off. Combine with
this fewer unit options, fewer upgrades, a tech tree that makes you
wonder why they even bothered to include it, and you're left wondering
how a great game like Dawn of War could have been pruned down to hatch
such a lacklustre, over-hyped, and anaemic progeny.
Did THQ want
to make Dawn of War accessible to younger audiences (eg. the three to
seven age group)? Did they simplify DoW because they were hoping to
release it on the console platform (which we know is notorious for its
lack of depth)? Or did they spend more time liaising with Valve and
Microsoft concerning million-dollar involvement contracts rather than
thinking about the marrow of their game?
Amid these questions,
and having finished the game campaign, I search my weary soul deeply for
a reason to brush the dust off the CD and run it again. Perhaps this
time I'll find that the game is now focused on exciting squad-based
combat, or that the RPG elements introduce a hitherto-unexplored depth
to the game. However, I just don't feel there would be a point to all
the trouble.
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