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Any fan of Dawn of War, Warhammer 40,000, or just good old-fashioned ass-kicking needs to see this video immediately. Embedded in this article is pre-rendered footage showcasing he developers’ collective vision of what Dawn of War 2 should have been. Had Relic been able to hold on to even a tenth of the awesome contained in this video Dawn of War 2 would easily have been the most visually stunning and downright nastiest RTS games ever published.
The biggest and most notable differences between the video here and actual gameplay are the fluidity of movement and robust physics. With the exception of leaping Tyrannids, most units in Dawn of War 2 tend to chug along very slowly and unit interactions are unnoticeable save for the elaborate (and, unfortunately, easily overlooked) melee “sync” kills. In this video we see the mighty Space Marines bowling over the smaller Eldar Guardians (space elves) and even knocking through environmental fixtures. Reality be damned, that is the breed of awesome that never gets old, no matter how many times you see it.
Dawn of War 2 seems to suffer from exactly what many have pointed out since day 1 of the beta: it feels like a Company of Heroes mod. CoH was successful because it focused on realism, which is of obvious importance to the authenticity required by the genre. On the other hand, Warhammer 40k is science fiction so realism makes things seem boring rather than authentic. Fictional representations generally benefit from exaggeration–of movement, of expression, of pretty much everything. The pre-visualization is so impressive because of its exaggerated physics, exaggerated might of the Space Marines, exaggerated explosions, exaggerated environmental destruction, etc. Dawn of War 2 has all of these features, but watered-down. Thats why this video makes DoW 2 feel like a grand disappointment.
The gameplay pre-visualization footage also showcases Eldar “anti-grav” vehicles, like the Falcon, Vyper, and Land Speeder, as they are represented in the Warhammer 40,000 universe lore and tabletop game. According to the IP, these vehicles are supposed to be the most maneuverable tanks and weapons platforms in the galaxy, yet in Dawn of War 2 the Falcon hovers but a few feet above the ground, takes a full 5 seconds to turn around, and couldn’t even move in reverse until a recent patch. The Vyper and Land Speeder never actually made it to retail (or even beta).
So, Relic, what happened between this video and what you shipped out in February? Granted, some of what we see here might not be viable for a multiplayer real-time strategy experience (the dynamic movement of flying vehicles in 3-dimensional space, for instance), but it seems that the developers backed away from the exaggerated, over-the-top style conceptualized at the beginning of the project. If Dawn of War 2 didn’t feel slow and watered-down before, it sure does now.
You can find this video and other goodies here. Apparently Relic put this video together for a presentation at GDC 2009.
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- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 Goes Gold
- Dawn of War 2 Multiplayer Beta Impressions - Part 1
- Dawn of War Multiplayer Beta - Heroes Guide - Part 1
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March 31st, 2009 at 9:13 pm
They cut a lot of it because it wasn”t working. Which is pretty unusual, developers cutting stuff that doesn”t work.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:43 am
That pre-vis video was totally hand-made. There was no gameplay code whatsoever, no pathing, no *game engine*, and the models were mostly dressed up DoW 1 units.
Everything was done in Maya by artists, every frame was slaved over, there was no worry about minimum-spec machines or DX versions or what-have-you. It was entirely pre-rendered and the rendering took forever (every dev on the team had Maya and the distributed render program running after-hours for weeks during the process).
Many man-months were spent making that pre-vis, for one and a half minutes of awesome on screen. Visually, what we ended up with in the *real* game isn”t too far off that mark, IMHO, considering the concessions that had to be made for reality.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:45 am
John, most of what you say about the pre-visualization is equally true about the game itself. The units in DoW 2 are mostly dressed up DoW 1 units, with the obvious exception exception of the Tyranids. And the developers spent years working on the game and the typical match lasts about 10-15 minutes (as opposed to working months on the video which lasts 1-2).
The point of the article is that developers have retreated from their vision with respect to STYLE. The video is impressive because it’’s so dramatically exaggerated and stylized, similar to comic book art. What made it to retail was basically Company of Heroes in space, plus heroes. It works for a WW II game, but not for a sci-fi game.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Actually, there’’s not a single model, particle, sound effect, animation or texture in DoW 2 that was used in DoW 1, it’’s all new.
Maybe you ought to crank up your settings a bit, I think there’’s plenty of visual oomph in the current game.
You should also understand the context in which that video was created in 2006, it was a “what if?” scenario more than it was a “we want to look like this” scenario.
We didn”t retreat from our vision. The title of the movie should be a big clue…”PRE VIS”.
April 1st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
A very good portion of what was in that video did make it into the game as far as i”m concerned. So 1/10th of the awesome is certainly a great exaggeration. The reasons why the current version of DoW II is suffering is certainly not because the Relic team decided to exclude things that are in that video. If you ask me, its for reasons beyond that video, mainly the lack of maps(or the size of maps in my case) and gameplay modes in MP.
Barring Air units, everything that we saw there was mainly cosmetic and while it would have been nice to have some of those features in the vid, its not like it would have been a huge detriment to the game with the exclusion of some of those features.
April 1st, 2009 at 1:39 pm
You exaggerate sir.
They got a fair bit of the spirit of that vid, the dread, the ASM the jumps and the general look of the units. Granted, the vehicle movement, the knock back and scenery destruction is well off. One hopes Relic will get round to improving these aspects (especially since the wtf release mechanism is no more).
Plus design time != real life, otherwise you”d only need software architects and no developers or balance teams.
April 1st, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Nuki is exactly right. That’’s mostly graphical fluff, besides the air units and destructible bridges, neither of which I can iamgine working in the small scale and visceral combat we have now.
That’’s not to say I wouldn”t like a pretty game, but I think DoW 2 is pretty damned good-looking as it is. Some touching up to the physics for broken walls and terrain and such would not be amiss as in these places DoW 2 feels very inferior to CoH, but I”m just not seeing what was in this video that was so amazing.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:51 pm
@ John
I didn”t mean to suggest that the units were recycled, just that they resemble those in Dawn of War 1 with more polygons, higher resolution textures, and specular lighting. In any event, it is irrelevant to my point.
Yes, the game is pretty…in screenshots (on ultra settings, which should be noted are STILL bugged and disallowed on many current generation video cards). Pretty models, however, contribute very little to the visual experience of the game, especially in multiplayer which is typically played while fully zoomed out. At the normal play distance the extra details put on the models are barely noticeable at all. Instead, animation quality become paramount, and this is where Relic has really fumbled. The pacing of the game is painfully slow and the model animations are poor (with the notable exceptions of the Tyanids). A common complaint of the DoW 2 experience is that the game feels like it’’s stuck in slow motion. This creates an overall clunky, plodding feel to the game, which is the complete opposite of what was demonstrated in that video.
As for claiming the video is a “what if” thing as opposed to what you wanted the game to look like, I don”t buy that at all. Such a thing would be a phenomenal waste of resources. Do you guys typically create lengthy pre-rendered video using development dollars just for shits and giggles?
To address other comments, there are indeed some parts of the video that did make it into the game, such as the assault marine jump, however most of it did not. The spirit of that video hinted at an experience far above and beyond what was delivered in Dawn of War 2, which is, sadly, a disappointment. The single player campaign suffers from slow, repetitive missions and terrible voice acting whilst the multiplayer game is plagued by the abominable matching system and equally terrible and feature-less lobby system. This is unfortunate because the multiplayer game would be enjoyable (I enjoyed CoH’’s multiplayer despite the myriad of problems with Relic Online), but more often than not I””m forced to give up on it because even finding a game takes in excess of 20 minutes.
The comparison of this video to the actual game highlights the many aspects of Dawn of War 2 where the developers came close to greatness, but were never quite able to grasp the brass ring. It’’s for that same reason that this video stirs up strong opinions (here and elsewhere), not because the game sucks, but because it’’s actually good, however it could have been great. But it’’s not.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:14 am
DoW 2 is slow-paced? I”ve never, ever, ever noticed that and I played since beta. Even the largest 3v3 map will see action within seconds and the battle continues rolling throughout the game. Of course that’’s a matter of opinion and you”re entitled to your own, but I have heard very, very few people say that DoW 2 is ”too slow.”
What things are different in this video:
Exploding bridges: This actually seems like it made it into the alpha game as one of the more popular gameplay trailers included it. Relic says it was buggy, among other things. I beleive them. Besides, blowing up bridges isn”t fast-paced enough for DoW 2, unlike CoH were it fits snugly into the gameplay. Constantly repairing destroyed bridges isn”t my idea of visceral combat.
Flyers: I”d really like to see an RTS that did flyers like that. There’’s just no way those units could fit in DoW 2 given the scale, and I can only imagine what engine improvements would be required. Besides, flyers are pretty lame; very rare in TT, not sure how they”d fit into DoW 2′’s small maps or general army composition.
Fast-paced combat: I, honestly, hated this. It wasn”t a vicious shootout as it is now when two units fire from cover at each other, it was a melee that lasted all of 1 second. If this is what you guys wanted, I can see why the current game would seem plodding and slow, but I just don”t get the interest. the I know we want exxagerated combat, but that was just ridiculous. I”m not even going to start on MP balance. Hell, what was up with all of the Eldar running into melee anyway?
Physics: Already there. As John already said, units don”t get thrown into stuff very often. But when they do, it happens.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:41 am
With regards to exploding bridges, they got it working in CoH so they should have it working here. Being able to interact with the environment is crucial for immersion, and it”’’s one of the most important reasons why CoH was so visually impressive. Destroying bridges wouldn”t have made DoW2 more fast-paced, but it certainly would have added another layer of complexity, and that”’’s not a bad thing. Like much of DoW2, it’’s a step backwards rather than forward from CoH.
As for flyers, I agree that they wouldn”t have been able to function in the video due to practical and technological limitations. That”’’s fine. However they certainly could have been (and should have been) made more agile, rather than the ponderous floating weapons platforms they are now. Instead of giving them a feel all their own, they function exactly like other vehicles in the game (looted tanks, predators, razorbacks, etc). That’’s not at all how they are in the tabletop game (in which they are represented as being not only twice as fast, but also able to completely ignore all terrain), and they are by no means rare in it. I”m an avid (and successful) 40k tournament player and I can attest you see them all of the time; hell, I have no less than 5 flyers (called skimmers in TT) in just my 1750 point Space Marine army. I know people who have entire armies made up of them.
“Physics: Already there. As John already said, units don”t get thrown into stuff very often. But when they do, it happens.”
And that’’s the problem. Choosing to emphasize realism in a game about space aliens firing laser beams acid spit at one another is a mistake, and the game seems to suffer an identity crisis because of it.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Nah, what I”m saying about the bridges is that I jsut don”t see them fitting into the scale or pace of the game. They”re cool and all, but a cut-and-paste from CoH wouldn”t work, in my opinion.
By flyers, I ment the literal ”flyers;” the aircraft that most people think of when the word flyer is used. I”m aware of skimmers in TT - my brother’’s mere 1k points of Tau has 3 of them - and I would have liked the Eldar grav vehicles given a more agile look rather than coming off as as ponderous as a Land Raider. Nevertheless, I don”t think we could have ever gotten what we saw in that video.
As for the physics, I think the main problem here is the maps that we have now. Aside from the crumbling walls and stuff that could have, admittedly, been done much better, a lot of the stuff is there, just not used to it’’s fullest. I”d love to see a REAL urban map in this game; maybe then we”d see more usage of this game’’s engine.
Now, I”m not trying to entirely defend DoW 2 and make it seem deviod of failure. I have more than a few of my own disappointments with the game and ideas for how it could be better. I just feel like you”re exxagerating the places where DoW 2 fell short a bit too much. This video really doesn”t mean anything to the end result considering it was pretty much one of the first ever videos of DoW 2, and it’’s not even the game engine itself.
To me, DoW 2 doesn”t feel like a CoH mod, it feels like an entirely new game and I get kind of tired of people asking for elements from CoH. Graphical things, such as physics, I can understand, as they do feel like a step back, but much of the gameplay of CoH just wouldn”t translate into DoW 2 as we have it now. CoH had a fair bit of a larger scale and just a totally different feel of gameplay to it.
In all honesty, DoW 1 wasn”t all that amazing until it’’s patches and first expansion. I think it’’s evident in many places that Relic was probally under time constraints thanks to THQ and the economy and all that, and hope that with more time and care DoW 2 can be made truly great.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:39 am
In an unrelated note, why are all of our apostrophes being turned into quotation marks? :P
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Perhaps my tone taken with the game was also too harsh. I think it’’s a good game, perhaps even a very good game, but it could have been a GREAT game. I also look forward to what expansions will bring, but I doubt it will be changes to game mechanics–more likely just new units and abilities.
As for the apostrophes thing, it just started happening a couple of days ago and I haven”t been able to figure out why yet. Every time a form is submitted all of the apostrophies get multiplied by 2 (including when you submit an edit).
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
This is some of my impressions and observations regarding this video and DOW2 as a whole, they are random and merely reflect my opinion as a person who doesn’t like everything in DOW2, but generally feels it can be addressed through patches, for the most part:
-*- army selection : their are three possibilities for mass armies: nids, orks and IG.
IG mass combines paper soldiers with range, orks mass combines range and cc with a lot of emphasis toward cc, nids are mostly pure cc unless to answer specific range associated threats like air units and long range artillery.
it is my opinion that you should either implement all three from the start so you can really flesh those differences out, or only do one so that you’ll have one army unique in its mass.
-*- SM vs IG : SM shouldn’t use cover, IG should depend on it; as simple as that, think COH vs DOW1, I want to see a 4 man * 2 squad SM force breaking through what otherwise require 12 man * 3 cheap squad IG force slowly stumble through, I’ll go into the issues with cover later on.
-*- ORKS vs NIDS : very problematic, nids are just a larger mass of a more ccing army, both in gameplay and fluff the synapse and whaaa serve the same moral/dps boosting rule with the exception of nids turning against each other when theirs is broken.
so, how to implement ? don’t, at least not both of them right from the start, ppl want nids ? do them first, but throw orks only with the next expansion…
-*- space Dwarfs VS Marines : Tactical marines are supposed to be very flexible - ccing and ranging in one unit, while the ASM should actually have much less dps BOTH in range AND cc, but instead offer higher armor and armor penetration to basically slow down and penetrate superior forces, it might not be correct for many chapters, but its codex and it provides the best game play.
Eldar are uber-specializing, fast moving force, one unit to cc and another for range, a third for jumping and firth for sneaking, all weak armor high dps and very costly to lose, the pro gamer first choice.
It feels to me as if the differences aren’t well made since through the balancing process instead of reducingincreasing armordps, fighting rolls were actually changed…
-*- At this point, if the other armies were implemented properly, their are the other forces:
-Necrons : VERY slow moving tanks, huge and long but slow firepower with minimal armor piercing teleporting cc.
-Tau: a cross between IG, SM and Eldar - just without the cc putting it all on range and firepower - as oppose to eldar mobility, IG numbers, and SM brute overwhelming force).
-Chaos: now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE chaos, but they are just a more cc version of SM, you can throw in demons and whatnots, but since an SM and Chaos army revolves around the tactical marine while all the other units are merely their to fill niches, it will always feel the same.
-InqBattle Sisters: yet another version of SM ? why o why ? they have breasts ? is that suppose to be a joke ? fun service maybe ? then what were the half dressed space elves for ? stupid…
-Dark Eldar: last choice army, eldar with a different eco and a little more ccing, this is a rather boring option, similar to CSM or Sisters but only without the appeal, best not discussed…
** so whats the best choice ? I will go with SM, NIDS, ELDAR and NOTHING ! surprised ha ? I truly feel it was best to keep the other forces for later, something like IG vs ORKS and later TAU vs Necrons, in whatever order…
now we get armies that aren’t well contrasted because too much was attempted too early on.
-*- It seems to me that in between dropping flying/hovering units and reducing unit speed (as a whole, not just space marines) the game lost a lot of the dynamics it was conceptualized to have, for once if the game play was faster you could allow for allot more user friendly mistake tolerating mechanisms.
-*- Some effect and features were obviously hard to implement and were deemed less then necessary and rightfully so:
- collapsing bridges : I don’t think a space traveling, highly advance species would find the collapse of a bridge very problematic.
- the flying/hovering units effect of coming from below is beautiful but unnecessary since the game play of it hovering from one location over non-crossable terrain to another location is identical.
-*- Then their are the things that did get cut but shouldn’t have been:
- flying units and light vehicles : what a miss !!! so much game play seems to have been lost by dropping this units ! not only the ability to out maneuver in an unexpected way, but also the mobility of light yet fragile fire power is surly missed…
- vehicle hulks : a valuable cover / scavenge, this concept seems easy enough to implement since its already in COH but oddly isn’t their in DOW2.
-*- but what really bothers me is the overmiss implementation of some things:
- cover: that just turned out wrong, SM should feel like their were in DOW1 - pushing through masses and cover like bread through butter, while game play wise the IG should mirror COH US forces.
but their is no IG in DOW2 ?! true and their shouldn’t be one right from the start, but its still very important to have the game play differences contrasted, maybe if you would force orks to use SOME cover as opposed to a swarm of nids…
- kill bonus exp: this was a real letdown, I really feel kill bonuses should faster and more plentiful but maybe with less damage, exp shouldn’t have been implemented in nids and orks so to add a little twist to the gameplay of say an SM player needing to retreat his forces while a nid or ork player has no such constraint.
this can later be emphasize by having a counter bonus that actually awards loses, this can be done per unit or per army, a kind of last push for the IG or carnivoring for the NIDS, this could make for a very interesting and intense gameplay :-)
I have more but this is getting really quite long, so To summarize:
I do feel that flying units + light armor + proper cover are the key issues that should be dealt with, the rest is balancing and expansion pack material.
I think that DOW2 as it is now has a good single player experience and a decent though very VERY limited and quite frankly boring & repetitive multiplayer; maybe because of the lack of unit diversity andor game speed.
I suppose if units moved faster I wouldn’t mind the little choice, but having to crisscross even a small map with 1 to 3 units (which is the average scale of most battles) is overly time consuming and worse once you do get to the desired destination their is actually very little you can do with your units other then to watch the pretty FX and wait to either retreat them or take the point your after.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:16 am
As I see it, the engine’s steep requirements completely molded every aspect of the game. It’s like it drove the IP instead of trying to make the engine fit within designers expectations. In other words, it’s like designers at Relic thought “What can we do with Essence 2.0 that has DOW in it?” Instead of “How should DOW2 evolve from DOW1? Of course, developers have to consider engine limitations but in this case, it feels like Relic wanted to show off everything their updated engine could do no matter what. I have the impression a few key aspects were “lost in translation” to next-gen.
For one, the epic feel is gone. DoW2 seems like a movie that got hit by a bad cutback on the actors’ budget. Imagine Ben-Hur with only a tenth of the cast on the chariot race scene and you’ll get my meaning, ok, DOW1 never had 10 000 extras on scene, but on a 4×4 on Oasis Sharr things were chaotic and funny like there’s no tomorrow. Secondly, I do agree with previous comments that the game feels slow except when squads retreat racing home. On that particular topic, I remember watching the mini map during a beta-testing match and noticed me and my two other teammates were kinda having some sort of race. Squads were constantly running back at full speed, reinforcing and returning to the fight. It was like the game was on fast forward when they retreated and returned to normal speed when they were returning to the fight. Seemed like a weird mechanic for a SCI-FI game and not a very practical one. Sure it worked in COH, but do we need to make DOW2 fit in the COH template at all costs?
In my mind, the DOW2 design process kinda followed this train of thought: “What can we do with Essence 2.0 that will allow us to keep it look extremely good and fun?” Well, start by cutting back on squads. From there, we can’t have a few guys in big maps -that, btw-, feature awesome environments. So cut some on it make them (maps) smaller too. If the maps are smaller, maybe we must cut on the tech-tree as well and keep it short, this way, we can get rid of listening posts with guns that would allow getting a more solid foothold on conquered territory but would make maps feel even tighter. We want to keep things dynamic and make keep the player on his toes constantly. Since we have no listening posts with guns, ditch base-building while we’re at it. The end result is a game that feels too tactical and not very fun to play after a while with few units on screen and not enough variety.
Instead of Essence 2.0 maybe Essence Light, an engine that would cut on certain eye candy and would scale down visually better allowing more guys at once on screen could have been a better approach. After all, Starcraft 2 doesn’t scream high polycounts/complex textures to me and yet looks awesome on the default camera view. Sorry I had to name the Devil, but I felt it was very much needed.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Some clarification regarding characters and units: People have repeatedly stated that the units look like dressed up DOW 1 units. While it may feel that way; it is not true.
If you put a DoW 1 and a DoW 2 unit side by side, you will notice significant proportion differences and a much deeper style, driven by Warhammer fluff art. The processor heavy graphics have been designed around product longevity so that 4 years from now, DoW2 will still look good.
DoW2 players have to also understand that every. single. piece. of artwork, from the tiniest little plant, to the biggest Tyranid, to the most insignificant icon, has been looked at, evaluated, and approved by Games Workshop. And for the record GW does NOT automatically approve artwork; they are extremely protective of their IP.
Relic artists are some of the best in business, many are industry award winners, and have long pedigrees working on AAA games, films, television shows, illustration and even industrial design. In fact, most contemporary RTS artists (at any RTS heavy dev studio) are very strong. This is because they have to be; the nature of RTS art is that it has to read strongly both at default camera, and zoomed in to the closest unit. Every piece of art must work within the overall palette and theme both at a macro and micro level. DoW2 artists walked a tightrope between unit id and Games Workshop approval.
Players must remember that they are playing a Relic game in the Games Workshop universe. That is all.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
“Sorry I had to name the Devil, but I felt it was very much needed.”
It is indeed the elephant in the room. I’ve avoided making the comparison because it’s becoming increasingly clear which of the two will likely stand the test of time, and I didn’t even like Starcraft.
August 21st, 2009 at 10:52 am
um give Relic a break I mean do you know how hard it is to make ALL of these models,to record ALL of the sounds and draw ALL of those high detailed textures?It’s a pretty great game if u ask me.Ofcorse it has problems,but Dawn of War 1 had a lot of problems too before its expansions came out,like repetetive unit speeches and some bugs.With winter assault more unit variety came and so did an entirely different campaing+an improvement in blood effects.Dark Crusade came out with the AWESOME balance improvement - hard caps on some units.With later patches they also fixed resource costs of some stuff to stop players from doing cheap ass rushes(something in Starcraft that annoys the hell out of me…WTF 3 marines and 5 SCVs destroying a protoss base wtf is going on here?!).Soulstorm wasnt a really big inprovement in gameplay,but it had Dark Eldar and countrary to what some people say,they are nothing like the eldar.Dark eldar are like space pirates,unlike eldar who are like vulcans lol.As for the small maps and army sizes-if you want it realistic,you’ll need to make it a 1000 marines vs 1 billion orks vs 100 trillion tyranids battle.No PC can support that and no PC in the near future will be able to support it,basebuilding is ridikilous and unlogical.Why would you go to an enemy base and start building shit in the heat of battle lol,and why would you drop 99999 units on the ground and watch them get blown up by a single artillery strike when you can send a small task force that can move quickly into enemy territory,engagin with small scale conflicts with the local enemy defences,while completing strategic objectives,like finding information about enemy leaders for assassination.If you look at it,DoW2 is the one of the most realistic RTS game.And realism DOES stack with Sci-Fi.In the Wh40k fluff every aspect of DoW technology is explained(warp travel,alien origins,space marine armor,weapons,genetic engeneering..etc).And combat is not slow lol.Sure the retreat is kinda too fast compared to the fighting,but the fighting was all about flanking enemies,throwing grenades at large groups of gaunts and not losing your troops.Also there is a Tyranid feeling to the game when you play Tyranids-the broodnest and tyrannoform that let you bring in so many more gaunts lol..its like theres no end to them and the orks are just like in fluff-they come at you like a stream of green shit and you just cut trough the hugeh mass of shit with you guns and then you walk over the dead shit on the ground.There was also more realism in the weapons than in DoW1.Make 5 squads of marines with plasma cannons and you can own almost every unit in seconds,then again you will get owned by a couple of grenades :D overall Dawn of War 2 is the best game that came out this year and the Expansions(in 5 years they’ll make atleast 2) will be even more incredible.Just imagine the ugly mutations on chaos marines with those graphics omg so awesome O_O
March 16th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Hi there I like your publish
April 19th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
my dad likes the wii mote plus. We’ve enjoyed Academy of champions almost religiously since we got the motionplus. What games are your favourite?
May 8th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I honestly think that Dow2 is crap. And I think some of the reasons stated is obviously why it is crap. Let me restate some reasons.
1) NO Base Building… wait..wtf? Base building has always been essential to an Rts game. Just look at supreme commander, warcraft, starcraft, star wars empire at war etc. WHY DID THEY ELIMINATE BASE BUILDING!! My thing is if one HQ gets screwed you have another one in place and you were able to defend your base with turrents.
2) limited squad sizes yet another wtf moment. The point of DAWN OF WAR is to have massive I mean massive chaotic battles. Thats what made dawn of war.. DAWN OF WAR.
3) along with the first two reasons comes smaller maps..smaller maps are no fun unless its just a 1vs1 but come on people.
4) wtf happened to all the really fast as hell vehicles?? This is what made the eldar fun to play in the first place. Being fast as hell and basically hit and running people. Not having vehicles move 2 inches a second..
Overall the epicness and the funess of dawn of war felt so scaled down its not even funny. However I do have one positive thing to say and thats the campaign. Ive seen replays of people playing campagin cause I don’t own the game. However Ive seen replays of people versing each other on dawn of war 2 and seen what its like. So anyway the campagin looks really fun to play. Thats about the only good thing about dow2.
Because of the mistakes made on dawn of war 2 I’m afraid its not a buy for me. I’ll get Starcraft 2 instead when it comes out. At least it is similar to the first starcraft and its NOT A WATERED DOWN VERSION!!!
May 10th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
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June 8th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Heh , Just noticed you’ve forgotten an important part of every starcraft player’s success story - game replays! And here’s my 2 cents about great games played in beta