Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War was a phenomenal game for me, seemingly coming out of nowhere to become one of the highlights of this 1001 list. I've started but not finished the Winter Assault DLC, and there are two more after that, full of new armies to base-build and Zerg-rush across the galaxy to purge the enemy, whomever it may be. That's what it's all about in the far future - war.
Following Dawn of War was Company of Heroes, the Second World War retheme, if you will, though it's much more than that. I've played it twice as much as I've played Dawn of War now, some 32 hours, finishing all the DLC and generally loving everything I was doing.
I like it even more than Dawn of War, but now the Emporer is back with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, which takes a little of Company of Heroes, rethemes it back into the grim darkness of the far future and then reinvents the gameplay almost entirely to focus even more on your squads and even less on your base building... just stop, I can't wait any longer, let me play already.
Fun Times
Why do Dreadnaughts make me smile so much? The intro video to Dawn of War II is a fancy CGI skirmish in the moonlight between some Blood Ravens and some kind of Eldar. They might not even be called Eldar anymore, I'm not really sure. If memory serves, I was lumped with the Eldar from the 3rd Edition Base Set, which I soon abandoned for a box of Blood Angels, which I also soon abandoned because we moved onto Dungeons & Dragons instead.
Anyway, this particular lady has just informed us that the Blood Ravens may have won this fight, but they're not going to win the war, alluding to a shared enemy that is a bigger threat than either of our armies is. What could it be?
Ugh, why did I call him Frank? That's not a very grimdark name. Commander Frank here is the one marine who can turn the tide of this battle, which is an Ork invasion of Calderis, the Blood Raven's homeworld.
Calling him the one who can get it all done is both a nod to the notion that a single Space Marine is an absolutely ruthless killing machine who has been genetically modified with multiple organs just in case some of the others fail (among other such nonsense delights) and a note about the switch in focus from the first DoW towards the individuals involved in the fight.
I must admit to being a little rusty on the controls, even with two days of gameplay between DoW and CoH under my belt, but it's nothing new to players of RTS games. Units can be selected via hotkeys or selection boxes, moved into place with the right mouse button, and are ready, willing, and able to open fire on any Orks that run screaming towards them should you be slow to actually issue an 'attack this unit' order with another click of the right mouse button.
Like the previous games, units have their own abilities that can be put to use in the midst of the action. Commander Frank can charge into battle and heal nearby units in a jiffy, and the Space Marine squad that follows him can taunt the enemy to attract their attention, and lob frag grenades to disperse groups in an instant.
Unlike previous games, though I suppose a little like CoH, enemies or crates can drop pieces of equipment, like weapons and accessories. So far as I can tell, unless these drops directly relate to some consumables like frag grenades, anything you collect will go into a big old pool of stuff that you can swap in and out in between missions.
The 1001 list mentions how this game is a little more like Diablo this time around, which isn't completely accurate of course, but if it helps to think of this sequel as more of a linear run through a map where you can collect things for use later on, then sure, DoWII is a little like Diablo.
This first level is very much a tutorial as we get to grips with how DoWII does things, but already I know I'm going to spend a long while with this game. I absolutely love these games thanks to the 1001 list. CoH 3 is somewhere on the horizon as I write this, but I've got all of CoH 2 to enjoy first. DoWIII is already in my Steam library, but I've got a long way to go before that gets installed as well.
Learning that explosives can blow things up is all we needed to do to complete the mission, and we get extracted back to the spaceship for some squad customization. It's not a spaceship in W40K, is it? That's not an ominous-sounding word at all. But we're in space in between battles, which is another change that DoWII brings, but let me get to the squad stuff first, eh?
Your units earn experience and level up, but it is only when you're back in space after a mission that you can actually level up. You can assign a couple of points into your stats to both raise a unit's effectiveness in the field and to unlock new abilities that they can make use of, and swap out weaponry with that which you've found on the floor or taken off an enemy, and when they glow brighter than weapon drops in Borderlands, it's not hard to miss all the stuff you can pick up.
Everything has stats and a silly W40K name, and you'll want to spend a least a little bit of time making sure your units are as equipped as they can be. Some equipment will work better with certain units, as you'd imagine, and it's probably better to specialise and earn new abilities than it is to spread all your stats out and try to cover everything with one unit - but what do I know at this early stage? That might be rubbish.
What isn't rubbish are all the little CoH mechanics that are on display here. My new scout unit (I think it was a scout unit) can sneak into enemy territory and lob demolition charges into buildings, just like I did so much of in CoH. Units can sit down and pray at beacons to capture territory and strengthen our hold of the map, just like previous games, only this time we don't seem to have to worry about resources of any kind. Less for me to think about? Hope so.
I can put units into buildings and have them shoot from a defensive position, again like I did oh so much of in CoH. Another new unit, armed with heavy bolters, can set itself up like a heavy machine gun squad would in CoH, suppressing the enemy and forcing them to decide whether to run or to fight - suppression! That's new to DoWII from CoH, isn't it?
We're only two levels in and I know I've found another favourite. It's more of the same in some sense, but so much more than that in another. It's an evolution in the formula, and that it has a lick of paint as deep, dark, and bonkers as W40K is the icing on the cake.
After this level was complete, and we'd levelled up our squad some more, we get to choose what mission to tackle next, and killing an Ork boss seemed to be a good way to end this first session with the game.
I've been glossing over the story completely because it's rather typical W40K stuff. It's not badly written, nor is it amazingly written, unless we're talking about how much it feels like W40K, in which case they've nailed it. These Orks are acting unusually, with the implication being that they've been prompted to come here and cause some trouble by something far more intelligent.
Given that the game is keeping track of the days that have passed, I don't know if there will be moments where we'll lose the opportunity of going on a mission because the moment has gone. On the one hand, I hope not - more gameplay to sink my teeth into. On the other hand, more realism in the story, and your choices will matter more.
With a focus on the people and not the bases they build, hopefully, this story will be a more personal one. They managed it to some extent in the CoH DLC, so why not?
Under the cover of darkness, we move through this desert town lighting up every single Ork that dares look at us. Scouts plant demolition charges, the heavy bolters rain down from defensive positions, and Commander Frank charges into the thick of things without a care in the world.
I'm playing on easy so health hasn't been an issue for me so far. It regenerates over time, I believe, but I don't know the details of how squad members can be lost, whether they're gone for good or simply knocked out for the rest of the mission. Similarly, I don't know if you can increase the squad sizes like you could in the previous games. Maybe I'll get that later on in the game, once we've learned some more about the changes.
This map features communication arrays and praying at them long enough spawns in some generators that are needed to keep them powered and under our control. I have no idea what these things are, both the communication array and the generators, but I'm told that we can only power one of the two that are on this map.
What does that mean, exactly? Why do I need communication arrays? Capturing beacons, too, for that matter? I do it because that's what you do in previous games to generate resources and control the map, cutting through enemy supply lines and the like, but DoWII doesn't have base-building in that sense, so far as I can tell. It doesn't have obvious resources.
I'm sure I'll learn more as we make more progress in the game, but at this moment in time, I'm simply doing things because they are there, and if I can't control everything on this map, I can at least wipe it clean of Orks.
And then we get to face the main man himself, Gutrencha. Spying some civilian buildings surrounding the arena, I put my units into position to rain down hell upon the Ork, but instead, hell rained down on me.
Frank, as the one unit with a chain sword, was cut down first and lay in the middle of the arena waiting for help.
In hindsight, what I should have done was pulled my scouts out of the building on the left and had them sneak their way to me while the other two units pulled Gutrencha's attention. What actually happened was Benny Hill-like chaos as one unit ran out, healed another, got killed, needed another unit to heal them who in turn got killed as well...
Eventually, through sheer dumb luck more than anything, Frank was on his feet and capable of using his Stimulant Kit to sprinkle out enough health to everybody so that whoever was left could stay in the fight, and by this point, we had surrounded Gutrencha and whittled his own gigantic health pool down to slivers.
The beast had been felled and our mission was a success. If this third mission of DoWII is any indicator of things to come, then I may well find myself having a tough time of things, and will really need to pay attention to what my squads can do in any given situation, and use their strengths to my advantage.
As the mission completion screens show, I'm quite furious, but not exactly well versed in anything else, so I've a lot to work on as we push forward into whatever hell the story will take us.
Just give me ten minutes to go over all these weapons and we'll see what's next, yeah?
Final Word
I can say nothing bad about Dawn of War II so far. I've barely played an hour of it, of course, so it's still early days, but those early days have brought a smile to my face.
Warhammer 40,000 is dumb fun. Nothing makes sense, it's all ridiculously over the top, every character you ever meet is a super-soldier who lives only to serve the Emporer who is clearly dead and has been for thousands of years, but this is all the galaxy knows: endless war and Space Marines.
The setting is capable of delivering countless experiences through multiple media, as I mentioned when playing Dawn of War, but great W40K video games have been few and far between. Well, thanks to the incredible gameplay of Company of Heroes as a fresh base to work from, Dawn of War II looks to push itself up as another major W40K game worthy of your time.
It will help massively if you enjoy the W40K universe, but if you've come from a love of Company of Heroes, maybe the similarities between the games will be your jumping on point to all the insane lore of W40K. If you can't follow along with all the silly terminology and naming conventions, you can at least keep up with the gameplay, which I know is going to keep me busy for some time to come.
I'm sure I'll be back to fill in some details on this before too long. Has future me bought the DLC yet? Here's hoping.
FILLING YOU IN
Well, ten hours or so later, that's the campaign wrapped up. There were some optional missions to give you something more to do, but they didn't seem to affect the story in any way. I was alerted to certain missions only being available for a few more days but ignoring them did nothing to impact my game, so I'm not really sure what the point of them was.
The character levelling and equipment swapping was cool, but a little cumbersome. I had weapons falling out of every pocket, and once you find a favourite, there's no point ditching it, unless you find another whatever it is that's a higher level, or does a little bit more damage. Everything else gets sold for experience points to level up quicker. It was nice to have Terminators and a Dreadnaught stomping around the battlefield, though. It's the simple things I enjoy...
Most of the bosses were nice and manageable when you remember your unit's strengths and abilities, and if you pay attention when you level them all up, you'll know what it actually is that each ability does. Use your units to their full potential and they'll take you through a generic Warhammer 40,000 story in no time at all.
Here's to the DLC, which I'm sure I'll pick up at some point.
Fun Facts
This game was the first widely released PC-exclusive game to have 'Games for Windows - Live' achievements (Xbox achievements). How many not-so-widely released PC-exclusive games had them before this one, then?
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, developed by Relic Entertainment, first released in 2009.
Version played: PC, 2009.