Game Play:
Anyone who has played Relic's Company of Heroes will find Dawn of War 2 to be very familiar territory. Indeed the two games are based on the same engine. The real big change Relic made with Dawn of War 2 was removing base building. They have shrunk Company of Heroes' base down to one forward outpost which now builds all your units. The squad based combat, originally introduced in Dawn of War, is also back but with the Company of Heroes makeover. Units such as troops are purchased in squads that vary in size and move as groups albeit with some individuality unlike the original Dawn of War. Company of Heroes' cover system has also been retained allowing your squads in the game to take cover behind various objects. Being behind cover increases their defensive bonuses meaning they take less damage. Three types of cover exist: heavy cover which is represented by a green cursor, light cover represented by a yellow cursor, and building cover which is obviously granted by units garrisoned in buildings. Squads, when ordered to move, will move normally but will take cover automatically when they reach their destination. Cover is directional so squads that are flanked and shot from behind will take normal damage. Interestingly, squads when engaged while not in cover will often scramble for cover when fired upon, but if engaged from behind while behind cover, squads will not move to the other side of the cover. Tanks and larger units do not benefit from cover, but can provide cover to squads behind or beside them. Vehicles and selected larger units can also smash structures by running through them which is meant to introduce more tactical game play since you can destroy cover and dynamically change the battlefield. In reality however, vehicles usually run over more things than you want it to meaning games typically end with barren, coverless maps since tanks ran them all over. Melee combat and sync kills, the favorite of the original Dawn of War, has also returned. Squads, when engaged in very close combat, will switch to melee and begin hacking at each other. Many units are even melee only and have to engage in close combat to do damage. Squads have a combined HP that when is reduced to critical, will cause squad members to be rapidly killed off. If all the members of the squad are killed, then you lose the squad and have to buy it anew. You can save your squads by retreating them with the retreat command which will allow you to reinforce them at lower cost once they reach your outpost, a system also ported from Company of Heroes.
An interesting change Relic has made with Dawn of War 2 is shifted the focus to tactical, front line combat lead by a valuable hero unit of which you choose at the start of the game. The hero units have abilities which either focus on damaging the enemy or supporting your own troops. The shift to tactical combat means battles in Dawn of War 2 are small compared to its predecessor and a whole lot less hectic. Relic designed the game to force players to take greater care with their units through limiting they amount they can have in play at any time. Since units are so much more precious, using tactics like flanking enemy defenses become much more important. Game play shows in reality though, tactics employable in the game are very rudimentary and at most involve luring enemies into machine guns, tunneling under enemies and springing up from underneath them, or dropping down on them from the sky. I feel this game has even less tactics compared to Company of Heroes due to the reduced map sizes which don't allow for tactical maneuverability. Many gamers have already argued against the changes saying they are essentially not what Dawn of War is about and definitely not what Warhammer 40K is about. As a guy who knows at least a tid bit of what the Warhammer 40K universe is about, I would have to agree. I'm pretty sure retreat doesn't even exist in that universe let alone.
Dawn of War 2 has a lengthy single player campaign where you command a couple of squads of Space Marines against the other races. The campaign follows somewhat like that of Dark Crusades' where in the player chooses which battles to engage in from a large planet map before each mission. There are three planets that the campaign bounces back and forth between, each with its own environment: desert, jungle, and city. Beyond advancing the story, completing missions grants you war gear which you can equip on squads of your choice. These war gear upgrade their stats, grant abilities, and sometimes change their appearance. The campaign is also persistent in that the few squads you command will gain experiance and level up which grants abilities and stats boosts. Within the missions themselves, there are three types: assassination, defense, and special story missions. Most the missions are assassination missions which make you hunt an enemy boss which is a stronger version of another hero or unit. Defense missions make you hold a position by fending off a few waves of enemies. Finally story missions are the ones that truly advance the story and have certain specific objectives assisted by dialogue. Throughout the campaign however, you only have access to six different squads and not any of the other Space Marine units that exist in the skirmish making missions horribly repetitive as the the campaign progresses.
The standard classic arcade skirmish is also present. The player has access to four separate races, each of which has three heroes to choose from. These races are the aforementioned Space Marines, Orks, Elder, and Tyrannids. I won't bother to explain them here but suffice to say they each play quite differently. The real gripe with the skirmish is that there are only two game types, point control a la Company of Heroes, and death match a la... well every game that has ever existed. As if this weren't little enough variety, there's only six maps to play them on by default. Patches have since increased this number to 18 but several of these maps are only larger or smaller versions of each other for differing numbers of players. In the end, it all gets very boring very fast.
The game's multiplayer is, like all traditional strategy games, an online version of the skirmish so there is no reason to elaborate on the game play. The multiplayer is based on a ranking system where in players gain experiance by playing ranked matches setup for the player by the game. Winning or losing matches gains players experiance which in turn gives them wargear for their units. Unlike the singleplayer though, these wargear cannot be changed and do not provide any real stats bonuses. They are purely aesthetic so you can show enemies how much you potentially own. The matchmaking system works by matching something called players' Trueskill, some way Relic believes gauges your skill. In reality I have never observed this actually working since I've been paired with level 50 enemies during my first few matches. The matchmaking system also plays no attention to ping and will freely pair players on different sides of the world meaning a lagless multiplayer game, be it from ping or lagging players, is a rarity.
Control Scheme:
Dawn of War 2's game interface is standard affair. There's an integral minimap on the bottom left and a unit control panel on the bottom right. A list of all your units line the right hand side of the screen. It all fits there since you can't control many units in the game. An nifty feature is that every unit you create is automatically assigned to a number hotkey so you don't have to do it yourself. Also there's a button that will turn your unit control panel to your building panel when clicked giving easy access to build more units. Beyond that there's really nothing else to mention. The multiplayer lobby however, is a far different story. Here is not a case of mediocrity but a case of complete failure. The multiplayer game lobby is barren with only a game list and a join game button. How do you refresh the game list? You don't, it does it for you every 30 seconds or so. That's right, meaning if your scanning through your game list, its suddenly going to disappear during an auto refresh and you gotta look all over again. There's also no game filters meaning its going to be spending time finding 500+ ping games for you.
Graphics:
As this game is based on the Company of Heroes engine, the graphics are very similar. Since the introduction of the engine, various new features have been added including Direct x 10 support and improved shader effects. Still however the two games look quite similar. Model detail hasn't really been improved nor has skin resolution. The new environments are quite interesting and involve some new, purely aesthetic features such as water falls and endless drops into clouds of mists.
Sound:
Sound in this game is generally good with fitting but highly generic voice acting. Support is included for surround sound in the form of Dolby Pro Logic. Still explosions and weapons sound meaty and fitting. All in all, its standard affair that meets today's quality standards.
Pros:
- Action orientated game play
- Great graphics
- Pretty engaging campaign story
- Distinct races
- Easy to get into
- Horribly repetitive campaign
- Horribly repetitive skirmish and online game play
- Original game shipped with so few maps it wasn't worth the cost of the game
- Horrible multiplayer lobby and matchmaking system
- Smaller battles with reduced tactics compared to Company of Heroes
- Feels 80% like Company of Heroes
FAIL-O-METER RATES:
2.5 out of 5 stars: The epitome of mediocrity.
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