I skipped the various DoW 1 stuff despite having it, just never got around to it. Thinking of playing DoW 2, anyone messing with it here? Any good?

 

I love it. Plain and simple.

If you're a fan of those big base-building RTS's with lots of resoruce mamangement and fielding a huge army, then stay away. DoW II gets rid of most of that. It really should be called an RTT- Real Time Tactical. In the single player campaign, you only ever control 4 units at a time so you really need to position them right. Even in the multiplayer, where you can build units from a HQ (but that's about it), it's still hard to get the huge amount of resources needed to field a huge army and you have a cap. It's all about the tactics of how you play- you charge in four squads of infantry in front of a suppression squad and those four will die very quickly.

All of their secondary abilities are vital if you wanna win. It's got some RPG elements in it, where your units level up and get tougher as they kill more things, and there's a whole 'wargear' aspect to it that allows you to customise your troops as you see fit. That said, I still love it even if it's not your most traditional game. It's not about buying over 9000 of the pwn!unit and sending them en mass. It's about how you use the small group that you have to win against the 9000 opponents you'll be fighting.

Get it, Middy. I think it's worth the money.

 

Shezza said it all.

And the solo campain is awesome even if you can only play the Space Marines. But giving the way the campain is done, it's not really a problem.

 

Everything Shezza said is true, but I was rather disappointed with it. I thought I was buying an RTS. I like RTS's because of the multiplayer options, and multiplayer for this game sucks. Part of Warhammer's appeal is the huge numbers that the factions have to throw at each other, and this game did away with that. Still, campaign mode can be fun.

 

Just installed it now, hey look I don't have a direct X 9 file. That would be because Im on Dx10. Jesus Christ you'd think these fucking game designers would knock that shit off by now. The game'll work fine with the Dx10 files, but now I get to go find a hack/missing dx file.

10>9 . Simple math. Too bad game designers don't get that. I've lost track of how many games I've installed since Vista came out that had them refuse to work on DX10. Annoying.

 

The higher campaign difficulty settings punish you brutally.

Jumped packed into the wrong place? Whoops YOU'RE DEAD.

Until ~ level 10, prepare to have everyone die at least once on every level if you're playing captain or above.

Also...

Spoiler

Avitus in Terminator Armour. 800+ DPS.
Thaddeus in Terminator Armour = Carnifex dead in 4 hits.

 

Yo, Mid, when you've practised more we should have some multiplayer games. I used to be quite good with the Eldar during the beta phase, although I haven't played it for a while now.

 

Wow, this is NOT a game that likes Vista. Crashed constantly, gigantic memory leak, constant errors.

I swapped back to XP SP3 today, and the fucker uses half the memory, no stuttering at all on Ultra, it'd lock up totally on Vista if I tried Ultra. The levels load in 5 seconds versus 30 seconds to 1 minute.

So much nicer. Prolly has something to do with not having 1.2 gbs of Ram being gobbled up by Vista, lol. Hell I'm using that much now, alt tabbed out, in mid mission, and typing this.

 

Is this out in stores, or just for open beta? I've been kind of browsing over it, wondering if you need to be deep into WH40k lore to really like it, or can you pick it up and figure things out as you go.

 

No you don't need to be into the lore, and yes it's out in stores. So far seems fairly easy.. but I am playing on easy, rofl.

 

Alright so I just picked this up a couple days ago and I am really enjoying the campaign but like Middy said it is very easy. The multiplayer is very fun once you get used to it and Id be interested in playing somebody to practice a little. Theres only so many times you can get fucked up by the computer before you need to play a person.

 

Something that's bugging me.

Can you not move the camera 360? If so.. that blows ass.

I keep having Eldar units hidden by rocks and shit, and I can't get the targetting to see they're there for shit. That reason is the main reason I hate anything that uses an isometric view, even the best games could be made better by having iso view but fully moveable camera.

I also get annoyed when I can't zoom in enough at times. The game so far, I'm only on I think day 8 or 9, bugs me because it does turn into a random clickfest as well.

Cover isn't really a tactical objective, just let Avitus go forward, use the jumppacks to give him time to set up, Commander bumrushes in with charge, and the other guy lobs grenades and sets up turrets during the boss fights.

Cyrus is turning to be a letdown for me, everything can see his ass and unless you buff him up big time, he decloaks constantly to do anything. I thought the sniper rifle would be cool, but his range blows balls too.

So far, I still like it, but it could of been dozens of times better. More to come.

 

Midknight:

Press ALT and then move the mouse around to change the rotation of the map.


As for cover being non-important, try playing at the harder settings and you'll see that it's vital, especially on Primarch mode. One group of Ork Shoota's completely wiped out my Force Commander, Assault Marines and Tac. Squad within five seconds because they were travelling between on lot of cover to the next. Cover will significantly decrease a lot of ranged damage you get.

Cyrus is a pretty useless character for fighting, in my opinion. His High-Powered shot for the sniper is alright, but I usually buff up the HP bar and give him grenades and demo charges. It usually lets him charge up to a mob, throw a grenade and then gtfo of there without dying. Plus, one of the abilties he gets during the HP scale is instant revival of squad members without the delay. That, combined with Reviving Squad members when cloaked, is pretty awesome, especially on those long boss fights.

I fucking hate the Eldar Avatar and it's 200k Hit Points. Especially since it loves to spawn Seer Councils and Howling Banshees all over your arse.

If you're finding the difficulty a little easy, notch it up to the next setting. Alternatively, in the replay, do things differently. In my newest game, I'm focussing on the Tactical Squad instead of Cyrus since I negelcted them last game, and I'm giving my Force Commander some ranged abilities.

Edit: Btw, my nickname on Steam is [DLP]TheDeadGuy and on Live it's StillTheDeadGuy. If anybody ever wants a game, give us a buzz and I'll play you. I used to be pretty decent with the Eldar during the beta days but I dunno how good I am now.

 

I love this game. Just wish I could get some variety to drop in the war gear the 2nd time through. First time I never saw any weapons for Avitus except 2 missile launchers.

Oh that did remind me of my biggest problem with it. Avitus is a moron if he has a missile launcher. If you tell him to attack something more often than not he will run directly up to it and stand next to it. After about 10 seconds he might decide to fire once or twice if he isn't dead at that point.

Besides that flaw I do wish the guys were a little more responsive from when I tell them to move as a whole. The guys furthest back like to stand around for a little while before getting going. Which during boss fights with aoe attacks can be dangerous.

The last problem which is more story oriented than control is the whole "You face billions of the enemy; this sector and our entire chapter's survival is on your shoulders but you can only use 2/3rds of your available squads." You'd rather be completely annihilated than let me use more than 4 squads. That's just ridiculous.

But ya other than those I love the game. Especially the jump packs which is making my 2nd play through tricky since I'm not using them.

@Shezza: For the tougher battles with the cheap reinforcements if it's going on and on use the orbital laser. If you can aim it right and get the boss in one of the 3 beams it'll do about 200k if I remember correctly. I ended up using it against the Avatar particularly when all the tanks and such rolled out and gathered around him.

Edit: I was just playing some more and I encountered another problem I had. When the commander is down you cannot drag and select with the box around him. It will only select him. So if the commander dies and you need to fall back you have to quick key to the squads or click each individually that can be a pain if you're not thinking about it at the time.

I know it may sound like I hate the game but really I just hate the controls the game itself is very good.

 

Avitus is very flaky for me. Sometimes he will go to where I tell him and just not set up his weapons at all. I'll have to click to move him again to get him to set up the guns.

Alt will move it 360? Cool.

LOL. Yeah, but it becomes a pain in the ass to coordinate those 4 as is, heh.

Something else that's annoying about Cyrus/demo pack, it's fuse is 4 seconds +/-. EVERYTHING sees it coming and moves. I've maybe got the thing to go off 10 times out of 100 tries and got it to kill a large cluster. The grenades are better for mass damage.

 

The demo packs are best for carnifex's, the can also be used to some degree against bosses. On defense missions you can toss them out into the way of mobs since they are all coming to a single place.

I know what ya mean about the coordination. I still sometimes see a squad just sitting there while the squad next to them is being eaten alive. You just look at them and go what the fuck are you doing? Maybe avitus' stupid is rubbing off on the rest of them.

Oh and to anyone thinking of doing a ranged commander/avitus combo don't do it. Ok well maybe do it if you are lucky but I'm not so i get shit for drops on war gear so it didn't work for me at all. Might also have sucked because it was my first play through really using cyrus so I didn't have any melee to tie the enemy up at range.

 

I'm doing melee commander, supported by jump pack squad, avitus is the forward leader scout wise, he usually spots something, I'll stop him, and he's set up by the time it gets to him.

I'll charge, then jump jet the group, by then they're suppressed and being eaten to hell and back.

Another thing that gets on my nerves, the turrets... I get why you can't pick them back up, but hell make them have more range plz! Same with the air strike. Too small of an area.

 

I got the Commander, Avitus, and Tarkus at full melee and the rest in stamina, then I put them all in Terminator armor and I also use Thule with a good set of armor and the dreadknought cannon for long range. I could crush fairly damn much anything.

Ive got to be working for the next couple of days pretty hard but a big weekend DLP match sounds pretty fun, anyone else interested in doing that?

 

They fix Avitus termy armor? I read that once he goes into the armor, you click to have him in a covered spot, but then he crushes the cover, so he winds up walking around doing nothing, lol.

 

I don't think you can enter cover as anyone in terminator armor. And I thought that was purposeful since it's made to walk through everything and just shrug off damage. It's so thick you don't even need cover.