Firstly Apologies for the lateness of this review, I’m well
aware that the game has been out a few weeks by now and that there are
countless reviews online already.
Secondly this is my first review so apologies for any rambling. (no worries Mike, readers are well used to my ramblings by now - Al)
Dawn of War is one of my favourite PC games of all time, met
only by the mighty Tie Fighter and Secret of Monkey Island. I still play it to this day, Dark Crusade and
Soul storm regularly get a play through when I’m bored and fancy some
action. I was slightly disappointed with
the release of Dawn of War 2, the game was fun and I liked the RPG levelling up
of my heroes but it missed the chaos of building a base then a massive force
and sending a tide of Marines and Dreadnoughts across the battlefield to wipe
out my foes. (DIE, DIE, DIE!! sorry -Al) When Sega bought out THQ
Games a few years ago it was said that the Dawn of War series was done for and
that we’d never see a third installment, even though the request for a third
addition arose frequently from fans.
A year ago I saw a reveal trailer for DOW3 and my heart
leapt for joy, even more so when I heard that base building would be back. Phenomenal. Imagine huge armies with today’s
graphics smashing into hordes of armies, needless to say this bad boy was going
to be pre-ordered.
I was lucky enough to
play the beta back in late March and was impressed by the graphics although had
a few concerns but put this down to only playing multi-player (no campaign
missions were available) and only being allowed to play against human opponents as
there was no AI option.
Upon release of the full game I dived straight into the
campaign looking forward to playing the Blood Ravens again (a silly faction,
that really probably should have been replaced by a bone-fide faction from GW but I
understand why they made one up because then they don’t particularly have to
stay on message with the lore).
My first
game was great, the bases are back with all the building choices from before, some have changed, no longer can you build an Armoury and upgrade units to
carry Heavy Bolters, you have to build a separate building, the Doctrine Chapel and deploy Heavy Bolters. The Armoury is still there but used solely to increase health
and damage of units along with some unit minor upgrades.
There were a few changes. No longer could you just recruit Gabriel
Angelos, he is now an elite character that you can spend Elite Points on (a new
form of resource, obtainable from certain requisition points) along with two
other elite slots that later on in the game you can change out to suit your
needs, I prefer to swap my librarian for Terminators for example, there is
access to an Imperial Knight but it will cost you 9 elite points and these build up
gradually so you may wait a while before being able to deploy it. Each elite has special attacks that are
devastating to normal units, it’s a cool mechanic as it melds DOW1 and DOW2 play
methods together fairly seamlessly.
I do have a few niggles with the game however, the biggest one is
the lack of an auto save feature. As you
play through a mission, it unfolds in stages, you start with one objective then
another one unfolds when you complete the previous and the map expands with the
mission. However, there is no auto save
feature so you can be playing along and get right to the end only to fall foul of a
HUGE Ork horde thinking you’d go back to the previous objective. But no, you go
straight back to the beginning. It’s
really frustrating, for example once my PC just crashed and I’d literally just
finished the mission only for everything to be wiped. I know it’s my fault as I should have saved
regularly but in this day and age where most games save as you go, you feel
like you’re being punished for not being a die-hard saver.
Second niggle is, no turrets. There is a drop pod that has Storm Bolters
inside it which is nice but it’s not the same as capturing a point and being
able to drop two or three turrets by the important points to help defend
them. You can still build listening
posts but these are just a single turret but they aren’t as hardy as they were
before and they can’t be upgraded. The
ability to reinforce troops on the field is gone, and as such you have to send
the troops back to base to reinforce them (there is an upgrade that allows
reinforcement at requisition points but this costs unlock skulls).
Thirdly there are only 3 factions, that’s it. No Necrons, no Tau, not even Chaos. But if the game is a success (fingers
crossed) then expansions will fill the gaps, if they made the expansions with
similar game mechanics to Dark Crusade or Soulstorm (where you have to take on
a planet or a system) I’ll be the first in line with my money (TAKE IT ALL
DAMMIT)
The last niggle is quite a big one and one that I’ve seen
mentioned a few times. Playing through
the campaign you start as marines but the next mission you play as Eldar, then
the next you play as Orks. It’s good in
the sense that you can get used to playing the other factions but I’m not a
huge fan of the chopping and changing.
Eldar, aren’t tailored to my play style and using them is a
bit of a chore. However the Orks are
fantastic, funny and they have some nice mechanics. Being able to build some units from scrap
piles (that are either pulled down from space by waaaaggghhhh towers or left
behind from fallen enemy vehicles) is a nice touch, also units such as Boyz, Nobz, Shootas etc can upgrade themselves from scrap piles and increase accuracy or
armour.
Each faction has access to many
different elite units like the Marines, particular favourites are Striking Scorpions for the Eldar and the trundling behemoth the Morkanaught (or Gorkanaught). I have to add, it’s nice
to see the foot of Gork (or Mork) as a special ability of the weird boyz,
although the animation is tame, I’d have love to have seen a comical Monty Python-esque foot appearing out of the warp and squishing stuff.
Some people have stated that this method of
play (the switching of factions as you go) feels like a massive tutorial for
the multiplayer, and I can see why. As
you progress you get access to more and more goodies, so in the beginning you
get access to just the basics and when you get a grip with those you start to
learn about other mechanics (such as the devastating mega bomb – Marines:
Orbital Strike, Orks: Meteor strike, Eldar: warp storm). It feels like a natural learning curve but I
get why people are saying it’s a tutorial for multiplayer.
Speaking of which, the multiplayer mode is a lot of fun, 1v1
2v2 or 3v3 are the default modes so anyone hoping for an 8 player mash up might
be a little disappointed. Having said
that I regularly play 3v3 with two mates against AI which always lead to large
amounts of carnage. The mechanic of the
multiplayer is thus: Destroy a shield
generator, destroy a turret (a substantial beam weapon that will knock you down
if you try and take it out before the shield generator) then destroy a power
core.
I know that some people miss the
old way which was just destroy the base.
We play on Casual mode and it provides a big challenge for us (although
we’re probably crap lol), just last night we were up against Orks, and the
green tide was lapping close to the power generator when I sent my squads up
the flanks and destroyed the power generator and we won. I’ve only played a handful of games against
real opponents and a few of them had forgotten about the mechanic and as such I
won games that I probably shouldn’t have, not sure how long that will
last.
Lastly the graphics are fabulous, the maps are nice and
balanced and the details are lovely. As
the war rages on the field gets heavily scared and carnage is abundant, burnt
out wrecks of whirlwinds and dreadnaughts litter the pock marked maps and the
earth is scorched. The squad limit is
250 in most games and I’ve never really reached that number of troops but even
with a sizeable battalion it looks impressive.
Requisition tumbles in quite slowly so I can’t ever see me filling the
army size (another tip: upgrade your requisition points to produce more
req.).
Ultimately DOW3 is a good game, is it perfect and all that I
hoped it would be? No but it’s better
than nothing which was the alternative.
You only get three factions that’s it.
It’s screaming out for expansions and I’ll be amazed if they didn’t get
announced soon. It seems like they were
playing it safe, not investing too much into developing more factions because
the game may not sell (a PC only release isn’t a safe bet anymore and I admire
the courage it took to bring the game out).
It’ll be interesting to see what factions come next and whether they
will be able to bring Tyranids to the game as previously stated they said that
they couldn’t do that faction as the DOW1 engine would not handle the army
numbers, I think it’ll look amazing to see a horde of gaunts followed by a
flying hive tyrantJ.
I run a fairly old rig now with an old i7 and
a radeon 7950 on a clapped out asus sabretooth motherboard. The game runs fine (although the fans blow
loud during a game lol), with no lag.
Despite my niggles, of which I have listed them out, mostly the game is
enjoyable, and finding a group of mates to play online will only increase the
fun factor.
