Friday 24 July 2009

And they shall know no fear

Further to my post yesterday, I just wanted to share with you what I’m up against… I’ve taken a few reviews from play.com.

got hold of this as like the first one (apart from the cut scenes, lol) but all you ever seem to be able to do is the same maps over and over again with a different boss at the end each time. YAWN!!!!

the first one was more similar to command and conquer, you could build your little base, build loads of little tanks, then go and smash the poop out of everything. unfortunaltely this game misses all that and you just get a choice of 4 teams to take into battle with you each time and level up your teams at the end of each level.

in all honesty this is not a great game :(

See? ‘build loads of little tanks, then go smash the poop out of everything”. How does that constitute strategy in any way, shape, or form? Here’s another:

The lack of base building reduces the skill required in the game dramatically turning the campaign into more of an RPG than a strategy game, and the skirmishes more like RPG but the creation of units keeps it a strategy game just not as good a proper strategy game like DOW soulstorm. None-the-less still enjoyable just not really strategy but it depends what you like and what you were expecting.

For a start, if you thought Soulstorm was good, you’ve obviously not got a critical eye for video games. How does having to rely on the various strengths of your troops and not simply their number reduce the skill required? It may reduce the amount of things you have to keep track of at any one time (and, hence, reduce frantic clicking), but that’s because it’s not simply a ‘select all troops, click on enemy,’ game with resource management to keep track of as well.

Finally, to anyone complaining about the lack of races in the game… Idiots, the lot of you. For a start, 4 races are more than the traditional required 3 races in RTS games of yore. Next, this is an entirely new game engine and system; how did you expect them to instantly transport the 9 races across from the original series? There was a gap of nearly 4 years between the release of the original and the release of Soulstorm (not including the development time for the original, either); did you really want to wait another 4 years for the release of Dawn of War II?

Anyway, I’ll blog about something else later, this has just really annoyed me; people seem to much prefer to play the same games over and over. Don’t get me wrong, I loved DoW, I just love the direction the series is going in; it feels different and exciting. I can’t wait for the inevitable expansion packs!

1 comment:

  1. you see, I can see the merit in both titles, and that's one of the things which I really love about what THQ did - the first game was, IMHO the ultimate in base building RTS. lets face it, the C&C series had gone very stale, and DoW provided exciting skirmish gaming, a challenging campaign and some stunning graphics. In fact the only company which has come even close is my beloved blizzard - SC and especially WC3 were the pinnacles of the genre until DoW, mainly due to the RPG elements of WC3 - they raised a bar that C&C could not reach. DoW did tho.

    DoWII went to the next step - the single player campaign was a breath of fresh air, simply to rehash the base built?/go kill! style of it's predeccessors would have made a few fans happy, but would have done nothing to expand the genre - to make an analogy, would you be happy if your favourite band released a stonking debut album, then rehashed it with different lyrics for the follow up?

    DoW 2 achieves something quite interesting - it actually feels like a digital version of WH40K. something every games workshop inspired game has failed miserably with up to this point, and that is the big thing about this game - you get a few squads, you improve their wargear, and you fight small, tactical battles.

    perfect - and what makes it more so, (and this is a very good commercial move imo) is that they haven't obsoleted DoW 1. they're very different games, and it's still very enjoyable to play the first.

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