Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II

Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II

For many, Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II represents a golden opportunity to dip a toe into the wonderful world of Warhammer without having to set foot in any of the terrifyingly friendly Games Workshop outlets (a traumatic encounter for the unwary!) or, crucially, ever having to spend hours painting teensy-weensy plastic models of angry fantasy folk. And that’s a result from the very outset in our view…

Beginning the game is a similarly benign experience, with intuitive and unfussy controls that experienced real-time strategy gamers can use without the need to consult the manual and that hapless noobs will pick up in no time at all. Assuming they pay attention to the helpful in-game instructions, that is.

And then DoWII acts as a neat introduction to the RTS genre as a whole, although it departs from the well-worn formula of resource gathering and management, erecting assorted buildings, generating troops etc. Instead a refreshingly direct route is employed, where your squadrons crash-land in Drop Pods fully formed - locked, loaded and thirsty for action.

Good job too as, after a brief cinematic intro, players are dumped right into the fray - hunting hordes of grunting Orks to begin with. In the singleplayer game this involves commanding of a legion of Space Marines. You have up to three teams at your immediate disposal, each headed by a suitably tough-talking squad leader and specialising in the fields of tactics, stealth or heavy weapons. Others, such as the jetpack-equipped Assault Squad, are unlocked as play progresses. But, be warned - newer, smarter enemies also become part of the mix soon enough.

The artful deployment of your troops is the key to thwarting your enemies’ advances, then, and directing their movement is a simple matter of clicking on the squad leader (or click-grouping for mass movement) and right-clicking again on the spot where you’d like him to be, whereupon his whole squad lumbers off as quickly as their weighty armour allows. Just like the real-world game, attacks have a defined range and angle of fire, but there’ll be no farting about with protractors and tape measures here. Just get close enough to the bad guys and your troops will blast away merrily, or you can direct their fire towards designated targets.

Likewise it’s possible, nay, advisable to select individual squads for specific tasks. The Scout Squad can sneak into an enemy emplacement undetected, while, say, the Heavy Bolter-toting Devastator Squad takes up a flanking position and the Assault Squad combat-jumps in unannounced, Chainswords a-swinging. And so it goes. It all looks brilliant zoomed-in too, although a wider perspective is recommended if you want to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

In terms of making sure your charges are fit and tooled-up for the task at hand, DoWII keeps things nice and simple. Health slowly replenishes as long as you’re not under fire and your Commander has the unique but limited ability to restore the wellbeing of his whole fighting force. If you’ve suffered more serious damages any casualties are replaced either back at the Drop Pod or any of the reinforcement beacons you encounter along the way. Very handy. Meanwhile artillery upgrades and ammunition appear as random supply crates or items dropped by downed foes.

This introduces a new, RPG-ish element of gameplay. Supply crates replenish ammunition immediately but successful completion of a mission rewards you with a booty of ordnance and points with which to enhance the power and abilities between rounds. Weapon/armour upgrades are simply dragged into place onto your selected squad leader and points are divvied up across a handful of criteria - health, melee damage, range damage and energy. It’s a simple system that encourages thorough play - and re-play, since getting your guys to level 20 provides additional rewards at key stages and is an almost irresistible target.

So far so good. So what’s not to like? In short not much. Warhammer die-hards may grumble that the singleplayer campaign only allows command of Space Marines. That said, the on/offline (vs. CPU) multiplayer game offers the choice of Ork, Eldar and Tyranid armies, although the selection of arenas is limited to just seven maps. We also found the camera a touch jerky until we’d turned the whizzy visuals down a bit (they still looked great, though). Others have commented that the action gets a bit repetitive too, but we can’t honestly claim to have noticed in the hours we’ve been playing. Thereafter we were occasionally frustrated when the Space Marines were too cumbersome for their own good, failing to stomp away from an enemy grenade in time - d’oh!

Aside from those minor complaints Dawn of War II is something of an unexpected pleasure. Gloriously unfettered by genre conventions or complicated controls, a joy to behold throughout, easy to get into for old-hands and newcomers alike and, most of all, great fun to play. Highly recommended.

4 out of 5