Dawn of War 2 BETA

Let me start by saying I love the Warhammer 40K universe. It is one of the best, if not best, Sci-Fi worlds ever created. I also never had the chance to play Dawn of War 1, though I heard many good things about it.

On to the review!.. yes I know reviewing a Beta seems odd but you can learn a lot about how a game will be simply based on it’s beta.

The Good.

It really feels like the Table Top game. You focus on controlling small squads of 3-6 units in each squad. The squads can take cover behind object, give cover fire, and with some of the artillery you can set up sectors of fire. Very cool if you are into in Military style maneuvering game.

It feels balanced. You get 4 races to pick from and 3 heroes per race. All 4 races seem fairly balanced so far. Some are obviously designed around early game, offensive, defense, or swarm tactics but they all feel viable. The different heroes for each races makes it feel as though you can play any race in 3 different styles of game play, from support to offense.

The graphics are good, but not great. Granted it’s a RTS but I was still hoping for a little more. The units are so small in some situations that you really can’t see the fine details. Over all it works because it doesn’t take away from the game, but it doesn’t really add anything.

The Bad

Really nothing bad that THQ/Relic did. The negative would simply be from GFWL and Steam running at the same time. You often get a NAT error which crashes you to the start menu. I also got an error last night that said Steam wasn’t running and got a CTD. Steam was in fact running, so I was confused. Obvious bugs from trying to integrate two systems.

Friends lists. I have Steam friends, and GFWL friends however they are not all the same. If they could master some way to invite friends via GFWL OR Steam it would be a nice step in convience. Also when inviting friends to a public game it would be nice if we could have a place holder rather than just an Open spot some random always seem to fill.

Summary
Over all DoW2 is a good game. I’m not sure if I’m going to buy it yet, but I am considering it. I don’t want to have to buy it to find out if they fixed the bugs but if the bugs are fixed it should be a great game.