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I’ve been playing the Dawn of War 2 beta off-and-on since it was made available to the public.  I’d like to tell you about the game (it’s a very fun game) but first I’ve got to tell you about this little problem that it’s exposed me to: Games for Windows – LIVE.  It’s pointless and redundant.  It needs to go. This game already requires Steam, which does everything GFWL does – only better.  There’s no push-to-talk button and there’s no setting anywhere under the Voice menu that actually allows voice communications to work in their current state.  Just check the “mute” box and keep Ventrilo or Teamspeak handy.  Pushing GFWL with this game reeks of the sort of moronic decision that a suit-wearing idiot high-up in the company made and no-one below him (or her) had the balls to oppose it.

(edit – Well, not 4 hours after this article gets published  do I notice this article here on Kotaku.  Color me surprised… surprised that he wasn’t sacked a long time ago!)

Inviting a friend to a game is also stupid.  Stupid is the only word I can use to describe this.  You left-click on the open slot, and then click “Invite Friend.”  You then have to manually type your friend’s gamertag into the “To:” field and then click the “Send” button.  It’s like an e-mail.  What do I do when I want to invite a friend to a game of Team Fortress 2 on Steam?  I open the steam community overlay, and there’s my friends list.  I can just click and invite the guy.  I don’t know how this game made it all the way to beta (it’s actually gone gold, sadly) with GFWL in-tact.  This shit should have been kicked to the curb within three days of initial testing.  For future reference, Relic: either use Steam (which you already require) or emulate Battle.net (I love Battle.net).  Speaking of Battle.net, there’s a model Relic should have followed for their public game lobby.  As it stands right now, it’s not a lobby at all.  There’s no chat options until you actually set-up a game, no friends list outside of GFWL (which is complete shit) and there’s no way to manually refresh the game list.  Worthless.

The system requirements, as-published, are too low.  I exceed all of the minimum requirements and meet several of the recommended requirements, yet I find that even after reducing many of the visual and audio settings this game continues to run poorly.   I’ve been hesitant to put the Model Detail from “High” to “Low” (there’s no “Medium” setting), but I think I’ll give that a go later today.  There’s also this little-known bit about there being a “bug” with dual-core Athlon 64 chips that is already fixed in Vista, but requires a download from AMD’s website if you were smart enough to avoid Vista.  Try playing without said fix, and you’ll be lucky to get through the intro videos (which, by the way, seriously need an in-game option for disabling – currently the opening movies can only be disabled via command line parameters).

Apparently, a person’s video and audio settings can be set higher than their computer can actually handle, and this will cause everyone’s game to lag.  Why a person’s network performance is suddenly being tied to their audio/video performance boggles the mind.  The person with his graphical settings set too high should simply enjoy the slide-show as his opponent steamrolls him rather than forcing everyone to wait for his display to catch up to the action.

Now for some positive things.  I really like how terrain is used in this game, particularly in the Argus City map (I think that’s the name of the six-player desert map).  Cover is a big deal in this game, and it’s done so much more nicely than it was in DoW1.  When you have a squad selected, you can see these yellow (normal cover) and green (strong cover) dots on the ground, occaisionally.  Those dots are where your units in that squad would be standing/sitting/shooting while benefiting from cover.  The distinction between normal and strong cover is very important, as strong cover will give you the advantage in a firefight with a squad that’s occupying a building.  If you really want to see this feature shine, play as Orks on Argus City and position your Lootas, Shootas and Mekboy at the proper places.  You’ll love it.  Speaking of the Orks, you’ll love their voice work.  It’s hilarious and spot-on.

Another thing I like in DoW2 is the use of wargear.  You can adapt certain squads to certain situations.  For example: Scouts can be equipped with either shotguns or sniper rifles, Warrior Broods can be outfitted with either Adrenal Glands, Barbed Stranglers or Venom Cannons – whatever you think is the right tool for the job.  Commanders have a wider variety of gear available to them.  They can choose a weapon, an armor and an accessory.  With the Lictor alpha, I typically take Scything Claws (suppression) or Corrosive Claws (damage), any armor (depending on the situation) and the Loner accessory.  There is, however, a problem with some wargear being so good that there’s no real point in taking any other option (Hive Tyrants should ALWAYS get the Venom Cannon weapon and Bio-Plasma accessory).

Continued play in ranked games will improve your rank with that race.  If your rank is higher, the models in your army will reflect that.  This is a purely cosmetic change, but it’s a nice touch.  What is NOT nice about ranked team games is what happens should someone leave the game: the computer AI takes over for him.  This is better than the game simply ending, sure, but the computer AI is horrible.  This also causes that game to become an unranked game.

Your squads, as well as your commander, gain experience and level up as the battle progresses.  This isn’t anything nearly as drastic as Warcraft 3’s hero-leveling system; you do not insta-win as soon as your commander reaches level 6.  These levels bestow minor improvements.  At least, I think they’re minor.  It’s impossible to tell beyond HP and Energy what (if anything) is actually improving, because there are no stats displayed anywhere for any of the units in this game.  And that’s just awful.

The direction of a game can swing greatly.  During the earlier days of the beta, I was getting royally stomped by some Space Marines and their Dreadnought.  I retreated every squad I had left to my base and reinforced them.  I headed out to cap the southern nodes and victory point (on Siwal Frontier, by the way) but the ‘Nought was headed down from the north, intending to cut us all to bits.  I just got enough requisition for a Zoanthrope at that moment and started spawning it.  I had to circle my squads around a bit but I managed to suffer minimal casualties and started to head back to my base to lick my wounds.  Just then the ‘Thrope spawned and started heading out.  The warriors+gaunts+thrope took out the Dreadnought, my Lictor hooked his commander (who proceeded to be thoroughly xenomolested) and I went on to win that game without much further trouble.  And yes, “xenomolested” is in fact a real word.  If it’s not in your dictionary already, add it yourself.

Dawn of War 2 is great fun and a blast to play, but it’s definitely a game that should be tried before it is purchased.  I like it, but I don’t think it’s going to be accepted as a competitive RTS.  It is very well balanced so far, but it’s just too simplified. There’s no real depth to the strategy in this game beyond countering appropriately and using cover.  There’s no need to scout, no ability to build defensive structures (with two exceptions, detailed further below), very few differences between the races (with the exception of the commanders and tyranids) and no real ability to do something unexpected and genius.  A play the calibre of JulyZerg’s Mutalisk Micro (which changed the way Terran vs. Zerg games are played) isn’t going to happen in DoW2.  If you could reasonably compare the RTS genre to swimming pools (and I personally don’t think this is a good analogy) DoW2 would be a little kiddie wader and Starcraft would be something olympic-sized.  I’m now going to detail some of these gripes (as if this article needed more negativity).

This game is full of “If they do X, I do Y” situations.  There are not a lot of units available to you, and you can see what race your opponent is right at the start (the Player List in the upper-left corner).  If you are playing as Tyranids and you are up against Eldar then you know to get a swarm of Rippers and Hormagaunts right away, and get a Warrior Brood ASAP, because you’re going to need to deal with those Shuriken Cannon platforms (which I don’t think are necessarily broken, but they do deal a bit too much damage).  If you, as a Tyranid player, get out some Spore Mines then your enemy should shoot at the mines while moving back (Spore Mines definately need more fine-tuning, but at least they can be hit now).  You don’t get units because they do the most damage or are more mobile, you get units to respond to the situation at hand (either to deal with something your enemy has deployed, or to deploy something to give your enemy a hard time).  Remember: this game does not show you any statistical information about your squads.  This is annoying at first, but after a while you realize that it simply doesn’t matter in this game.  He sets up a suppressive platform?  Infiltrate and disrupt it, or flank it, or send in rippers with warriors.  He sends in assault marines?  Use Hormagaunts and Warriors, taking one out with a Lictor if you can.  Just figure out what to do in response to a situation, or how to give your opponent a situation he’ll have difficulty responding to and you’ll be fine.  Simple.

You can see which points your opponent has captured without actually scouting the area.  Now it’s obvious that if you suddenly no longer control a point that your opponent most likely does, but there’s no good reason for you to know at the start of the game in what order your opponent is capturing points.  Example: if, after capturing my nearest power and requisition nodes, my opponent has yet to capture any node I may then safely assume that he is either AFK or headed straight for the victory points.  The lack of a need to scout flies in the face of conventional RTS design.  Now I’m aware that DoW2 is not a conventional RTS but it’s still supposed to be a strategy game.  Scouting is a cornerstone of formulating a good strategy, and the lack of any need to do any scouting seems like yet another move that caters to the strategically impaired.

This game (like its predecessor) uses Requisition and Power as resources.  In DoW1, you could fortify relics and non-critical requisition nodes with Listening Posts, which could then be outfitted with defensive upgrades.  Your power generators were built within the relative safety of your base (which typically had listening posts around it or even within it) with the exception of the massive power generator, which had to be built at some (usually) remote location.  I felt that Dawn of War beautifully married resource gathering with map control through that excellent system.  It’s still here in DoW2 but you can no longer fortify using listening posts or turrets.  This is part of Relic’s “focus on your squads and not on your structures” mindset, and it’s a novel concept in-theory (an RTS without base-building or the ability to erect defensive/offensive structures), but in-practice it feels like a good bit of the depth you’d expect in an RTS game has been removed.

In DoW2, you cannot build defensive structures unless you choose the Techmarine or the Mekboy.  Those who come from a conventional RTS background are going to sorely miss not having the option to defend a position without leaving a squad at that position.  This forces everyone to adapt to a low-APM style of RTS play, and serious RTS players simply aren’t going to like this.  If you’re capable of performing 200+ actions per minute, I truly hope you can find something useful to do with the extra 100+ that simply won’t be needed here.

On the topic of defensive structures there’s the ridiculous matter of your starting base.  It has LOADS of armor and HP, and is flanked by two defensive structures (which are easily killed off later in the game).  This completely negates any possibility of early-game rushing in either mode of play, and it feels like something that’s been forced for the sake of those new to the RTS genre.  There’s no way to end an annihilation game within 30 minutes unless your opponent GGs and drops.  The possibility of you being stuck at some guy’s base and wailing on it for 15 minutes straight as he refuses to admit defeat is enough reason for this mode of play to not be included at all.  For Annihilation mode to be considered a viable form of play the base’s starting HP should be reduced to a third of what it normally is and both turrets should be removed – they can be restored to normal by upgrading the base.

Whether you’re playing point-control or annihiliation, you have to constantly monitor whether or not your units are mindlessly following enemies back to their base.  Dawn of War had a “hold your ground” stance and Starcraft and Warcraft have “Hold Position.”  These both serve the same purpose: your troops attack enemies without moving.  No such option exists in DoW2, and so far my opponents have abused this “feature” to no end.  They simply send out a cheap squad to establish visual contact with my troops and run back to their base with my troops following closely behind, right into the jaws of those deadly defenses.  Dawn of War’s stances are sorely missed here, and how you can have any RTS without a “hold position” feature boggles the mind.  This isn’t a matter of laziness, it’s just good game design.  Retards who will quickly defend this flaw simply because they’re myopically sold on DoW2 say things like “well, you should pay attention to your troops” or “learn2micro, n00b.”  Look guys, if I want my squads to stay put, they should stay put.  This is holy RTS law.  I’m busy micromanaging the xenomolestation of your Force Commander with my Lictor Alpha and Warriors and I can’t be bothered with my ‘gaunts retardedly following you back into your base like kindergartners confronted by strangers with candy.  If I say “stay” then they should stay.  End of story.

I’m going to end this as positively as possible.  I really enjoy playing this game in spite of it’s shortcomings.  If DoW-style stances are added, the starting bases are nerfed a bit, the public game lobby is improved, performance issues are addressed, unit stats are revealed, some depth is added to the strategy and the (very few, very minor) balance issues are resolved, this game will be even more fun to play.  Will I be buying DoW2, or Starcraft 2 instead?  There’s no reason not to have both.  DoW2, while having very little chance of being considered a serious RTS, is still a very fun game (and the 0-day patch will probably make it even better).  Starcraft 2 is the sequel to Starcraft and that’s all that really needs to be said about that.