In DOW2’s single player, a small handful of Blood Ravens can manfully hold off a veritable horde of Orks or Tyranids: in the course of one level, your dozen-odd men will decimate hundreds. This is a game that lives up to the auto-mythology of Space Marines: the brutality and invulnerability the fiction has always claimed of these quasi-religious, ultra-militaristic warrior-fanatics, but that they’ve so rarely displayed in any game adaption, whether on the tabletop or on the screen. Its graphics are not especially high-tech – instead they’re precise, artful, thoughtful and absolutely Warhammer 40,000.Įven when playing the fortieth near-identical mission in DOW2’s oddball but extraordinarily compulsive singleplayer game, the ennui was kept at bay by the simple, giddy joy of coolly cueing up and then watching the stunning slaughter. Melee troops collide with bone-crunching thuds, grenades scatter corpses outward in an orbiting ring of death that smashes through walls and vegetation, while dozens of subtle,tiny animations grant your troops a visible grim resolve: men fighting and responding to the fight, rather than robotically awaiting your instruction. They’re not just going through the motions, falling over at the right moments and flailing with intangible swords at a handful of pixels somewhere near their target. Once in a while, it's fine to be shallow.ĭawn of War II is one of very few (perhaps even the only) strategy games I’ve played in which I could swear blind those little guys are truly fighting. When it comes to Dawn of War II however, it’s incredibly difficult not to dwell obsessively on its excellent aesthetics. Books shall not be judged by covers, pop bands not by their singers’ facial hair and a man not by what socks he is wearing.
After a long weekend snuggling up to it, here's wot I think of its explodey delights.Īccording to the Sacred Creed of games writers who genuinely care about games writing, it is not the done thing to dedicate several paragraphs of a review to a game’s graphics and sound. Dawn of War II, sequel to Relic's much-expanded Warhammer 40,000 RTS, was released to shelves and fat pipes just a few days ago.
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