An emotional history unrelated to Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II

Beating up defenseless citizens, popular long before GTA

I suppose I should devote my first few words to the origins of my gaming fetish. I have a thing for PCs. They’re my constant. I spend all of work on a keyboard and, aside from time with the band and the girl, I’m on a different colored keyboard at home. It started with my dad, who conducted occasional marathon Kingmaker sessions with college friends until CIVNET made them obsolete.

When he brought home our first computer, a blazing fast 386 with 10s of megabytes of space, he played more games on it than me or my brother. He was the first of the family to beat MINES OF TITAN, and he spent more time trying to get games to run in DOS than whatever it was he told my mom he was getting the computer for. Browsing the store that sold shareware at Delco Plaza and going to computer shows are pretty much the only fond memories I have of my dad before he quit the soul-sucking insurance business to be a librarian and a poorer, less angry person.

Cave Story or Doukutsu Monogatari

I have an emotional attachment to the beige boxes. Sure, things ‘just work’ on PCs with an alarming irregularity, but that’s what you pay for an open platform. My descent into DIY/Punk culture was tied to subversive gems like FALLOUT and one-man operations like CAVE STORY as much as it was to Operation Ivy and Against All Authority. Those games influenced me in ways that Sonic and Duck Hunt never did. The raw element of the indie game scene continues to keep me wasting most of my gaming hours on the PC today. The PlayStation Network, WiiWare and XBox Live Arcade distribution models are a good start, but still present painfully high barriers for developers to jump, which is a risk developers aren’t always willing to take.

So that’s my introduction. Now on to WARHAMMER 40,000: DAWN OF WAR 2.

DoW2 is incomplete. Two-thirds of what is there is exceptional. The single-player and cooperative modes recreate the small, squad-based conflicts that made the table-top game so fun to play. Without resources to manage, battles become a tactical affair. Cover is both essential and, with the right equipment, destructible, and each squad serves a specific function. But even the most thoughtful approach quickly breaks down into a chaotic grudge match, which is a joy to watch thanks to detailed and smoothly animated character models.

Space Marines, your only hope, and choice, in Dawn of War II

Sadly, though your squad leaders will grow in power and offensive variety, the missions remain the same. You attack Orks, Tyrannids or Eldar, or you defend a structure. Again and again and again. The illusion of control granted by non-linear missions helps, and group of squad leaders with real personality is a welcome touch, but the varietal deficit leaves the game feeling unfinished. What’s there is a joy to play, that relieves the genre of its most tedious aspect.

The last third of what is there is a completely different game. It does away with the tactical approach in favor the resource management and large armies common to the RTS genre. There aren’t any buildings, but it still feels more like the first Dawn of War than the single player game I’ve been playing. If I wanted to play DAWN OF WAR, I would. But I don’t. I want to play what I’ve been playing with my roommate, only now I want to destroy him. And I can’t for reasons that are beyond me.

Final thoughts? What is there of the game is great. What is missing? Too much to recommend a purchase at this point. If Relic releases campaigns for the Orks, Eldars and Tyrannids, and they add other races — Tau and Chaos Marines would be a good start — the game could be worth $50. But for now, it’s really just for people who love the table-top version of Warhammer 40,000.

Also, I hate Games for Windows Live. It’s intrusive in the game, and its logo is an ugly stain on the box art that screams this “game has been tainted by Windows, install at your own risk.”