Two weeks until the best RTS game ever. I expect to see a ton of similarity between this and Starcraft 2. I don't know a whole lot about it other than the multiplayer beta that's available right now, but everything about it I like a ton. Awesome graphics, the gameplay is slower than most RTS, but it's not without action. It also doesn't suffer from unneeded shit syndrome like Supreme Commander has. Each upgrade path seems clear and non convoluted with useless timesink upgrades.

I like the squad leader customization. It's super DotA.

Destructible environments and cover make it feel pretty tactical also, as opposed to just a zerg rush. I also appreciate this series method of resource management. You take over points of interest instead of running a peon train to mines and lumber.

Blood. Gallons of it. When I play these Dawn of War games, it makes me sad how butchered and weak the Warhammer MMO is in comparison to it's origins. These battles are just epic.

I think I will pick up the old Dawn of War games, those look pretty fun as well, and it is weird to see a RTS game with a story I can get behind and be interested in.

I don't know much about the Dawn of War games, other than what I have tried this past week, but this shit is fun. Some pretty intense vids on youtube also. Might want to give this one a look over if you're interested in RTS. Multiplayer demo on Steam.

Thanks for the quick review of it….and I do love to read your reviews. It’s one of the only things that keep me coming back to this site, well that and maybe word that they’ll remake a Lanys server and turn back time to 26 Dec 1999…hey that would make me only 24 years old!

I am downloading it right now and it looks like it’s going to take about 12 hours….hurrah for suck internet service in bumfuck Iraq!

James

_________________

Musnicki

Heh, I have a mustang myself, love the pics. And at least you can get internet in Iraq, eh? Hope you're home soon.

As far as this RTS goes...how's the single player version Givin? I like RTS, but I tend to suck at it as I spend too much time city/empire building and get rushed.

_________________

If DoW2 is anything like DoW, then the single player campaign will kick the shit out of anything blizzard has ever put out.

_________________

World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Thats funny, Givin's view is pretty much exactly the opposite of what I've seen so far. Now, I loved DoW (until the point where it became a kite-orgy, making the minimap look like some sort of twister was going on), and played the crap out of CoH.

Maybe I was expecting too much CoH with different looks but the beta so far is pretty much a handful of units that you have to micro, bigger scale tactics are gone.

In DoW you had massive battles (at least if you didn't play 1v1 where you just had a massive twister), with 5+ infantry units, some tanks etc. Thats 40k to me, big battles. In DoW2 you have like 3 units, 1 vehicle. Thats ok, it just feels more like playing Commandos than DoW. Actually thats all it comes down to. Place your suppression units right, time jumpunits on your opponents suppression units, try to get an anti vehicle weapon so you can 2shot his 500points tank etc.

Ground control is gone (you still need it to get resources, can't get cut off though), one of the best parts of CoH. Stances from DoW are gone. WTF? Whats the point? I think AI is gone too, no more units ducking for cover, melee units not entering melee because you decided to add one shit gun to a walker etc. Diverse techtrees are gone. It's only tiers now, options only vary from unit to unit. No longer "ok, he's tier2 and he's building a second commander, means he won't have tier2 tanks the next minuites". Its just, "ok hes tier2 now, and can build everything tier2". I don't like instapicking the commander and skills set to them either. Doctrine choices >>>>>>> commanders. More decisions to be made during the game, not before. Then the tiers seem weird. Tier3 Predator vs Tier3 Avatar? Hello, I want my Landraider back. Balance is still bad in general, spore mines and shotgun scouts, fun fun.

I can see the game being fun, and I've preordered it because I just want to see where things go. I also expect the campaign to be good (at least if they can change the AI before release). I just don't see CoH getting kicked off it's throne anytime soon, and definitly not by DoW2. I don't even see how DoW2 should be an improvement to DoW, except graphics and tyranids (and I expect zerg to be the better tyranids). DoW has more blood too!

CoH Gold is 29,99 on steam, get that if you haven't played it. Destructible terrain, slower than most RTS, tons of options but no useless stuff, best map control/resource dynamics, "experience" system with doctrine choices. Best RTS, ever. Nothing close, seriously. It has everything. It has been the same since release, I buy a new game, play it for a week or two then I'm back at CoH.

edit: Tarot, if you suck because you spend too much time building you might still own in DoW2, there simply is nothing to build

_________________
My stuff on facebook.

LOL That might save me Jalen!

_________________

Tempted to agree with Jalen here, though personally in contrast, I disliked DoW 1 - admittedly, I only played the demo. I wasn't able to run back FAST enough to WC3 for my RTS fix.

It seems to me that this game is of similar ilk to Supreme Commander - lots and lots of flash, little gameplay substance, mechanics, and balance. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed Supcom for what it was worth, moreso than DoW 1. Supcom was mostly flash, a bazillion different units(some of them very very cool).. and it all looked fucking awesome on the battlefield. I could not stand playing it multiplayer, which is what hooks me deep on RTS's usually.

This is why I'm waiting for SC2. It won't be anywhere near as cool-looking, and I'm sure the physics will be inferior, but the mechanics and balance will allow for some killer multiplayer experiences(along with ENDLESS awesome custom maps... WTB the SC2 version of DOTA). Call me a fanboi or crowd tagalong if you will, but if it's one thing I can hold faith in from Blizzard it's that its RTS will have superior gameplay mechanisms all across the board. To this date WC3 still holds my attention more than other other multiplayer RTS out there(I can't push myself to play the dated SC and WC2 games).

I didn't really like SupCom, there was just too much of everything and you could pretty much play it on the minimap only. 10000 units on huge maps, I just couldn't get into it. I like to know my guys . WC3 was great, I just prefer Relics resource model over the "build 100 drones" Blizzard one. The kiting was what ruined it for me in DoW. melee1 chases gun1 which gets chased by gun2 which gets chased by melee2 which gets chased by gun3 which gets chased by gun1. If one unit changes target, there is a 3 seconds mess, then the whole thing starts again with different positions. Add in Eldar with Fleet on Foot and you can even play high speed twister!

CoH demo, I think this one has skirmish mode with some of the best maps.
Opposing Fronts demo, expansion demo with the first 2 campaign missions.
Try it! It even comes with a useful retreat button, unlike DoW2's suicide button.

_________________
My stuff on facebook.

Heroes and small numbers of units partially hurt WC3 for me. I guess I'm a little bit of the opposite, I believe that there's a certain strategic value to knowing when and which units to pump out en masse in a large "army-fest", or even "zerg-fest". Heroes sorta distracted from that, and focused more on point-click tactical engagement(and, sadly, MOST of that engagement was focused on the hero due to the need for strategic use of abilities) as opposed to strategic unit production/management.

Part of why I'm hoping SC2 doesn't have heroes to the same degree that WC3 does.

Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of the whole hero thing either. Seems like such a concept would be hard to balance anyway....either they're too weak and an ignorable irritation/feature or they're too strong and the game starts to revolve around them, which is the path War3 seemed to take.

I was a little surprised to see this get such high rating so far. IGN gives it a 9.0, and metacritic's average rating(so far) is 88. They give it some good praise, and from the way they describe it it does sound interesting.

I'm a little turned off by the lack of base-building, but it may be worth looking at. Going to wait and see, maybe try a demo when they release one.

There are 500 cookie cutter games with base building that you can play.

I'm all for originality. The RTS genre has the least innovation of any major gaming genre. I'm tired of the same formula.

The campaign is so fun. Co-op built in + lvl up and equipment system + boss to kill. It's like 2 games in 1, "normal RTS" multiplayer and Campaign (with multiplayer support).

In Campaign all your units are "heroes" but don't let that turn you off, it's kinda like playing a Warcraft 3 RPG type map. Quite the opposite of the normal multiplayer mode.

I give it 9.5 I only removed points for not having Necrons =)

Didn't say I wouldn't give the concept an opportunity. I'm glad to see more games doing things differently. But, that doesn't mean games like this couldn't embrace the concept and still succeed. But again, it may still be a fine game.

Unfortunately you can only find 3-4 GOOD "cookie-cutter" RTS games with base building that actually have quality gameplay. You can also find games that don't have base building that suck balls. That concept or the lack thereof doesn't make a game great, nor does not having it hinder it from success.

Anyhoo, still looking forward to trying this game when I have time.

Right.

Blizzard alone has 3-4 GOOD cookie-cutter RTS games, you dolt.

Which proves my point, thank you. I repeat:

You can also find games that don't have base building that suck balls. That concept or the lack thereof doesn't make a game great, nor does not having it hinder it from success.

SC and WC2 had it. WC3 continued the tradition even after they had time to reconsider it, and it was good(maybe not SC/WC2-level good, but very much a contender).

Damn, you're stupid. Try reading next time.

Let's not forget games like Homeworld, Sins of a Solar Empire(to a degree, wasn't my favorite but did some things right), Age of Empires(Moreso the first one, second two got progressively worse), a few from the Command and Conquer series, Rome:Total War(a very... long base-building game), and to a degree Rise of Nations. They all followed somewhat of a base-building cookie-cutter mold(arguably Homeworld less so, for its day) and were mostly excellent games.

In short, you're a complete idiot.

The same people who made Supreme Commander made Total Annihilation. One is the greatest RTS ever released, the other is a steaming pile of shit. One tried to be innovative and rewrite the rules, the other focused on being a crazy amount of fun.

Guess which is which.

In short, fuck innovation in the ass.

Agreed on the innovation thing, though to DoW 2's credit it sounds like its decidedly "different"(maybe not innovative per say) approach has worked for it.

I honestly hope I'm not the only one that enjoyed Supcom, though =p Not exactly the most epic gameplay ever, but watching some of those over-the-top units in action was quite fun. Hugeass armies of gigantic spiderbots wiping out the enemy city, fleets of gunships raping buildings, and of course the badass stealth bomber the Seraphim get.

My main complaint was that it just took too long to build stuff and meet energy requirements.

So I play single player campaign, and play some more single player campaign and can't stop thinking that I've played this game before. Then I realized that I am playing Syndicate all over again. Which is a good thing

For multiplayer, I'll stick to Company of Heroes till they butcher that with the next addon.

_________________
My stuff on facebook.

Is it seriously like Syndicate? That was one of my very favorite games as a kid. Blowing up cars with your squad of dudes with mini guns...good times.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I’m having issues with this game I can’t seem to find a solution too.

Loaded the game fine, but; more than half the time I go to start it up, I get a lag in Sound to video. Often hearing the loading screen sounds up to a minute ahead of the video.

Most of the time, I can alleviate this now by logging into Windows Live before launching the game. But it’s not a 100% fix.

The second problem, is in game, I get a lot of lag while the game is in play, I have to roll the mouse wheel and drag the camera down closer to the ground to get rid of the lag.

I know I have not only the right specs, but much better in my system. I don’t get why this is happening.

Any thoughts?

_________________
"People sometimes say that ideas cannot be stamped out by force. The Albigensian Crusade proves them wrong. Ideas can be stamped out by the elimination of everyone who holds the ideas." - Quote :"Middle Ages" by Morris Bishop.

My friend is sad because there is a lot less people playing Company of heroes with him. I'll get him to buy it and play the campaign with me. On hard the campaign is rough, you have to micro manage your troops a lot. I didn't try on normal and would not have it any other way. It's hard to get a lot of XP per missions because my troops can often get knocked out and need to be revived or the mission take longer so I don't get a lot of medals.

About your problem. What are your specs and do you run with antialiasing enabled? That could sounds like a driver problem too. I play on my old 8800GTX in 2560x1600 with no Antialiasing without any performance problem (on Windows 7 x64 with 182.05 drivers). I wish I had my EVGA GTX295+ but I had to RMA it and 295 are scarce at the moment so no candy for me =(

AMD Dual Core
3Gig Ram
GeFroce 8600GT
1440X900 19 Wide Screen Display

_________________
"People sometimes say that ideas cannot be stamped out by force. The Albigensian Crusade proves them wrong. Ideas can be stamped out by the elimination of everyone who holds the ideas." - Quote :"Middle Ages" by Morris Bishop.

Check if antialiasing is enabled in game or in the nvidia control panel, you should keep it off with that video card. Also I recommend a 64 bit OS for High or Ultra textures or keep the textures to medium or lower on a 32bit OS even if the patch note say they improved 32bit support.

Turn shadows off. That will mess you up more than the anti aliasing.

I tried asking this question elsewhere, the answers to which I got were mainly consisting of “You’re an idiot!”

What could I expect from GenMay I guess?

I picked up DoW 2 back when it first came out from GameStop, brought it home. Loaded it up and patched it up, got on And found myself; stymied in disappointment.

It was not because of the game itself, almost all the time I was forced to reboot my machine before even attempting to play the game, if not it could take 10-15 minutes just to load, then the game would look like a slideshow and be more or less unplayable.

Even when I got it to run right, I would have to zoom down close to the action to prevent it from lagging to hell and back.

Frustrated at various attempts to fix these issues, I left it on my hard drive, and went on to do other things.

I decided to endure it again a few days ago. What’d I run into? Steam; Fucking Steam.

For the better part of a Day the game tells me I can’t play my game because there’s no room for me on Steam. WTF?

The advice I got for this from Genmay is “Moron!”, “Idiot!” etc. Nothing of use.

Frustrated, I ignore the game for a few days. Then this morning I try to play the game again. Well. Steam is kind enough to let me through. But lo and behold, hey, I have to load into Microsoft live (The last time neither of these things gave me a hint of trouble).

Windows Live tells me it has to update. If I don’t it will shut off. I care? Not really. I shut if off.

Go to start campaign, the game tells me I did not log on to Windows Live, can’t play.

WHAT?!?!?

How, the, fuck, do I by pass Steam and Window’s Live? I can understand updating the gamer via those avenues. And can understand them being required for Multiplayer. Well fuck, I don’t want to do EITHER right fucking now.

Let me play the god damn game I bought please!

How do I get it to let me past this crap so I can play the campaign?

Any ideas? I mean other than “You’re an idiot!”

(This still probably won’t fix my slide show to lagging issues. But that’s another post if I can’t fix it.)

_________________
"People sometimes say that ideas cannot be stamped out by force. The Albigensian Crusade proves them wrong. Ideas can be stamped out by the elimination of everyone who holds the ideas." - Quote :"Middle Ages" by Morris Bishop.

Welcome to the new anti piracy that MMOs showed was effective. Online account log in = payed for game.