Dawn of War II

[ProPain]

I see some CDZ regulars own the game. Bought it on the last sale and I really like it. It carries the THQ/Relic signature: if you like Company of Heroes you prolly like this as well. Basically it's CoH in space with some RPG elements.

Frankly I'm surprised Shabba doesn't own it. :)

[Shabbaman]

Frankly I'm surprised Shabba doesn't own it. :)

Me too. I don't really like RTS, but as I never fail to mention how awesome CoH is. One of the things I like about CoH is it's WW2 setting, and how the basic units are simple humans with rifles. The downside of scifi is that it's not really basic anymore, you'd end up with fancy shit like lasers. The major downside of Dawn of War is that it's Warhammer. As a Magic player I'm proud of the very single fact that there's a game that attracts a worse kind of nerd than M:TG, and that game is Warhammer. Thus, I shy away from Dawn of War. In a feeble attempt to make fun of Warhammer players I'll refer to this game as Down of Wor from now on.

[ProPain]

Sitting in a gameshop for hours with nerdy guys week after week while painting my warhammer figurines isn't my idea of fun either. But I do like RTS :), then again DoW isn't a classic RTS, there's no base building involved and it shares a lot of strategical concepts with CoH. (working with limited sqauds, using cover) as well as unit abilities.

But not to worry Shabba, I just finished installing CoH on my repaired desktop, gonna give it another go and see if I can finish the campaign this time around. Hopefully my Starcraft playing has brushed up my micro skills enough to not get owned by the AI this time.

[grahamiam]

I enjoyed the single player campaign for DoWII, but never got around to multiplayer, which is apparently a completely different game.

[ProPain]

I bought it for the SP campaign. Without the base building I suspect micro management will be more important in DoW MP and I suck at thatin RTS.

[Shabbaman]

Compared to a normal RTS, you only have to micro one or two units simultaneously. You're basically trying to keep one unit alive, and that's exactly what's the appeal for me: I'm too attached to my units to let them die.

[ProPain]

I understand the appeal, my problem is that I suck at that kind of micro. I played WarCraft III quite a bit and that was a very micro oriented game. Being able to micro your 1-3 heroes was key, and I just got my ass handed to me over and over again.

That's prolly why I like Starcraft so much. If you can macro well, micro is less important (well at least on my level of play :) )

[akots]

IMO, WC3 is quite a hard game for single player missions. I played some time ago on hard both Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne and it was really frustrating at times. I don't quite remember how many campaigns I was able to finish (most of it IIRC) but my younger son constantly compained as to how difficult it were for him even with walkthroughs and forum help. Must admit he played very hard which is somewhat insane IMHO. So, comparison here is not going to be very accurate.

As to Warhammer, I really hate it despite trying only a couple of times. There is a shop of Warhammer fans around the corner of where I lived. I peeked in a couple of times there and it was quite sad to watch. Although, I understand their urge, I just need to be 25-30 years younger to be intimately touched by that.

[ProPain]

WC3 frustrated the hell out of me. I was looking forward to that game hoping it'd be the next starcraft. Boy, was I wrong. Also it was so taxing on my fairly new comp that even LAN MP was freezing up when Swingue and I did some simple 1v1 or 2v2.

In the end I only played Tower Defense mods with it. Although buying the frozen throne, I never even finished that campaign. I like Bliz games a lot, but WC3 was sort of a let down for me. And by then we had Civ 3 PBEM and WC3 started gathering a lot of dust.:)

[Beorn]

Wc3 mods still have me hooked to this day. There is a civilization mod that I helped design (civ wars) and I have put years of online play into that: tuning a bot to manage and rank a competitive league of 100's of players, making it to the top of it, leaving my signature on anything math-like in the game (from marketing calculations to unit stats and special abilities balance) ... it was my post-C3C rebound hook-up :) Wc3 mods have extended the game's lifespan for a looooooooooong time and are still worthy imo.

I was pretty good at both RTS micro and macro but never liked it as much as the longer-winded development of a civ game though. What kept me on Wc3 was the competitive play and the development of strategies and game styles more than the game itself. All my Wc3 buddies are on SC2 now and I'm not following them, nor would I get another RTS (and that sounds like a promise I won't keep forever, but meh).

[Shabbaman]

Even in Starcraft I liked MM-ing more than the rest of the game, with Ghosts or a large squad of flyers. In other games I play with artillery a lot. But that;s not even true micromanagement: if you want to play CoH correctly you'd have to make the units face the opponent correctly and such. I don't really bother with that. The difference between CoH and other rts games is that my playstyle actually makes some sense in multiplayer.

I haven't got it installed anymore though, the relic updater was driving me crazy. I'm looking forward to a new CoH though.