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jp's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (PC)
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| [March 16, 2005 07:44:03 PM]
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Aaah! The multiplayer mode opens up all the other races to play! This makes this game incredibly broad (I don't know about deep yet). So far, I've played a couple of skirmishes (against CPU opponents) with the Orks.
Orks are way cool and they are definitely not a "re-skinned clone" of the marines in terms of options, best strategies, etc. So far, I can't say how different they play but I guess I'll get a better feel for that as I get some more experience. This game is basically measuring up against Starcraft in that arena. Starcraft is, to me, an excellent example of non-symmetric game design (and a game balancing nightmare too). Each of the three races had very important, and essential, differences between each other that made mastery with one race pretty meaningless when evaluating skill with the other races.
So, my current mental state about this game could be summed up as "wonderfully re-enchanted". I feel like I've discovered a secret room in a house. Yay!
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| [March 14, 2005 12:53:41 PM]
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So I finished the next mission...and, much to my surprise, it turned out to be the last mission! It was a cakewalk, but I'm not complaining about that. What really surprised me is that the game ended! There are no missions to play as the other races!
It is likely that I'm the one being a moron here. I can't really say why I expected to play all the other races except that I figured this game would follow Starcraft's model. (30 missions, 10 with each race..or something like that) Does that diminish this game in my eyes? I guess... somewhat. I'm kind of torn about that since the last RTS I played had 50 missions and I was ranting that it got stale really soon and that they shouldn't have had that many. This game only had 11 and it was over. In fact, as previous logs will show, I feel that 11 missions was too many...but I still want to play the other races....
I would bet serious money that we will be seeing some expansions for this game with all of the other races involved. The developers have already done a lot of the hard work (modeling, art, sound)...and an ork campaign would be really wicked. Sigh.
I have two things left to do now:
1) See if this game has any in-jokes like the ones you get in Blizzard games when you insistenly click on a lot of units.
2) Try out the multiplayer.
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| [March 11, 2005 11:22:39 AM]
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Another night, another level. I really thought this would be the last one of the marines campaign. Well, that is assuming you get to play with all the other races (ork, eldar and chaos). I'm so disappointed that it wasn't the last level that I'm not sure how long it will take me to plunge into the next one.
These levels are now taking me ages to complete. I think it took me about 4 hours last night. This is way too much. Am I being to defensive perhaps? (I always try to have a defensive position that can hold its own before risking a full out offensive manouvre). It didn't help that this level was a "hunt down every last enemy unit" level...which means trekking all over the place..but still. Sigh. Way too long.
The other thing I've noticed is that I haven't really got much need to build all the super units the game provides. I've found that having three squads of marines with 4 missile launchers and full upgrades can pretty much hold their own against almost anything. (ok, maybe not the super demon thing, but still). Their only realy weakness is in hand-to-hand combat but they usually make up for that with concentrated firepower. It also seems that dreadnoughts are really powerful. A squad of 8 of them can pretty much wade through anything. (except som nasty eldar grav tanks, or where they falcons?) Anyways. I'll have to find out if there is too much left to go, otherwise I'll just move on to another game.
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| [March 10, 2005 02:58:26 PM]
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I played (and finished) mission 9 last night. It took me longer than it should have simply because I wasn't murderously efficient. Basically, I think I've realized that this is a game about taking out your opponents base as quickly as possible. You can't really "rush" like in Starcraft, but the enemy AI simply doesn't rebuild its buildings...as far as I can tell.
Yes, the AI will take back strategic points you have captured and it will also generate enemies and send them out to harass you..but once you've nailed the production buildings...bye bye enemy.
Now that I think about it, this seems to be one of the biggest failings in RTS AI. Sure, pathfinding and targetting and not acting stupid are really important, but enemy AIs tend to also really suck at rebuilding their bases efficiently. Actually, it might be that they don't recognize the strategic importance of some buildings (like the ones that produce builders, or the ones that produce units). Anyhow... it is still a fun game and I'm dying to get to play with the other races..though it will take me forever!
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| [February 20, 2005 05:35:17 PM]
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I'm now playing on "hard" (actually medium) and have just finished the 8th? (or was it 7th?) mission. Anyways, the difficulty change made things a bit harder, but not too much. I might have to try setting the game on the hardest level in order to see how things go.
The missions are kind of cool. Note that I said kind of. In a way, the are like the sucky missions from Starcraft. In particular, I'm referring to the missions where you had like 20 guys or something and you had to explore a base. These were missions where you didn't have to do any building, but they were totally linear and if you went slowly and carefully you had it made. This game feels like that, though there is a lot of building involved.
Actually, the next to last mission I played was kind of cool. I had to destroy some eldar bases BUT I was constantly getting attacked by orks. What made it interesting is that the ork attacks where unrelenting and unavoidable. They basically warped on to the map and proceeded to attack everything. The warping is a bit unfair, but at least it kept the tension up since I had to focus on the defenses of my homebase as well as the offensive-exploration against the eldar.
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| [February 8, 2005 03:51:34 PM]
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Pssh. This game is way to easy.
I played the first levels on "Normal". This happens to be the easiest difficulty setting which is select by default. I then played a few levels on the next difficult setting. Still too easy. Sigh.
I'm not sure if it is my approach to these type of games (RTS) or what. Given that Stronghold:Crusader got easy, and this one as well...I'm kind of starting to wonder what is going on! I know I'm not an awesome player.
I guess part of the problem of this game (up until now) is that the AI seems to be very reactive. In other words, If I sit tight and take my time...nothing happens and I can breeze my way through (since I took my time to get prepared). This is in opposition to a game in which you are pressured all the time to "be ready" for the enemy attack while simultaneously trying not to let the uber-efficient enemy AI get too far ahead in terms of resourcer, manpower, etc. It seems that taking your time is equal to pushover in the RTS world.
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| [February 8, 2005 01:09:41 AM]
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It's kind of weird for me to start a GameLog for a game that was already in the system, but was lost due to a technical disaster. (sorry Kikesan). Sigh.
Before I get into my initial impressions I guess I should let everyone know that I've been a "follower" of Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K since the days of Rogue Trader. (consider yourself old if you know what I'm talking about). By follower I don't mean "insanely fanatic fanboy". Rather, I've bought a lot of their products over the ages, am familiar with the backstory and have even (again, over the years) played my fair share of actual tabletop games (with mostly unpainted miniatures). I have two armies...the first is semi-painted while the second is still mostly packed in blisters.
So! With that out of the way I can say that this game oozes 40Kishness live I've never seen before. Curiously, it doesn't do so by appealing to the core mechanics of the tabletop game (whose rules have, invariably, been problematic). Rather, it appeals to a lot of the cool factor of the armor, equipment, guns and militariness of the universe. Its a dark future, but it is not dark in the pale-vampiric-angst sort of way. It's just plain gritty, unhappy and warlike.
After getting over my "oh my god aren't the models look" state I've started to pay more attention to the gameplay. I'm slowly getting used to the interface and starting to enjoy the idea of "strategic points". Unlike other games in which you harvest resources from the map, here you have to control certain points in order to get the resource you need (this adds up slowly over time). So, in general terms, sitting around while building your mega-fortress is pretty darned hard. Also, it is pretty much pointless as well. Most of the levels (I've played 5 so far) are pretty linear...and all you have to really do is march a couple of
squads killing everything in your path.
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jp's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 6 February, 2005
GameLog closed on: Tuesday 6 May, 2008 |
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