Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War
So I got into the open beta for this game yesterday (not that it was a challenge; just a matter of signing up and downloading the client software), got it installed, and gave it a couple of goes. Had to update the Catalyst drivers for my Radeon, but other than that, it was pretty smooth sailing. Played through the Eldar tutorial, and tinkered a bit with the Space Marine and Chaos tutorials as well.
All I can say is, "Wow."
First off, the graphics are wonderful. The different factions represented (Space Marines, Chaos, Orks, Eldar) look wonderful, and each has their own visual flavor. For example, Eldar buildings are carved out of floating pieces of wraithbone summoned from the Warp, whereas Space Marine buildings deploy out of giant self-constructing machines. The unit models themselves are beautiful. With texture quality set to high, you can zoom right down to look your units eye-to-eye, and they look nearly as good as any painted 40K mini I've seen. Add to that the visual effects, the situational combat animations (units suffer knockback from hard melee hits, units get thrown by explosions, units occasionally get stuck on their opponents' melee weapons and have to be shaken off), and the army paintjob customizer (with official Citadel Colors, natch), and you've got a pretty, pretty game to look at.
( Look at the pretty picture )
Secondly, game play is fun. They streamlined resource gathering greatly. Other than setting up power generators, all you have to do to gather resources is to control Strategic Points on the map. That's it. No resource trains of peons to get disrupted, no hunting for new mines or forests or gas deposits (as Strategic Points are marked clearly on the minimap)... it lets you focus on the combat, rather than getting bogged down in the resource gathering. Considering that one way to win is to control 75% of the Strategic Points for 8 minutes, it's already a goal to expand. The SPs do degrade and stop giving you resources after a whlie, but if you lose one and later recapture it, it's refreshed back to full. Still ended up with more resources than I could comfortably spend. :)
There are some bugs, of course -- it's in beta -- but if it's this good in beta, I can't wait to see the final release. It's WH40K, but without the cost of buying/painting minis, and much faster paced. Add this one to my Christmas list, will you?
PS - I need to get back into Warcraft 3, just to keep my RTS chops up (or build them up in the first place). Care to join me some time,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greenwings?
All I can say is, "Wow."
First off, the graphics are wonderful. The different factions represented (Space Marines, Chaos, Orks, Eldar) look wonderful, and each has their own visual flavor. For example, Eldar buildings are carved out of floating pieces of wraithbone summoned from the Warp, whereas Space Marine buildings deploy out of giant self-constructing machines. The unit models themselves are beautiful. With texture quality set to high, you can zoom right down to look your units eye-to-eye, and they look nearly as good as any painted 40K mini I've seen. Add to that the visual effects, the situational combat animations (units suffer knockback from hard melee hits, units get thrown by explosions, units occasionally get stuck on their opponents' melee weapons and have to be shaken off), and the army paintjob customizer (with official Citadel Colors, natch), and you've got a pretty, pretty game to look at.
( Look at the pretty picture )
Secondly, game play is fun. They streamlined resource gathering greatly. Other than setting up power generators, all you have to do to gather resources is to control Strategic Points on the map. That's it. No resource trains of peons to get disrupted, no hunting for new mines or forests or gas deposits (as Strategic Points are marked clearly on the minimap)... it lets you focus on the combat, rather than getting bogged down in the resource gathering. Considering that one way to win is to control 75% of the Strategic Points for 8 minutes, it's already a goal to expand. The SPs do degrade and stop giving you resources after a whlie, but if you lose one and later recapture it, it's refreshed back to full. Still ended up with more resources than I could comfortably spend. :)
There are some bugs, of course -- it's in beta -- but if it's this good in beta, I can't wait to see the final release. It's WH40K, but without the cost of buying/painting minis, and much faster paced. Add this one to my Christmas list, will you?
PS - I need to get back into Warcraft 3, just to keep my RTS chops up (or build them up in the first place). Care to join me some time,
greenwings?