The New Flesh

I admit it, I’m not very good at real-time strategy games. Actually that’s probably a little misleading, it’s probably more accurate to say I’m really bad at RTS games. Pretty much every game I’ve failed to complete because it was too difficult to be fun was a real-time strategy and I’ve failed to finish pretty much every real-time strategy game (of course I never play on easy mode, I still have my pride). I don’t really know why, they’re just a mystery to me, I think I know what I should do and I try to but then somehow it all falls apart in the execution. I generally put this down to purely a lack of skill on my part but after today I’m inclined to think the whole damn genre is plotting against me.

Let me roll back time a bit to last autumn shortly after the release of Introvision’s big flop Multiwinia. Around that time Steam had a good deal on Multiwinia and Darwinia so I decided to check out the Darwinia demo and found it to be very good fun (if you haven’t played Darwinia I highly recommend it by the way) and so I decided to forgive the RTS genre it’s previous crimes against my sanity and have another go. What followed was by far the most fun I’d ever had while playing an RTS and I completed Darwinia in very short order. Fast forward a few months to a few weeks ago when I saw Dawn of War II on sale for £9.99 at play.com (sadly that price has now doubled) and given my new found optimism regarding the RTS genre, the very good reviews, the apealling setting and some positive experience with the demo I decided to give it a go. The result has been the 2nd most fun I’ve ever had with an RTS and probably the biggest foxtrot uniform moment I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

Very pretty, not exactly practical

What I love about Dawn of War II is the fact it’s squad based. None of this resource management and base building stuff. Just four mini-squads of 1 to 4 doods, each with a semi-invincible squad leader who never dies but does occasionally need reviving if you really screw up and some highly expendable grunts to bolster the numbers. After that it all comes down to which 4 of the six squads you want to take with you on each mission, what weapons and equipment you want to give the squad leaders and how you want to upgrade them when the level up (there’s an RPG element to the squad leaders that I find rather pleasing) and then just knowing how to attack different groups of enemies, all good fun stuff and very well executed. I dare say when it was released there were probably legions of RTS purists out there wailing and gnashing their teeth but screw them! There are plenty of RTSs that do things the traditional route it’s about time someone made one I could enjoy.

The setting of Dawn of War II is also very good fun, it’s full title is Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II and I’m sure most of you are at least somewhat familiar with the Warhammer 40,000 setting but for those like me who could never afford lots of super expensive toy soldiers it’s basically a Tolkienesk fantasy in space. The Elves are called Eldar and they’re right poncy bastards who you need to shoot in the head. The Orks are called Orks funnily enough and they’re Orks so you need to shoot them in the head. The humans are space marines, genetically engineered religious zealots in massive power armour who enjoy nothing more than a quiet afternoon shooting people in the head. It’s an obvious setting that wears it’s fantasy roots for all to see and yet it’s so well fleshed out that it’s actually wonderfully refreshing compared to the more cookie cutter fantasies, bland science fiction settings and the often woefully awful real world settings that are found is so many games. Guess if goes to show you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when making your world, you’ve just got to come up with a really good design for a new hubcap.

The execution is mostly great, everything pretty much works as it should do and the graphics are very pretty although zooming in to see the tiny details is completely pointless and far less fun than it should be thanks to the fact the camera movement speed doesn’t seem to adjust with the zoom so the slightest twitch when zoomed in can send the camera flying six screens to the right but at least it’s there if you really want to look and from the practical standpoint when zoomed out everything remains clear and easily identifiable even in the heat of battle. The only real practical annoyances coming form the fact it uses the reprehensible Game for Windows Live system. Not being able to play the single player portion of the game is without an internet connection is utterly rubbish, not being able to play it even when you’ve got an internet connection because bloody Games for Windows Live is refusing to talk to it’s authentication servers is enough to make anyone bang their head against their desk in frustration. Why oh why Microsoft, one of the company with the most to gain from PC gaming, persists with this rubbish I’ll never know.

Very practical, still fairly pretty

Now let me tell you about that foxtrot uniform I mentioned. One of the nice things about Dawn of War II is that behind the clicking on little people and telling them where to stand to shoot people and when to heal or throw grenades there’s a story going on that doesn’t just take place in the big picture mission briefing but also plays out among your squad leaders. So for instance you spend several missions trying to find a cure for one of your poisoned compatriots and until that’s done he doesn’t show up in any of the cut scenes or on any of the missions. Now that’s great, it’s very good story telling but it does throw up some interesting situations.

There’s a mission fairly late on in the game called Angel Gate, it’s one of the harder ones and completing it turned out to be a challenge. My first two attempts resulted in failure so decided to take advantage of the slightly non-linear nature of the game and do some side missions to harvest some XP (I told you it had RPG elements) before I tried again. This proved the correct decision and then I came back and tried again it was tricky but very doable. I failed on the third attempt but having learnt what to expect I got it on the fourth try, then just as the end cut scene was loading it crashed. The game has been rock solid apart from that but it choose that exact moment to crash. Fine, whatever. I left it a couple of days then went back, tried again and I managed to complete it first time, no problem and the game didn’t crash in the same place. Then during the cut scene one of my squad leaders tells me he’d like to stay behind and conduct a clear-up operation, I go to the squad load out screen and of course he isn’t there. Fine, no problem. Neither is any of the equipment he carried on the last mission – uh oh! That was the guy I chose to carry the medkits last mission and you can only pick up what your loaded up to carry so no medkit carrier means no medkits full stop! I start the next mission with some trepidation, this could be very bad for a poor RTS player like me but thankfully I set down and walk a little way and there he is, ready to rejoin the team, all is well again and we carry along our merry way. Then he decides that actually he’d like to stay here and defend a important point we’d just captured while the rest of us go off and fight the boss battle. Noooooo! Now I’ve already admitted I’m bad at RTSs but I still think you’ve have to do pretty well to defeat this boss without any medkits at all. Needless to say I didn’t even get close. Mission failed. Everything reverts to as it was before the mission. So there I am, all my medkits are down on the planet surface so I’ve no way to assign them to another squad leaders and once the mission begins no way to make the squad leader holding them come with me to fight the boss. The save system is automatic with no way to revert to a previous one. No way to adjust the difficulty mid-campaign to see if I could beat the boss on easy without medkits. So here I am, stuck. Game over. Shut down game. Walk away. Write it up in a thousand words on it for The New Flesh. I swear RTS games hate me.

It’s a sign of how good Dawn of War II is that it didn’t end there, that in spite of the fact I brought Sims 3 today and I’m itching to have a go at it I felt the urge to try again one more time and see if I could for once in my life not suck at an RTS game beat that damn boss without any medkits and somehow by repeatedly running away I managed it. With every squad leader down bar my commander I managed to whittle away her health to nothing and save Angel Forge. Sit back. Relax. Shut down game. Write another paragraph for The New Flesh. I still swear RTS games hate me but I swear I love Dawn of War II.

8/10