The single-player mode has been overhauled to ensure the entire experience is absorbing, entertaining and challenging above all else. Utilising a squad-based mechanic, each mission begins with the loadout menu where you take the time to equip your troops with weapons, armour and special abilities. As the narrative progresses you’ll gain extra units each with their own area of expertise. And you’ll need to utilise their abilities if you want to best each of the game’s taxing missions, which include lengthy battles with nasty uber bosses. Question is should an RTS really feature boss encounters?
 |
 |
|
| Mass destruction and devastation like this is fairly commonplace in Dawn Of War II | Your jetpack crew become an invaluable aerial asset in the campaign's early stages |
During our hands on with the game, we got to try out the opening four missions of the single-player campaign and we can confidently report that the bosses we fought didn’t disappoint, offering up a decent change of pace from the rest of the action. The core of the single-player game is a solid tactical romp through expansive levels filled with hundreds of enemies interspersed with a variety of additional tasks that keep things varied. Relic have made every effort to ensure the single-player mode is much more than a mere afterthought extending far beyond the standard one-player campaign you’d normally expect in the usual Command & Conquer vein where cut-scenes bookend each mission.
While there’s still a focus on micro-management, this revolves around customising your squad members rather than building bases and generating resources. Assembling your Space Marine force is a quick process and after just a few missions you’ll already have three crews to choose from. Our hands-on revealed a spy crew for stealthy infiltration with the ability to briefly turn invisible, heavy gunners and Marines equipped with jetpacks for leaping long distances across maps to launch surprise attacks from the air. How you use each of your squads is up to you and as the single-player campaign progresses and more crews are unlocked, you’re given more choice of specialist troops to deploy for each mission. You’re allowed a maximum of three additional support teams upon loadout; so choosing the most effective combination for the task at hand is key.
 |
 |
|
| Sadly, we were unable to sample multiplayer due to an issue with Games For Windows. Oops. But you can check out the beta | One of Dawn Of War II's menacing uber-bosses. They're pretty huge and intimidating and take a lot of perserverance to defeat |
Dawn Of War II takes its cue from Relic’s other major RTS franchise Company Of Heroes, affording the game more visual polish than before. Also, where that game offered an absorbing and deeply involving single-player experience where you were made to actually care about the characters in your team, Dawn Of War II aims to repeat the same trick. Happily, this doesn’t appear to come at the expense of the hardcore crowd who previously enjoyed Dawn Of War’s demanding multiplayer challenges and fans fearful of the experience being diluted or over-simplified to cater to more casual tastes can assuage their fears now. Dawn Of War II is every bit as hardcore an RTS as any of Relic’s other strategy titles and anyone who fell in love with Company Of Heroes will find a lot to love about this game since the two share so much DNA.
 |
 |
|
| There's a pretty high level of visual detail in the game and a lot more polish on show than in the first Dawn Of War | See the beardy weirdy with the furrowed brow? That's us, probably clicking the restart tab for the umpteenth time |
In fact, Dawn Of War II does almost everything right by offering a game that successfully fuses a simultaneously testing and enjoyable non-linear single-player narrative with a resolutely hardcore multiplayer mode. That it strips away some of the staples such as base building isn’t of detriment to the game at all as there are still more than enough tasks to keep you occupied. Capturing enemy bases and factories prove to be huge battles of attrition against swathes of hostile units, while securing spawn points to replenish your bedraggled and depleted armies can be nail-biting skirmishes that can leave you vulnerable if you’re not careful. Finding cover is enormously important and as such the AI will sometimes leap into it if under heavy fire. At the time of playing, we found the odd issue where the AI would get stuck or fail to avoid a devastating boss attack, but otherwise it does a pretty sound job of surviving. There are also guard towers that you can clear out and use for your own ends, setting up entrenched gun emplacements that offer decent protection against sudden attack.
There’s a lot of care and attention to detail evident in what we played of Dawn Of War II and our interview with Jonny Ebbert (available to read now) is certainly a testament to how hard the team at Relic have worked to make this the best game they possibly can. We hope that in the six weeks or so leading up to release they ensure the whole thing is up to scratch, but with an RTS pedigree like Relic’s there’s no doubt that this will be something very special indeed and a fine reward for Warhammer fans and strategy fans alike.
Dawn Of War II is pencilled in for release on 20th February.
