Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II
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ESRB:
Blood and Gore,Violence
Publisher: THQ Genre(s): Strategy Home Page: http://www.dawnofwar2.com/
Bring a Friend Tackling down a Carnifex with a friend. You can also play the single player campaign in two-player co-op mode - the usual four squads get split between players, each controlling two of the units. Both players can switch which unit to control between deployments and in other ways it works just like the single player game. The host keeps the savegame and continue to play the campaign with or without the second player. The co-op play works great and is one of those "duh, why nobody else figured this out before?" features that should become a standard feature in RTS games for any single player campaign. The biggest flaw of the co-op mode is probably the fact that the gameplay becomes noticeably easier when you have just two units per player to micromanage - you can just blaze through defenses that would take considerable time to assault while juggling four squads alone. You can naturally compensate by just starting out with a higher difficulty level. Skirmish, Multiplayer Skirmish mode gives you three different Force Commanders per race to choose from. In addition to the campaign, Dawn of War II offers a skirmish mode. The map choices include 1vs1 and 3vs3 maps, but unfortunately there are just seven maps restricted to three different terrain types and based on existing single player maps. You can play offline against AI opponents, in LAN and with friends or online, choosing between unranked and ranked match play via Games for Windows LIVE matchmaking. All four armies - Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Tyranids - are available for play in skirmish. At first you will be royally confused and it's strongly recommended to play a couple of practice rounds against some AI opponents - skirmish is a whole different game! You no longer play with specific named heroes commanding squads - instead you pick one of three different commander units as your Force Commander and start out with a single turret-defended building that can be used to build units. You won't be construction additional buildings, but the main base can be improved with tech level upgrades which unlock additional units and equipment upgrades. With unit building there is also resource gathering and it is somewhat similar to the system used in Company of Heroes. You have two types of resource nodes that need to be captured to fuel your war machine and these nodes are spread out around the map. In addition to the resources, in Victory Point mode you have to compete for the control of specific map locations. Alternatively you can play for annihilation - whoever is the last man standing on the battlefield wins. Most of the time you tend to be either attacking or defending a resource or a victory point. This creates natural front lines, but due to the low unit cap there is plenty of opportunities for guerrilla action behind the engagement for stealing resources.  Defending a Victory Point in Skirmish. Unlike in single player mode where additional abilities are dished out based on skill point assignments as you level up, in skirmish your units can be improved with upgrades bought with resources. Due to the low unit cap, properly upgrading your units and keeping them alive becomes very important. Like in single player campaign, you can reinforce your units with fresh troops at your base, complete with all the upgrades you have purchased for that unit. On the other hand, if the unit commander bites the dust, the whole unit is lost and with highly upgraded units this can be a devastating blow due to the amount of resources spent on unit upgrades. Retreating is a key move and wasting good units in hopeless matchups is not advisable. This creates highly mobile battles with opportunities for ambushes, encirclements and feints. Unfortunately Skirmish suffers from some outstanding balance issues - in short, "Nerf Tyranids! Thanks". The lack of maps and the inability to play 2vs2 (without tossing in 2 bots as padding) is also disappointing. I'm sure Relic is already planning an expansion pack with additional maps and an extra army or two, but just seven multiplayer maps out of the box, mostly created by recycling campaign map assets from single player? That's just weak. As with the previous Dawn of War game, you can also paint your army to ensure it stands out from other armies from the same faction. Unfortunately you are limited to just picking out color schemes as there is no functionality for unit markings or decals.
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