Leveling Down

Dawn of War 2 is a gorgeous looking game that emphasizes tactics over strategy.

50 or so hours later and I can say that I’m done with Dawn of War II. I may go back in and skirmish with the AI from time to time, but for the most part, I’ll say that Dawn of War II was quite a satisfying experience and I recommend it if you are in the market for a PC based RTS/RPG style game. It’s pretty much Company of Heroes inserted into Dawn of War, and for fans of Company of Heroes, that’s great news, but for fans of Dawn of War I, not so much. Read on for my review.

Good
- innovative campaign design
- enjoyable gameplay mechanics
- excellent presentation

Bad
- campaign is only for one of the four playable races
- polarizing multiplayer that isn’t as deep as traditional RTS game
- quite a departure from the previous Dawn of War game

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Perhaps one of the best GBA games most people will never get to play?

Mother 3
On my new commute to work these days, I am now playing Mother 3, which is the sequel to Earthbound (Mother 2) here in the United States. Apparently, the game was never released in America due to several reasons such as it being a bit too controversial for children (it looks cute but its storyline is mature), too many potential copyright infringements (the music team behind the Earthbound games love the Beatles, among other things), and it is a Gameboy Advance game that released in Japan when the DS already took off in the States. Suffice to say, the only way to actually play this game is by downloading a fan translation that patches the Japanese version of the game. It’s a stellar translation and Nintendo isn’t telling the group to cease and desist because the company decided not to release the game in the US, so no one holds the copyright. The translation group has even gone one step further and put together a 240 page full color guidebook with tons of original art and is selling it for $20. I almost want to buy the guidebook just to support their effort, but the thing about guidebooks with me is if I buy one, then I will have to depend on it as a crutch the rest of the game since I’ll worry I’ll miss something so I’d rather just play it freely. Plus, I’m in the subway and I’d be a little embarrassed reading a strategy guide and playing the game at the same time on my way to work.

Dawn of War II
I spent most of this week’s gaming time finishing off the campaign for Dawn of War II, but I haven’t had a chance to try out multiplayer enough to warrant a review. I’m surprised though that Steam is telling me I’ve already logged 40 or so hours into this game, so suffice to say, the game is pretty lengthy on the hardest difficulty. Review will definitely be out next week as this weekend should give me some extra needed time to spend with the multiplayer.

Defense Grid
Been playing this a bit this week since it’s on sale for $5 and I’m actually enjoying it a lot. It does a great job in the first few levels of keeping things simple and slowly adding more enemy types and towers to use. I also like that there’s a feature for speeding up the enemy movement, so you’re not always sitting around waiting when you don’t have enough to make/upgrade towers. Great deal at $5 and I’ll try to write some detailed impressions up for it next week.

Starcraft
Starcraft rounds out my heavy PC gaming week, as I’ve gotten back into the PC gaming side pretty strong thanks to Steam’s sale, Dawn of War II, and the impending Starcraft II release. Now that the Starcraft II beta is imminent, I’m continuing to play the game to brush up on its mechanics. Having completed the Terran campaign, I’m now knee deep in the Zerg campaign. All these memories keep coming back as I play this game – one of my more memorable aspects of playing Zerg that I got to experience again is having 4 Hatcheries next to each other and spawning a full hotkey of units at once.

Does this screenshot bring back memories or what?

Apparently it’s PC gaming week for me this week, as I’ m in the midst of moving and my 360 is packed so I’ve spent my hours this week with the following:

Starcraft – Believe it or not, I have gone back and installed Starcraft and Brood War on my PC. (I also re-installed Diablo II and Warcraft III as well, but for now I’m just sticking with Starcraft.) After watching the new Starcraft II Battle Report that was released recently, I’ve gotten totally excited about the game and decided I want to play through Starcraft’s campaign missions  to “get back into the game” before the inevitable Starcraft II beta releases in the months to come (which I hope I get picked for). It still holds up today, and I’m already almost done with the Terran campaign. Man those siege tanks bring back memories. I don’t know what it is, but building clumps of a siege tank, a turret, and a bunker full of marines really makes me happy. It doesn’t look like siege tanks are in Starcraft II though, which make me quite sad.

Dawn of War II – I’m really enjoying the campaign mode for the game. I think I’m almost done, but I must have spent over a dozen hours of gaming already since I’m playing at the hardest difficulty. And it is honestly pretty difficult. But after playing Starcraft some and realizing that there’s no difficulty setting in the campaign, the difficulty of Dawn of War II was a welcome change as now I’m actually being challenged rather than steamrolling the AI. This is the first game that has challenged me in a while – maybe not as crazily as Left 4 Dead on Expert, but this is a game I do need my full concentration for. Hopefully I get around to the multiplayer at some point next week.

Dawn of War II looks like an RTS game, but actually plays almost more like an RPG.

I started playing Dawn of War II this week, a PC RTS/role playing game hybrid that is turning out to be pretty good. This is the first PC game that I’ve started seriously playing ever since Blizzard’s Warcraft III & World of Warcraft, so it’s actually a little bit jarring coming back to keyboard and mouse after years of using the 360 controller. I mentioned last week that I was having trouble playing Left 4 Dead on the PC using a mouse and keyboard after being so accustomed to the controller, but luckily, Dawn of War II keeps things pretty simple. Read on for my thoughts on this PC game that is the first Windows game that has Achievements and uses the Xbox Live matchmaking servers.

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To celebrate the new free Scout update on the PC version of Team Fortress II, Valve has put it on sale for $9.99 on Steam from now until Friday. This new update brings new weapons, maps, and 35 Achievements for the Scout class alone! Expect others classes to follow. Also of note is the new Dawn of War II game on sale for $35.90 as part of GoGamer’s Madness sale. Ugh…my backlog now extends to PC games too -_-

Team Fortress II [$9.99 Steam]
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II [$35.90 w/ free shipping GoGamer]

Street Fighter IV – After struggling to decide whether to buy it at launch or not, I ended up going for it. The presentation in this game is amazing! Unfortunately, I’m getting my butt whooped online. Playing the AI and online is so different – you can pull off flashy combos and stuff against the AI, but against humans, it seems like it’s all about safe moves and frame advantage. I’m such a noob when it comes to this stuff, but maybe I’ll get better in time.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – cmfl3x and I have continued to make our way through the campaign, just finishing off the last two missions on the Allied campaign late last night. We must have retried each of those missions 3-4 times, as it gets pretty hard on Hard difficulty. The last Allied mission is rough – there’s a timer and we ended up destroying the last building when the timer hit 0:00 (maybe it even hit -0:01 heh). It was funny because both the Victory and then the Defeat videos started playing one right after another, but luckily we got the Victory endscreen. Talk about a close call!

Left 4 Dead – Just when I thought I was done with it, the PC version has to go on sale and I ended up picking it up. Expect a write-up with my thoughts comparing it to the 360 version at some point.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 – Never considered picking this up since it’s a PC game, but the fact that it’s tied into the Live system and has its own Achievements has me interested. Maybe I’ll wait for a price drop.

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad – Campy Japanese zombie beat-em-up playing as a girl in a bikini sounds like it could be enjoyable as I like zombies and I like Japanese developed games. A girl in bikini doesn’t hurt either but since my wife may not like the idea of seeing me play as a scantily clad woman throughout the game I’ll hold off on this one for now.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Picked it up since it was on sale at Best Buy this week. I think it got lots of 2008 PC game of the year awards, so I’m curious to check it out. Supposedly it’s a cross between an RTS and a Civilization game, but in space. I’m not the biggest space strategy gamer, but maybe this one will turn out ok for me.

Why does everyone like being elves?

I recently decided to give Warhammer Online a try since I needed something to do while grinding the 56,000 kills or whatever in Left 4 Dead. I didn’t think I’d get back into the MMORPG scene after World of Warcraft, but figured the $10 price I paid for the game was not too big of a deal as long as I didn’t continue the subscription after the first free month. Granted, I only leveled up to rank 6 and never saw the end game but if you’re curious how it is, check out my impressions. In many cases I will be using World of Warcraft as a comparison, since they’re actually quite similar.

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