Dawn of War II open beta started yesterday, those who bought the last expansion to Dawn of War could access the beta a week before. The series is created by Relic, the same guys who made Company of Heroes. Dawn of War II is based on the same “Emotion” game engine as CoH which means units are “smart” and can more or less manage themselves regardless of what your mouse is doing. The engine was praised for changing the way RTS are played and opening the somewhat niche RTS genre for a broader audience.
Unfortunately, I was never very interested in CoH because the so called smart AI was never that smart and only being able to control groups mean some of the precious units will always stand stupidly out in the open. That being said, the obvious fact that I enjoy the more traditional Craft/Age/C&C RTS. So why did I choose to play this? Because I was itching for a good multiplayer RTS which I have not seen in a while; sorry Sins and EA’s C&C games but none of you were very impressive on a RTS level as everyone who played Sins played on slowest settings and C&C games were always about massing up tanks and doing a giant push.
DoWII have a good amount of depth and very micro intensive without being the complete click-fest that the traditional RTS have been criticized for. Base building has been completely axed as there is literally a single building that all units magically poop out from or drop down from a giant steel bombshell. On the flip side, I still see there is a limited amount of depth in the game if only because you cannot build more than 6-8 groups of units. I came into the game blind while most of the people are migrating from DoW I or CoH but after losing a half dozen games, I realized I could consistently beat most people with more or less the same build.
The game has other faults including terrible lag problems which drop people constantly as well as an Xbox Live-like match making system including the infamous “Xbox Live 5 minute match up time before actual playing” AS SEEN IN POPULAR GAMES LIKE GEARS OF WAR 2, HALO 2, AND LEFT FOR DEAD XBOX.
I hope they fix all that before launch because the game is definitely different from normal rts
