Chaos Rising
Platform: PC
Publisher: Relic/THQ
FingerSports Rating: 3/5
Now with added spikes!
Good old Relic. From Homeworld to Company of Heroes, they have rocked the RTS world. The recent Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising expansion is another nice title, it’s ‘stand alone’ nature means all newcomers are welcome to buy it without having to source a copy of the original. But you should anyway-it’s a good game!
I’ve chosen that term carefully, it’s a good game. It’s not fantastic, it’s not disappointing. Lets have a looksie eh?
It’s an expansion to a sequel. The original ‘Dawn of War’ game (and all of it’s bastard offspring expansions) formed a sound RTS with a great selection of races/units that allowed for a huge amount of variety in both online and single player. These games featured a series of different campaigns that increased in ambition with each title – although the graphics weren’t the best out there, they were serviceable and nicely animated. The game had a nice resource system, capturing points on the map forced players to expand. All in all, it was well worth the cash.
Dawn of War 2 wasn’t what many people expected. No (ok, very limited) base building. Tiny unit cap. Experience systems. Um, what happened to your battle lines? Where’s the squadron of tanks? Why the hell are there only three marines in a squad?
Settle down and actually play it. To say it ‘borrows heavily’ from Company of Heroes is an understatement, it utilises a very similar style of play. But what relic have forced you to do is really try to make the most of a few units, the whole single player is done with four units per mission. Online you’ll rarely have more than five or six units, they are expensive and the food cap is very easy to reach. You do get used to it.
Ok ok ok. I’ll stop ranting and do a proper review.
Story:
Based in the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40,000 universe (where basically everything has gone to shit) the game throws you back into command of the Blood Ravens space marines, super human warrior monks (only a bit emo) who live to bash evil people in the face. If you’ve completed DoW2, then you can load up your previous squads with all their experience and most of their wargear, a nice touch. Your power armoured thugs arrive on planet blah blah to investigate why it has ‘re-appeared’ in a convenient plot twist to bring evil spiky people into the equation. Those familiar with the 40k universe will know that apparently, this sort of thing happens all the time. It’s passable and involving in its own way, really you just want to jump in and kill things, and that’s what you do! It’ll make a lot more sense if you have played DoW2, but you won’t miss much if you haven’t.
Visuals:
Havok makes things pretty. It just does; tanks rumble over walls crushing them and spraying masonry everywhere, blood sprays from weapon impacts, muzzle flashes illuminate shadows and the textures are pretty. Well fancy that – a modern game that looks nice. Shocker.
Sound:
Relic = great voice acting. No surprise, the voices in Chaos Rising are entertaining. Chaos champions shouting: ‘Do you hear the voices too?’ makes me happy. The rest of the sounds are good enough, engines rev, explosions go bang and chainsaws buzz. The best bits by far though is the weapon sounds, especially the Ork gunz. I can’t even begin to explain how gut wrenchingly visceral they are. DAKKADAKKADAKKA. Ah-hem. Sorry.
Gameplay:
If you haven’t played Company of Heroes or the original, Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising focuses on utilising a smaller number of units to establish battlefield control, with practically no base building or structure management. The resource system involves capturing points on the map, and takes very little time, resulting in a very changeable battlefield. Even one unit behind your lines can de-secure a couple of points in a few seconds and half your resource intake. I like. There are only two types of resource, requisition and power. Power is deceptively important, as you don’t need as much of it as requisition but it is gathered more slowly. Essentially, if you keep harassing an enemies power supplies, he cannot advance up the tech tree. Again, I like. However, that’s not how you win. There are usually an odd number of special points scattered across the map which award no resource bonus, but controlling more than your opponent will reduce his score counter. First player to hit zero loses.
This is a nice departure from the ‘I kill you till you die from it’ approach, as it creates quite quick games, rewarding players who raid constantly and don’t let their opponent hold any ground. Also, the games small unit cap means you’ll usually not be able to cover each of the objectives, so there’s always an opening. Unless you’re clever…
Improving upon DoW2’s unit selection is possibly the best aspect of this release, and to the joy of everyone who can’t be arsed to fork out for the expansion: If you own the original then you get the new units free. Thanks! Bugger I just paid for it. There’s nothing else really new, DoW2 has a nice ‘last stand’ mode where you and two other players face off against hoards of attacking enemies till you die. You know, like in a last stand. Chaos Rising adds 2 new heroes for those who bought the expansion, and it’s a great mini-game and has quite a following. I know a couple of players who prefer it to the main game. They’re also fairly dim.
The new race has some interesting balance issues end game wise; they always win. Solution? Rush the bastards, they suck quite hard early on.
Conclusion:
Dawn of War 2 is a good game. The expansion features more of the same. If you like RTS games, you could do worse. If you like the Games Workshop universe, go for it. If you played Company of Heroes and want something similar, buy it. If you are short on cash and not sure, then wait for Company of Heroes Online and Starcraft 2. They will be better games.
