I installed the Dawn of War 2 beta the same day my PC Gamer arrived. The PC Gamer in question had a review for Dawn of War 2 inside. Hmm. Interesting.
This happened once before. The game started with an ‘H’, I believe. And ended with ‘ellgate.’ Now I’m not suggesting that the two games will be related in terms of quality. However, I am a little concerned that this exclusive review is so exclusive that time itself hasn’t quite caught up.
PCG is the Premier of the games industry. Don’t expect objectivity.
It’s a pretty negative review though. The score is high, but the review follows the format: the game has feature X, and here’s a detailed description of feature X, but in the end feature X doesn’t really work that well because of ABC. Then it does the same with feature Y, feature Z. It just reads as a very negative review.
Yeah, I read the review as well and have no idea how that score got attached to that text.
What score is that?
And what were they negative about?
Well, since no one reads the words and only looks at what the Gameran Kings will report, I guess PC Gamer is showin’ us why they’re still in business. World firsts is where it’s at.
The “Beta” moniker on the current DoW2 demo exists because they wanted a good 4-6 weeks to incorporate community suggested game tweaks and balance changes into multiplayer via a patch on release day. Tough to take any pre-release reviews seriously.
Well, they spend a while talking about how the single player is very different in that it ditches base building etc, and that this sounds great in theory, until you realize that you’re basically playing the same two missions over and over for the whole campaign. One is missions where you make your way from one side of the map to the other, and the other mission is the defense mission where you hold out while the enemy keeps attacking. And they also complain that often times the campaign re-uses the same maps with a different story.
They also complain about the cover system. Apparently it only works against Infantry, but most units you’ll be fighting against either ignore cover or are melee units, and in either case cover is not relevant.
They do like the graphics and leveling system in single player, and they discuss the multiplayer game very briefly in two paragraphs (out of a 4 page review), but don’t really touch on whether the sides are balanced, how the game actually plays in multiplayer, etc. I’m guessing the reviewer didn’t get to play much multiplayer so he didn’t want to comment on it.
And that garnered it a 86% rating.
Possibly they want to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that multiplayer is where the strength will be, and that it will turn out great?
Unfortunately, that’s the same problem the Hellgate review had.
No, the Hellgate review was of the single player game and small scale coop. It was expressly skeptical of the multiplayer subscription model and told gamers to take a wait/see approach before signing up to it.
Despite that, the score was outrageously high.
No it wasn’t. From Single player point of view, it was fairly on the money. Maybe a few points high but a solid mid 80s point game. The multiplayer would maybe get 50 points but that wasn’t really available.
I guess we’ll just have to disagree on what constitutes a good 89% singleplayer game then. I would’ve put HGL somewhere in the high 60’s to low 70’s due to the killer bugs and horrible dialogue.
No shit. F’n 90%+ should be genre classic that will be remembered for years, so a 89% for Hellgate is laughably off the mark.
Yeah, Hellgate was definitely a mid-80s game. It’s a shame a lot of people missed it because of the optional subscription-based content and crappy multiplayer launch. It was the best action/RPG since the original Diablo, in my opinion. Great monster designs, solid AI, varied and interesting attacks/skills.
A combat intensive game that actually had fun combat, which is more of a novelty than it should be.
I enjoyed the singleplayer a lot, too. I didn’t know it was supposed to be bad until I read about it on the internets.
I’m so uncomfortable right now.
To be honest, I have yet to read the review. The actual score isn’t the point outside of the fact that the game isn’t done.
Does anyone know if any of the high and lows in the review include a super bowl prediction? I haven’t placed any bets, yet.
Isn’t the single player in Dawn of War 2 essentially similar to what you get from World in Conflict and Ground Control before it? I’m really not at all opposed to that sort of game. Though, I hope it doesn’t consist entirely of Warcraft 3 RPG missions. At least GC and WIC had some nuance in the tactics you’d be required to employ during the missions.
Oh, hey, fuck those 'nids. The same problem about cover exists in multiplayer. Why bother with it when your best units are all melee? They really could stand to jack up the power of ranged combat.