First Look at Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 Beta

The Dawn of War 2 beta has just been released to owners of the original Dawn of War's Soulstorm expansion pack, with everyone else to be allowed a sneak peak in the coming days. As a veteran of the original Dawn of War, here are some of my thoughts on the multiplayer in the new game thus far.

Once you are logged into your Games for Windows - Live account, the first thing you'll have to do is select your hero unit. Your choice here will make a central impact on how your game will play out, and it will incidentally determine your faction as well. Each faction gets three heroes. The Space Marines, Space Orks, Eldar, and Tyranids all seem to have heroes that are pretty unique, but generally each gets a front-line fighter, an offensive support, and a defensive support hero.

After the matchmaking system does its magic, which shouldn't take all that long, you're presented with a view of your base, an initial squad to play with, and your hero. Your base won't be changing much, since base building has been stripped down to the barebones of unlocking new units. As someone who is not much of a fan of base building, I thought this would be my most welcome addition; but so far, it turns out that I do miss being able to build up my defenses to a degree.

Graphically, I have to admit I am somewhat underwhelmed. Knowing the Company of Heroes engine was going to be put to good use in the Warhammer universe, I was pretty excited about the visual appearance of the game. Maybe it is just the CoH engine showing its age, but there hasn't been a single moment where a visual effect really put a smile on my face. The gameplay consists of moving your units to capture resource nodes on surprisingly small maps, which are obviously an attempt to keep the action consistent. Yes, fighting will occur more often than not, but that brings me to my next point.

Things die fast! Unfortunately, that is the one major thought that I have brought out of the beta thus far. You can order squads to automatically retreat back to base in order to reinforce them, but sometimes the enemy will hit you so hard you don't even have a chance to do that. This could be tweaked, but as of now it seemed a bit strange. At times I felt like a healer in a RPG, carefully watching the battle and the life bars of my squads going down; except instead of being able to heal them back up, I have to order them to run away. Maybe it is a streamlined version of what players did in the original game, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's great fun.

My initial impression therefore has to be that this game is more evolutionary than revolutionary, and not as inspired as it might have been. Diehard fans will be pleased, but it remains to be seen if it will attract the kind of broad appeal Relic will be hoping for-especially with Starcraft 2 on the horizon.