Dawn of War 2 first impressions

This game has been out for about a week and so far my brother has knocked up 33.6 hours of play with it.

After having a go with it myself, I'm really not surprised.

So the most astonishing thing about Dawn of War 2 is how addictive it is. Most of this is down to the RPG elements - your squads level up frequently and you are always unlocking wargear, meaning you're constantly customising your squads and getting attached to them.

The battles feel really personal - of the squads available, there are three 3 man squads and a 4 man squad... with these you have to battle through hundreds of enemies...

It captures the feel of the table top game- small numbers of marines cutting through hundreds of orks.

Hee.

So yes, it's bloody good fun. The plot is also done pretty damn well. There's enough of it so you feel engaged but no more, really. This is slightly sad but I'm grateful for what we have, given that it's a semi-non linear RTS

Are there any problems?

Well, the Tyranids are a bit rubbish. When I played the tabletop game, about ten years ago now, I remember the tyranids being huge red creatures, the iconic one I remember was a bipedal red alien thing with four arms, each carrying a bone-sword.

Here, you've got hundreds of little critter things that are easily dispatched and a few generic tentacle things. They're not really bad, it just doesn't feel like they've been crafted in the same way the eldar/space marines have.

It would also be nice to have a few more choices of squad.

This is a double edged thing - at the moment, each squad has personality and feels genuinely unique. If you were to introduce more, that uniqueness would fade. The thing is though, at the moment I can chose from:

1) scout squad - who are sneaky and have loads of really useful abilities
2) jump pack squad - who are close combat experts
3) your commander
4) a devastator squad- who have a heavy bolter chaingun thing
5) a tactical squad - who are generic marines.

Now, of those, I always have the first three and switch out the last two depending on whom I'm fighting. They're pretty much interchangeable though. It would be nice to have slightly more variety so you're making genuine tactical choices about who you bring with you on a mission.

But yes, Dawn of War 2 is utterly superb. get it :D