Warhammer 40K Dawn of War is easily one of the most successful RTS games out there. Dawn of War beat Half Life as game of the year and its continued expansion packs would be enormously popular.
When Dawn of War 2 was released people were shocked by how… small it was. Instead of choosing to make a classical RTS they went with a format that people were REALLY unfamiliar. Even with my initial review two years ago I didn’t even see it as a strategy game.
But these days MOBAs are super common and so micro managing smaller groups of units with abilities is ‘all the rage.’ It’s entirely possible that much like the original Dawn of War, Relic was just too far ahead of the time.
Speaking of far ahead of its time… WTF is Games for Windows doing here? Honestly get used to filling out this bad boy because with the always Online aspect this game… it’s heavily buggy.
So it crashes quite a bit. In a full play session I had three crashes. So does what the game adds make it worth getting this expansion.
Well first off its a stand alone expansion which means you can get it on its own. However if you enjoyed DOW2 this game is most certainly for you.
What they add to the game is minimal, it’s mostly more of the same stuff you liked. There is a better story telling element that has a little more interaction and an extra member of your team. The extra member is another Tech Priest to fill in that slot from the one that died in the last game.
The game starts by informing you that there must be a traitor in your company! So now you are off killing Chaos being setup by one of your own guys.
But who is it?
This is honestly one of the stupid overwhelmingly common themes in Warhammer 40K games. It might be why so few people buy them. There is always a traitor and all of your team members always yell TRAITORS WE HATE TRAITORS and then at the end the traitor ends up not being anyone on your team at all…. just some extra person you would never expect… because you never really knew they existed for most of the game. All the while there is some traitor in the Chaos world, throw in some Orks who add nothing to the plot at all other than to admit that Orks exist and make some cameos from the Eldar who despite almost always being right we have to kill for some reason.
The standalone expansion game will give you about 7-8 hours of gameplay… this can be compared to the almost 40 of the original. The game does have 5 endings if you are willing to grind them all out. However gaining them is a bit wonky and odd.
There is this system of corruption in which if you make missions far easier you get corrupted and if you make them harder you have corruption removed. The endings are earned by balancing off corruption on five levels Highly Corrupted, Slightly Corrupted, Neutral (neither direction favoured highly), Slight No Corruption, and High No Corruption.
I honestly just looked up the other four endings as I didn’t feel like grinding them all out.
The core gameplay is good and it was fun to play, but it’s just so short and lacking. Unfortunately this game is just not worth buying, not even at a sale price.
It seems odd reviewing a sales game that soon just might not exist. With THQ’s properties getting thrown around without a buyer for the series it’s unclear whether even reviewing this game post-hype launch would even be worth while. This of course is the Game of the Year Edition.
Unfortunately unlike all other Game of the Year editions which include all DLC and expansions, this one is just the original game with multiplayer connectivity between all the various versions of the game.
I bought the entire THQ package for $25 however often THQ games go on sale at 75% meaning this would cost $2.50. Quite a cheap eat for an RTS classic.
Synopsis: The Emperor
When you first see Warhammer 40K you at first can make some sense to this world. It is obvious that a religious faction of humanity has dominated the entire galaxy. It seems clear that this religious faction doesn’t entirely value life. It’s clear there are many enemies including the Xenos, Orcs, and Chaos. All of that stuff basically makes sense.
But then you get to The Emperor. At first he seems harmless because you picture there is a ruler of the galaxy called The Emperor who is a leader of some sort of cosmic empire.
But then you’d be wrong.
In fact the military world of the 40K universe has a human military junta lead entirely through rank and jurisdiction.
So who is this emperor.
Well… that’s where the whole oddity comes in.
The Emperor takes a sort of God-like status in the world of Warhammer 40K.
Basically The Emperor died a hundred millennia ago.
A group of scientists and priests preserved his body and most importantly preserved his mind.
The unique feature about The Emperor was that he was a great psychic whose mind was able to touch the entire universe. It was the great psychic mind of The Emperor that brought on the many millennia of peace across the universe.
Because The Emperor’s dead brain has been preserved it is presumed that The Emperor can still hear all of the thoughts of people across the universe. So when you are praying to the Emperor you are praying to a person who does and does not exist…. a logical contradiction.
It gives the people a certain paranoia that they must be loyal to the emperor in fear that some day he may telepathically tell on you.
Synopsis
As a game that basically created the tactical RTS genre you will find this game lacking compared to most modern tactical RTS games.
In the first there is not a tonne of unit variety available. Note that I’ll only be really reviewing the single player game because honestly…. good luck finding someone to multiplayer with.
So your first most basic unit is the space marine. It is also the most iconic unit in the game. All infantry based squads come in… squads. Instead of having one unit per as most RTS games were doing, this game offered a group of units together. You can reinforce this squad by paying some resource in order to add members to the squad.
These squads are your all purpose squad. They do very well against enemy infantry, enemy vehicles, and enemy snipers. Through specialization they can be equipped with flamers for morale damage, bolters for long range damage, plasma rifles for close range damage, and rocket launchers for anti-tank damage.
Morale is a key concept in the game. After a unit takes so much damage their morale is broken and they take increasingly high amounts of damage and deal lower damage. This mechanic was designed to deal with stalemate battles.
However if a space marine squad equips a commander for resource they can recharge that morale.
Next on the list is the Scout. Scouts are most commonly equipped with sniper rifles but can also be equipped with flamers and plasma pistols. These are weak stealthy scouting units that are often ignored.
Next up are your assault squads which have jump packs which allow them to travel over ledges and make giant distances.
Vehicles have many serious advantages including being overall better than all squads, do not have morale and can equip more specialized weapons.
The most iconic of the vehicles is the Dreadnaught which is an all-purpose unit which can be tooled towards anti-tank or anti-infantry.
The Rhino and Land Raider are both transports. The Rhino is mostly useless but can reduce ranged damage on a target area. The Land Raider has weapons!
Whirlwind is an artillery style unit that deals very good damage against buildings.
The Predator is strictly an anti-tank tank.
In the spirit of having low amounts of creativity both the Chaos and Space Marines have roughly the same unit types!
So winning battles in the campaign often involves using the new unit as it arrives combined with space marines.
The story of the game focuses around The Blood Raven squadron who have landed on Tartarus to lend aid to the civilian population. Upon landing an Ork invasion has hit. The commander of the Space Marines smells something is up after cleansing the Orks starting the main anti-Chaos storyline.
One of the more incomplete parts of the game is the cover based system. Units can be strategically positioned into craters to get bonus cover based armor. But this falls short in the game. Instead you spend most of your time trying to get your units all firing.
The game will net you about 20 hours of gameplay.
Strengths
Great Story
Timeless Visuals
Bug Free!
From the beginning cinematic to the ending cinematic you are going to want to finish this game just to see where it takes you. In fact when you’re done you’ll want more story… like an entire expansion.. which is also available on Steam. The game has really great pacing with its story giving you enough time to fight your way to the next level without shoving story in your face.
The graphical style of the game is timeless. As one of the first games to include a benchmark test it was the top of the line in graphics at the time. But as you look at games of its era today that have become insanely dated because of their N64 style polygon graphics… this one just maximized it effectively. It didn’t hurt they were designed after actual game pieces.
Unlike most games that came out in this era, this game is bug free. The game used to have quite a large multiplayer community and there were multiple balancing and fixing patches to make the multiplayer better and better. Few games had this sort of post-launch support.
Weaknesses
Patches Ruined Campaign
Bad Pathing
Space Marine?
Upon loading up a level I found that my artillery was not firing. I kept running it into enemies and it just would not fire. Upon looking up a fix I found that a patch had made it so that the vehicle starts off on a non-firing mode in which you have to activate a firing mode. Each unit was supposed to feel powerful as you got it. A lot of the time you could just completely ignore certain particularly terrible vehicles (like the rhino).
The game also suffers from some terrible pathing. This has to do with the fact that two squads cannot occupy the same space, meaning they cannot pass through. This means micro is impossible. It also means that you have to move your army through a choke point taking fire from all directions just so you can get all of your units firing. When your units take damage they cannot be moved backwards.
It felt as though certain units were less useful than others. Even after getting the very powerful Devestator Squads a lot of times you’ll just continue milking out those space marine squads because of how powerful they are. The only reason to get vehicles is seemingly because your space marine squads are maxed out.
Concluding Thoughts
Warhammer 40K is dated as a game. It’s half the RTS of Company of Heroes and lacks a lot of the acceptable standards of a modern tactical RTS. The story is fun, but that’s about it.
If you’re looking to play a game for the experience of seeing what created the modern RTS industry it might be worth playing. But as far as getting some grand skilled experience…. you will find it lacking.
In years to come Relic learned its lesson with Warhammer 40K and when they introduced Company of Heroes they created a lot of defense based missions… something very lacking from Warhammer 40K Dawn of War.
EDIT:
March 30, 2013: After a month I decided to try out some of the various expansions that I owned. It was neat that I didn’t really have to install anything I just had to activate the packs. However each expansion pack offered about 10 new missions total. Worse yet instead of having a central focus they kind of splinter off into each side getting about 5 missions making for some very uninteresting stories. The expansions include new races The Tau and The Imperial Guardsman… however no one really plays multiplayer anymore so this is a moot point.
After the THQ auction occurred it seemed odd that there were a number of titles that simply did not sell. Some of them, like Destroy All Humans, seemed obvious because of how nothing has really been developed for that game.
So in this article I’ll explore reasons why the Warhammer 40K license was not acquired by anyone ranging from least likely to most likely.
#1: Poor Sales of Space Marine
What killed THQ was the poor sales of three games: Homefront, Red Faction: Armageddon, and Warhammer 40K: Space Marine.
Homefront was acquired by Crytek because…. they were making Homefront 2 already.
Red Faction and Warhammer 40K however were not acquired.
It would seem that a likely reason might be how little they make at market.
Crytek purchased Homefront at a $500,000… quite a cheap purchase. They were commissioned to build Homefront 2 six months ago. It is believed that a large portion of the game was already completed. If some other studio was to pick up this game presumably they’d be able to steal Crytek’s work and just re-brand the game. To me this purchase seemed like an interest in making a game.
But for Red Faction and Warhammer 40K it seems clear, low sales.
Warhammer 40K Space Marine was supposed to be an RPG that set the stage for Warhammer 40K Online. It was supposed to tell the story that would act as a guiding vision for the MMORPG.
In the end the MMORPG was cut and turned into a Co-Op RPG.
But Space Marine didn’t do so hot. It did so poorly that four months after launch they added in all sorts of “overpowered” weapons to the multiplayer and began trying to sell the game on multiplayer.
It was a disaster… and it’s not even because it was a bad game. The campaign was fairly long and the multiplayer was kind of fun. It just so happened that people were sick of on-rails shooters and were ready for something new.
Had Space Marine been a commercial success like Saints Row and Company of Heroes… someone might have bought it.
#2: No Relic Attached
All of the studios and all of the licenses were sold separately.
There was a specific interest in having certain properties be bought with certain studios. Relic for example was purchased by SEGA with Company of Heroes. Volition Games was purchased with Saints Row.
It makes sense that whoever wanted Warhammer 40K also might have wanted to purchased Relic.
However with SEGA taking Relic and only wanting to publish Company of Heroes 2… who would want Warhammer 40K?
It is believable that there is a developer out there who could do the license justice.
Generally when you receive an unfinished game from a studio the end result is not all that… fetching.
No better an example can be found with Team Bondi and Rockstar Games. Team Bondi was working on a new adventure detective game that would show off some new groundbreaking technology. But Team Bondi went bankrupt before they could finish the game. Rockstar Games finished the game and added in some DLC.
If you play the game through without the DLC it feels like something is missing. If you play the game with the DLC it feels like these particular missions have a very different feel from the remainder of the game.
This is exactly what would happen to Warhammer 40K’s Co-Op RPG. It could be picked up by Gearbox (creators of Borderlands) very easily. But then the game would just transform into Borderlands in space…. but Borderlands is in space….. you know what I mean!
The point is that without the studio that was working on it… working on it… it would almost seem pointless to acquire the IP. Any studio that picks it up would almost have to scrap the entire game and start over.
#3: Warhammer 40K Belongs to Games Workshop
At the end of the day Warhammer 40K’s sale was not a unique intellectual property like Company of Heroes or Saints Row… it was a license.
It was a license with Games Workshop.
Who knows how terrible this license would be for a developer/publisher.
The folks at Games Workshop knew that their product was valuable and have worked exclusively through THQ since Warhammer 40K’s first RTS game.
The games up until Space Marine did pretty well on sales. And Game’s Workshop knows this. Last year THQ signed a new agreement for the license which was originally set to expire this year.
It’s likely that Game’s Workshop seeing THQ in a desperate time wanted a better share of the profits.
Because of this it is likely that the Warhammer 40K license is highly unprofitable and just did not look all that inticing to investors and game developers.
Honestly it just doesn’t sound like a good deal. Who wants to develop a game in which all gameplay elements and plot devices have to be approved by a tabletop game maker? Then after all that you release the game and you owe them a tonne of cash?
It just doesn’t make sense as a business model.
In the end my best estimate is that all of the highly profitable almost complete games were purchased and there were just so many reasons not to want to get Warhammer 40K.
I bought this game on launch and haven’t really played multiplayer until the free weekend. Since then I’ve been banging my time out of this game that went on sale on Steam.
In this review I do not talk a lot about the multiplayer in this game. That’s because I’ve covered this pretty heavily in my anti-MW3 rant on this game.
History of Warhammer 40k
In the late 80s Game’s Workshop were trying to capitalize in the sudden popularity of board games by making the most expensive game possible. This game would be a table top game where you would play four factions on the board: Space Marines, Orks, Chaos Marines, and Xenos. The game was a strategy game where the individual pieces cost near the same price of a full board game.
The game had a very limited popularity but because it cost so much to actually buy this game it became one of the first popular social games. Social games required players to buy pieces of it and bring all of their pieces together. The game was not popular, but was successful.
As a note still today there is a store in the Kingsway Mall in Edmonton that ONLY sells Warhammer 40k toys and figurines. It makes enough money off of this expensive stuff to not only survive, but also do well.
The game’s commercial success saw the creation of a lot of cheap spin offs including Inqusitor, Gor 40000, Space Hulk and Battlefield Gothic.
In the early 90s Game’s Workshop felt it was time to take their tabletop game into the gaming world. The first two games for Warhammer 40,000 did very well for the time. Chaos Gate was a real time strategy that would give hints to the later Dawn of War series. The more popular Rites of War was a turn based table top game for the PC.
The numbers for their sales were not phenomenal and no one wanted to pick up for the Warhammer 40k franchise. Game’s Workshop started producing comic books, graphic novels, and novelettes telling the stories of the Warhammer 40k galaxy…. and it intrigued people. So much so that THQ bought the IP.
Their first game Fire Warrior was a first person shooter that was unfortunately, before it’s time. It was not very popular and was beaten back by the more popular Nintendo 64 and PSX console games.
They decided to go to Warhammer 40k’s roots, an RTS game. They gave the IP to Relic to work with. Relic at this time had produced Homeworld which was one of the most popular games, ever. What Relic came up with was the Dawn of War series. The series was a hit. People loved the homeless world of Warhammer 40k and found themselves yelling WAAAAARG! Dawn of War saw four expansions, all very successful in their own right. Dawn of War saw two sequels each had their own expansions.
But pirating hit these games very hard. These games were supersonic successes but their sales numbers were offset very heavily by the piracy numbers.
THQ felt that future titles for Warhammer would have to focus on online play to punish and push out pirates. Their first idea was Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. In 2001 shooters were not that popular. But in 2010 shooters were the most popular and profitable.
But in 2011 something happened, the market was flooded with shooters. MOBA shooters like Modern Warfare 3, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 3, and Halo 3 were all the rage. But these gave people a full experience for years, not months like previous shooters. THQ was too late to realize this.
In 2011 they released Homefront, Red Faction: Armageddon and Space Marine. None of these did very well and the THQ stock dropped to under a dollar. It was stated if they did not get their shares up they would be taken off of the NASDAQ listings.
In an odd move THQ gave a free sample weekend of their multiplayer game and listed 13 DLC options. In these DLCs were more powerful armor sets, new game modes, and aesthetic samples. Space Marine Multiplayer had become “pay to win.”
Synopsis
Upon buying Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine you are getting two separate games.
The first game is a single player game. You will be able to hold four weapons at a time. Your first weapon has no ammo limits and is a weak pistol gun. Your second weapon is an automatic blaster weapon that deals slightly more damage. This weapon is also the only one you can hold while wielding ‘power weapons.’ Your third weapon is a sniper rifle type. Your fourth is a power weapon, think grenade launchers and shotguns.
The campaign will allow you to equip different weapons for different scenarios. As well you can equip the POWER HAMMER. This weapon will one shot damn near anything but is very slow. Usually with the power hammer is a jet pack. The jet pack will allow you to lift off and powerslam your opponents.
After every kill you will slowly fill up a power bar. When the power bar is full you will let the rage of The Emperor out on everyone. This increases your melee and shot damage and when you aim you will enter a slow motion sniper mode so you can hit perfect head shots.
This power mode is also one of the only two ways to regenerate health. You have a combat shield that will regenerate if you don’t take damage for so long. But you also have a health bar. The health bar will regenerate only from hitting execute attacks or using your power mode. Execute attacks can only be done to stun enemies.
Melee options include single target, area of effect and stun. Stun can only be done on enemies who are so low on health. Alternatively jet pack ground slams or lascannon fire will stun a target. Of course weaker enemies will just die to these.
The single player experience is a single fluent campaign with few loading screens that brings you through the events of another doomed world. This world is overran by Orks. Sent in to save the day are the Ultramarines. A group of specialized Space Marine unit invented in Dawn of War 2: Retribution. This group is lead by Captain Titus. Space Marines are genetically engineered soldiers designed to serve.
The multiplayer is closer to a 3d person shooter version of Modern Warfare. In it you can carry a maximum of two guns, although some ‘loadouts’ as they are called will only get one super powerful weapon. The bigger your weapon the less mobile you are.
Classes in this part of the game can be broken down into four types: Standard (blaster rifle with high mobility), Dreadnaught (heavily armored, low mobility only one weapon), Assault (jetpack with melee weapon and a pistol), and Snipers. There are thousands of combinations of armor types and weapons that people can customize with.
As you level different types of armor and weapons will become available. You do this from gaining experience which is gained from killing players, assisting, protecting, taking nodes, and doing perks. You can also get new pieces by purchasing them as a DLC.
The multiplayer has many modes including capture the flag, capture and hold, and my favorite annihilation. There are also modes that you can purchase as DLCs for $4.99.
Strengths
Compelling Story
Fun Gameplay
Unique Twist on the Genre
Warhammer 40k is known for one thing, an amazing story. Warhammer 40k unlike most scifi worlds is broken and desperate. The orks in this world care only for blood, gore and conquest. Humanity finds its hopes in religion. Citizens are being mass destroyed every single day. Space Marine is another addition to this story giving us a feeling of loyalty and another a sense that everyone is corruptable.
If you’re new to Warhammer you’ll not get left behind. The story does not require any background.
The gameplay is new and refreshing for the genre. Think of it like Halo with melee. Yes I know Halo has melee. But this game has perpetual melee. Since it’s a third person shooter you can see around yourself and smash people down, as opposed to Melee’s more sinister assassin style melee. The game is very fun to play largely in part because of a well put together gameplay.
You will LOVE going into mega mode and channeling the power of the Emperor to hack and slash everyone up.
Weaknesses
Bad Collisions
Bad AI
Expensive
Linear Single Player
Imbalanced Multiplayer
Immediately you will find your dude is big and clunky, like a Space Marine. They will run into walls and pretty easily get stuck. The physics are Havoc physics meaning that you cannot pass through people. This means in multiplayer sometimes you will just roll or walk into people instead of find cover. Even the NPC partners in single player know this is messed up as a lot of times they’ll get stuck walking INTO each other.
The AI is TERRIBLE. Most of the time your allies are not even shooting. They never seem to kill anything. All they manage to do is get in the way, forcing you to take grenade hits.
The game is also not exactly a ‘cheap eat.’ The game at regular price is $49.99 and as an on sale price it is $29.99. But that’s not really the end of it. There are all of those DLCs that are $5 each which essentially doubles the normal price and quodrouples the sale price. The game is not significantly popular and because of this there is no real reason to charge for DLCs It is almost outrageous.
About the single player it is distinctively linear. This is actually VERY disappointing for a Relic game. Every single Relic game up to this point has been far less linear. In Dawn of War 1 there were multiple tactics and builds to get to a point, everything had multiple routes. In DoW2 you could actually choose different missions every time. So for them to make the single most linear shooter I have ever played is disappointing. I was expecting you to be able to choose multiple paths. Instead you go through… one path. If you try to divert you just run into invisible walls. Sorry you can’t walk up this small piece of rock bro… unless you have a jet pack.
Makes these space marines look like geriatric space marines.
The multiplayer in this game is bad. It’s like Modern Warfare 3. If you like this leveling system, well it’s for you. I’m not a fan of having to play a tonne to get everything. I much prefer a competitive environment like Counter-Strike where you get all the weapons. But a lot of people enjoy playing this kind of game where you are leveling up. Maybe you like that, I don’t. I rather get all the weapons upfront and deal with people using BALANCED weapons.
New players to these sorts of first person shooters are nothing but fodder for people who have been playing them for a while. Honestly how is that fun? The reason why people get ridiculous KDRs in most of these games has to do with them preying on nubs. Yes there are many talented players who are legitimately good but these games will only show off their talents if they are playing against people of an equal level… which they rarely will be.
Conclusion
The game is good, not great, just good. The price tag is a bit steep. For me if it goes on sale (or when it goes on sale) it is a good buy. But then it’s only a good buy for the single player. Multiplayer is insanely imbalanced. But that’s by design and intent, not because of anything wrong with weapon load outs. The single player will give you 12 hours of gameplay with four difficulties. All of the collectibles you will find your first playthrough because they’re all in the open and it is a linear path. At such a ridiculous price it is not worth buying at all.
I will say they ARE working on the game, for six months. Initially when you would execute an opponent you would be locked into an animation and just get owned by everyone. That doesn’t happen anymore, instead everyone around you is stunned. You can still got shot down, but you can’t die. It’s a work in progress.
If you were an unfortunate fool to buy it, it’s worth trying multiplayer again. If you’re new, just don’t pick it up, not worth your time.
I’ve had Warhammer 40k for roughly five months now and never thought once to try out its multiplayer. The concept just did not seem all that appealing. But with updates they greatly improved the multiplayer and tried to showcase the game with a free weekend of multiplayer.
So I decided to give multiplayer a try. Keep in mind I had NO DLCs AT ALL! I have no intention of buying them and my experiences will be based on not having purchased weapons and armor.
So first and foremost it is another one of these you have to level up, games. So in the video I SUCK because I have the worst weapons. After playing this for a couple of hours I got better weapons and suddenly my KDR (kill-death ratio) went from 0.5 to 3.0. Leveling up doesn’t take too much of your time and has not nearly as much impact on the game.
That’s not to say the game isn’t loaded full of BS
My first most hated thing is the THUNDER HAMMER. This thing is retarded. It apparently will one shot anyone and it has a cleaving attack. This means it can one shot multiple things at once. It wouldn’t be so bad, but then the person gets a jetpack so they can just snipe your entire team. The thunder hammer of course is purchasable making it a sort of pay to win item as opposed to vanity.
Another really insanely OP and infuriating one shot weapon is a laser snipe weapon. I’m tempted to call it the lasek cannon but I know that’s what fixes your eyes. But yeah it’s a sniper laser cannon will also one shot. It’s infuriating because the targeting retical on this thing is INSANE. It is HUGE. It means that it requires no real skill and aiming to snipe people. You just point and shoot. You can two-shot anyone easily and if you actually do any amount of aiming for the head region at all you will get a head shot.
So ignoring the infuriatingly overpowered bullshit, how is it?
Well it’s a lot like Modern Warfare 3. This is a game that I didn’t really feel a need to review because enough people have talked about how bad PC version of the game is.
I’m actually not a very big fan of shooters that require you to level up. I think shooters are addictive enough to not need to give you this hook that will keep you playing. I can play 3 straight hours of Counter-Strike. I don’t need to level and I don’t need to unlock anything. I just have the feeling that I need to head shot kids.
I HATE how I know that I’m dying at Level 1 because my weapons are full on worse than someone elses. For me to get a 0.5 KDR is really really good. This is because I take more damage than everyone and it takes more of my shots to kill someone. It’s a miracle I can kill anyone honestly.
But as I started getting more powerful my power comes with a friendly reminder that I’m killing people of a lower level as well. The people of insanely high level can one shot you and in return take many many shots to kill.
I often wonder about the people who play these sorts of games. Do they REALLY think it is fun smacking people who clearly do not have as powerful of weapons?
Why can’t developers make shooters that are BALANCED. Why is this piece of shit leveling system required in every single bloody shooter that comes out.
I don’t mind leveling for medals and aesthetic rewards like in R.U.S.E. or Starcraft 2 which had a leveling system that simply gave your position on a ladder.
It’s mind boggling. It boggles my mind how developers have to try and program addictive gameplay my trying to give us bells and whistles.
So that rant is over.
Is the multiplayer actually fun?
Yes.
Surprisingly yes.
I was thinking a third person shooter would make for particularly bad experience. As it turns out it might be better.
Most first person shooters have melee in them. The melee is usually really dumb doesn’t look good and feels cheap. Most of the time it is just you hitting people with the butt of your gun and killing them instantly. I’m sorry hitting someone with a blunt force object will not kill someone instantly. They’re usually lame mechanics.
In this game everyone has a chain sword, axe, or hammer. Meleeing animations are all fluent and easy to aim. Think of in a first person shooter trying to stab someone behind you. You have to 180 around and kill him. In this game you dude will just turn around with a mouse aim.
There is no such thing as a one hit death from head shots. You have to bleed down a person’s shield first and then one hit them. Unless of course you have the OP lasek cannon (which will also fix your eyes IRL). This is refreshing and it makes sniping less effective. Shooters get burned so bad because sniping is made to be the end all.
Overall multiplayer is quite enjoyable. It could use some balancing tweeks and they could just get rid of the leveling system. But overall it is fun.
If they do another multiplayer weekend, pick it up. If they sell multiplayer only, buy it.
TheGameGuru.Me 
