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Tacticular Cancer reviews Dawn of War

Discussion in 'TCancer News & Content Comments' started by DarkUnderlord, Nov 20, 2006.

  1. DarkUnderlord Bringing that old Raptor magic.

    DarkUnderlord
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    Nov 20, 2006 Stats Ignoring
    #1
    <strong>[ Review ]</strong>

    <p>It's a two year old game. It's had an expansion come out recently. So what do we do? <a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=26">We review the original sans expansions.</a> I take pure, unadulterated Dawn of War and put it up against Starcraft... because I can. Here's a snip:</p><blockquote><p>Let's say your army meets his army and you lose. That's it. You can't capture anymore strategic points until you've rebuilt your units. Now think about that for a moment. While you're rebuilding your units, his units are capturing even more strategic points. Even if you rebuild what units you can (with your dwindling resources now that your enemy is taking all your strategic points) and send them out, you're only going to encounter his units again. Given capturing strategic points gives you resources, that his army has defeated yours previously and that he's now captured more strategic points than you, he quickly gains the upper hand. </p><p>Your game is over even before you get the chance to counter attack because by the time you do, he's got even more resources, which therefore means he has even more units, which means whatever you've built is going to die and die horribly. So, if you manage to capture and hold on to more strategic points than your opponent, you've generally got the game in the bag long before the final shot is even fired.</p></blockquote><p>It's <a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=26">a monster article</a> but hey, it gives me an excuse to create a <a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/gallery.php?dir=Warhammer%20Dawn%20of%20War">Dawn of War Screenshot Gallery</a>. Enjoy! </p>
     
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  2. Greatatlantic Erudite

    Greatatlantic
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    #2
    "The only question is, will Relic ever learn how to properly balance a real-time strategy game?"

    Yes, and its called Company of Heroes! Actually, I haven't played in months I've been so busy. So maybe somebody discovered a winning strategy for one of the sides. It does do a much better job with defensive units, though it still has an abstract resource management system. Also, if you throught DoW had impressive visuals, CoH blows it away.

    As for the review itself, very thorough. My disagreements would be centered around your "like it or don't" qualifiers. Personally, I like my RTS games focused on frontline combat that encourage you to fight for the entire map.
     
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  3. Jason chasing a bee

    Jason
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    Nov 20, 2006 Stats Ignoring
    #3
    Is that like saying "she has a great personality"?
     
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  4. Ryuken Liturgist

    Ryuken
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    Nov 20, 2006 Stats Ignoring
    #4
    The DoW: Anthology package is one of the best deals I've seen in years. For only 5 euros more someone new to DoW has it all instead of only Dark Crusade, which needlessly screwed up the looks and voicework of some characters.

    As for comparing it to SC; well, that's like comparing apples to oranges, if you like apples more, then it's a clear case for you. Even by playing the demos of both games one could see that.
     
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  5. Greatatlantic Erudite

    Greatatlantic
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    #5
    Well to my defense it was 3AM, or close to it. I really should get more sleep, but when caffeine makes the urge to sleep go away, why fight it?

    But really, I think the thoroughness of the review was its strongest point. It really did cover just about every aspect of the gameplay and focused on gameplay mechanics for why it would be better or worse then Starcraft.
     
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  6. kingcomrade Kingcomrade Edgy

    kingcomrade
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    Nov 20, 2006 Stats Ignoring
    #6
    No kidding. First of all, the Accursed Crozius looks really stupid in both Winter Assault and Dark Crusade (and it doesn't accurately depict the crozius in tabletop, which doesn't look so unwieldy as its only 1 dimensional). They should've stuck with the Manreaper, though I guess with the whole Word Bearer thing the crozius makes sense. Why they changed a lot of the voice acting doesn't make sense, either, most of the originals were the best out of all 3 packs.

    Very good review, you pretty much pointed out why SC BW is on my hard drive and DoW isn't. You did forget the whole 6 gig of space vs ~30 meg, though.

    By the way, you ought to post those Starcraft replays, DU.
     
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