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Dawn of War 3 MP Beta; Preview
Topic Started: Apr 25 2017, 09:13 PM (35 Views)
Khan Kane
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Reaver Khan
Hey guys, damn it's been a long time since someone posted here...

Well i was going to post a video for this content, but that didn't turn out that great in the voice commentary department (ambient noise issues and etc)...
So good old fashion forum review it is (the text is a slightly adapted version of the script for the video):



INTRO:

So I've played a bit the of Dawn of War 3 Beta. The Beta was for multi-player only, and had no way of making matches vs AI, so that reduced the ability to check out things in detail.

Anyhow, i got a couple games in, and did the tutorial, which is enough to get a first opinion on the game:

Most of you that know me, and are watching this probably met me through a MMORPG. I play a lot of those lately, but they're not even close to being my first love when it comes to games.
One of the first games i played on a Windows PC was Warcraft, then Age of Empires, Caesar, and all the strategy games i could get my hands on. Sure i played shooters like UT and Doom, and racing games, and RPGs. But to date, nothing keeps me quite as hooked as a good strategy game.

My first contact with the 40k universe was actually as a mod for another game, more precisely a skin pack for the original Unreal Tournament. Back then i had no idea what that was except that they looked awesome. Then i found the first Dawn of War. And it was awesome, since then, i've played all Dawn of War games and expansions, collected and read through dozens of Novels on 40k, and played a ton other games from the universe, like Battlefleet Gothic, Space Marine, and others.
What i never played was the actual miniature game, because 1) that stuff's expensive, and 2) it takes two to tango, and i never met anyone that plays it. But i'm nerdy enough to actually watch people playing it on youtube (yes my life is that exciting).


The Graphics:


So on to DoW3. Most of you will know by now it's releasing this month, on the 27th. It as had a bit of controversy around it. People were used to the old engine from DoW and DoW2, which although better in DoW2 still looked more or less the same. The new game, obviously uses more current tech, and bigger units, so it needed to make some concessions. That means that regular Units will be smaller on screen because of the big ass elite ones (i mean you don't want to go around seeing only the foot of your giant walker).
So in order to make up for that they had to improve the visual queues for your units. So there's a bit more flashy lights and auras than in the old games, but unlike a lot of people i don't find them offputting and a step away from the grimdark of 40k.
In fact the setting for the 3v3 map that i played, and the tutorial maps as well feel very much akin to maps from DoW2.

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The Sound:

Then you have the sound. The voice-overs are decent. I mean yeah i don't think any of the original actors are still in the game (i guess when SEGA took over some stuff happened), but they get the job done. Its nice for example seeing a subtle change on one of the Librarian's Lines, hopefully those changes will resonate with the campaign story, since the current BloodRavens should still be recovering from treason and heresy amongst their ranks (check DoW2 story for details).
But where the game shines right now is the sound effects. They go a great way into giving weight and a feel of the power behind the stuff we're doing. This is very noticeable on the elites again. Their attacks are usually louder than anything on the field, so you get some read on what's happening.

Some samples to be found here:


Gameplay:

The game was obviously built with multi-player in mind, now hot-keys are more standardized (something they added as an option on the last expansion of DoW2) and commands are usually clustered similarly to MOBAS with unit controls being standardized to the left side of the keyboard (QWERASDFZXCV), other controls use similar groupings and all key-binds are readily visible on screen.

The Elites also feel a bit like moba characters, with very flashy easy to read attacks that usually involve some play/counter-play elements, which doesn't really detract from the game, but adds to it, now summoning an elite on the field is a major strategic choice instead something you simply do, because.
Elites offer extra power to the game, but they have a price, so weighing the cost vs benefit of summoning a cheaper elite now, or the stronger more expensive on later is something you'll need to do.

The Space Marine units and resources still work very much the same as previous iterations, with a few changes:
The Plasma Cannon is no longer an upgrade of heavy bolters but something that is deployed in tandem, i guess the objective is to make it newbie friendly, because those two weapons have mutually exclusive purposes. The heavy bolter is meant for shredding infantry while the plasma cannon works best vs armour.
This was one of the main features of previous DoW games, where you had to consider your upgrades vs your enemy, so you'd probably use more bolters vs armies that rely more on infantry and use the plasma cannon when the enemy was tank-heavy.
DoW 3 still keeps some of this, but from what i could see its mostly on the tactical marines, with plasma guns vs flamers.
Sadly because no matches vs AI I didn't get to experiment much, so i didn't play around with many of the units.

The new mechanics also lend some uniqueness to the races, having only played Space Marines i only got to test out their Drop-pods mechanic, which IS AWESOME. The previous game also had this but in a more contrived manner, requiring us to micro-manage spawn points and buildings to get units on the front-lines. Now it was streamlined into a secondary build queue with its own cool-downs.


The Multiplayer:


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The Elites and Doctrines in Multiplayer also should lend themselves to increase the game's longevity, the game has a in-game currency called skulls (a very heretical name actually) you earn from matches and from aquiring experience with your elites, you'll use this to unlock various doctrines and probably other elites to use in the game.
Also as you level your elites you'll unlock dyes, skins and doctrines to use on your armies, also lends a bit of credence to your army when you deploy the "Master" skins of an unit, or when your elite has the halo that serves as the final reward for leveling it to the maximum.

Posted Image

The new multiplayer mode is also very fun and objective-oriented, it also has a moba-ish feel to it with a central objective to destroy, and 2 other objectives you need to destroy to reach the final one, similar to towers and nexus of MOBAS.

Like previous versions you get an army painter that comes full of historical armies for you to pick, and allows you to create your own, of course. (my videos show me using my Blood Reavers army).

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The Veredict:


All in all, the game shows great promiss, the only drawback so far being that there's only 3 races and the campaign apparently will force us to bounce around between them instead of having a different campaign per race. I think it was the Winter Assault campaign that followed the same model, and it wasn't the worse of them all, just felt like you'd finish the game faster that way.
I'd rather see a campaign closer to Dark crusade or soulstorm which weresimilar to a game of "risk it" where' you'd vie for control of an entire map against other races.
I'm pretty sure that as soon as the game launches they'll be working on the next expansion, so it'll get better. After all the original dawn of war didn't have that many races in it either, iirc it only had one more faction (the Chaos Marines) than DoW3 will launch with.

My Hype level: 9/10 (Already Pre-Ordered)

Edited by Kane, Apr 25 2017, 09:16 PM.
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