Hey beta beta beta! Swing beta!
So the Dawn of War II multiplayer beta is open. I installed it, and was pretty psyched about trying it out, but it turns out that it’s public multiplayer only — the private and local modes are disabled. And you know what? Fuck public multiplayer.
Now I’ll give you that I’ve enjoyed public multi games when they’re carnage-centric; I had some fun playing Quake 3 with randoms back in the day, for example. But you know what’s never been fun? Playing a head-to-head strategy game online against random people (and what’s even less fun than that is playing a co-op strategy game with random people, but I’m reasonably sure the Dawn of War II beta doesn’t include the co-op mode). If I wanted to hang around listening to trash-talk from teenage stoners all day long, I could just turn the chat channels back on in World of Warcraft. They’re off for a reason.
I was keen to see how the new system would play, with its lower focus on base-building and resource accumulation and greater focus on actual combat and tactics; the sameness of building up your base in every single level is part of what puts me to sleep about typical RTS, so it’d be keen to see if maybe I can stay interested in Dawn of War II the whole way through its campaign. Also, hey, there’s a co-op campaign mode; maybe I’ll play with the wife.
This is a "Games for Windows — Live" game, which I’m given to understand basically means it uses Microsoft’s Xbox Live for the PC setup. And you know what? "Xbox Live for the PC" is a shit name, but it’s about a thousand times better than "Games for Windows — Live." Attention Microsoft: sack your employees in charge of coming up with service names ASAP. I’m also not really clear on why Relic isn’t just using Steam’s own game-stats-and-chat-and-acheivements system, but, hey, there you are.
Still and all, if anybody’s keen to try it, let me know how it is. I’ll probably get it when it comes out.
