Ineffable damnation now thoroughly effed
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II has been out for a while now, but I still haven’t picked it up due to my preference for waiting until games cost thirty dollars and buying them then. So instead of that, I’ve been replaying the original Dawn of War, fucking up some chaos demons and greenskins and goddamn irritating space elfs.
Dark Crusade was really up my alley. Instead of a weird story mode with arbitrary restrictions on what you can build and what troops you can field, it just gives you a planetary map to conquer, and every battle plays a lot like the skirmishes, but with cumulative results and rewards and things. That’s the exact play mode I want in these games, since one thing I’ve absolutely hated about every RTS I’ve ever played is how few options you have for most of the game. It’s like, hey, I know there are Terminator Squads in this game. How about you let me goddamn use them sometime before the very last level?
So Dark Crusade was great about that. It was also great about letting you play whatever faction you want and not sticking you with one or two "campaigns" while all the other factions are just for the CPU to play with. But you know what I didn’t love about Dark Crusade? Invisible units. I know, "but Darien," you say, "lots of games have some type of stealth or invisibility." And that’s true — lots of games do. But very few games make it work the way Dark Crusade makes it work. The invisible units in Dark Crusade can’t be fired on by anybody ever unless you have a way of making them un-invisible. And you know what doesn’t make them un-invisible? Attacking.
So, yeah, they’ll just stand there plinking away at you, invisible as the day is long, and you can’t do a fucking thing about it. No automatic reveal when they attack, no option to blind-fire in the direction of the shots and take a huge hit penalty, no AI that’s smart enough to make the troops fall back when something they can’t see is killing them — nothing. You know what’s the least fun thing in the entire world? When you’re nearing the end of sacking an enemy base, and the battle’s finally turned in your favour, and then you realise he’s reinforced with invisible units. And all your servo-skulls — which are the only unit that lets you see invisible, and which take up the valuable attachment slot where you could put a Librarian or an Apothecary or some other unit, and which have all of maybe 70 HP — got killed in the firefight. So now, even though you finally won this kickass fun seige, all you can do is retreat because your enemy’s just decided to bring in the magic unhittable units. That’s not very much fun there, game.
So what I’m saying is that I’d appreciate it if Dawn of War II is as much like Dark Crusade as possible, except without the terrible goddamn invisibility mechanic.
