Ever since I started playing the Dawn Of War games I've had this odd little soft spot for the general storyline of Warhammer 40k. I mean, I'm not into the monotonous tabletop game and confusing card game but the stories and ideas behind the whole WH40K universe are surprisingly captivating and interesting.
The story for this game is relatively simple yet quite enjoyable; you are an unnamed force commander of the Blood Ravens space marines sent to the home-sector of the Blood Ravens to help defend it from an invasion of Orks (a brutal, green-skinned race of savages with rough English accents). After only a few battles on a desert and a jungle planet you suddenly discover that there are two other alien species assailing the sector as well. The numberless Tyranids arrive suddenly to attempt to devour the sector and the mysterious Eldar arrive to prevent this happening, by blowing up the sector. Of course however, this being your home-sector. you are thrust into battle after brutal battle against these enemies in an attempt to hold the sector until reinforcements arrive whilst also finding a way to destroy the Tyranids.
The best thing about Dawn Of War 2 is that in contrast to the four Dawn Of War games that preceded it, Dawn Of war 2 concentrates on the player wielding a few squads rather than a whole army. In every mission in the campaign (except for one in the middle and one at the end) you are dropped into combat with your commander and a choice of 3 of your 5 other units. The units you get are made up of; an infantry squad led by a bald guy, a scout squad led by a dude with a ridiculous robot eye, a heavy weapons squad led by an asshole, a jump pack assault squad led by a newbie and a massive heavy-armoured walker. because you have such a small force to into battle with each time, you are forced to really think about what squad weapons load-outs and combos you want. If you are facing an attacking mission then use swift-moving squads etc, so on so forth.
On top of that the difficulty level is a bit odd. The first two difficulty levels are bloody easy but the top two are harder than a 10-year old Christmas cake. But If you are having trouble doing a certain mission then simply do loads of side missions and unlock some powerful weapons (e.g. a hammer that can take down tanks or a plasma cannon). That brings me to my next point: the campaign's side missions. All in all there is roughly 20 missions as well as the many side missions that vary from 'blow up some generators' to 'kill a big alien in an arena'. Whereas the main missions provide plenty of varying combat situations the side missions offer like 3 or 4, each of which is relatively similar to each other. But aside from that, the campaign is tremendously fun and challenging. What also emphasizes this greatly is the fact that the space marines are genetically enhanced super-soldiers. They are all hulking, heavily-armoured brutes but swift-moving troopers and because of this you get a real feel that you can just power through any enemy. Now let me tell you, when you've got that feeling playing this game you literately can beat anything.
Another thing that makes Dawn Of War 2 so enjoyable is the great voice-acting. I'll admit, I have seen better-voice acting in other games but the voice-acting in this one makes the characters all feel genuinley believable. You even get a feeling that the Ork and Eldar characters are believable in the sense that the Orks are all incomprehensible brutes and the Eldar being massively arrogant. The only race in the game that doesn't have great voice acting is the Tyranids, namely because they don't talk whatsoever but make up for it with some awesome unit names.
Don't get the feeling that the single-player is the only good thing about this game though. The multi-player battles that you can join are truly entertaining, especially having been based around the legendary strategy game Company Of Heroes. One aspect of the game however, that is brilliance incarnate above all is the 'last stand' mode. In the 'last stand' mode you choose a champion from one of the races in the game, select a weapons load out and then drop into an arena with two other players to fend off against wave after wave of enemies. Seeing as how there is only 3 of you facing huge waves of attackers you really have to work as a team; when one of your buddies gets downed you help them up, you must co-ordinate your different fighting styles etc etc.
As with the campaign, in multilayer and 'last stand' the more you play the more goodies and unlocks you gain (as well as going up in the worldwide rankings). This can be very satisfying especially when you've been slaving away at the multi-player mode for days on end and you finally gain your wanted upgrade after several slogging matches with other players.
I can't think of anything else, bad or good, to say about the game. It forces you to time and co-ordinate every decision so carefully that you have to be paying attention to your whole force, not just one part of it. So I say "buy this game yer frigging gits" because in a genre of gaming that has been defiled so many times, Dawn Of War 2 is a strategy game that like Company Of Heroes and Red Alert 2 is fun no matter how many times you play it.
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