f13.net

The Beta is over now, and the game is going live tomorrow on steam.

Anyone else here picking it up? :drill:

I probably will just to play the single-player game.

Sign me up!

I'll no doubt get it when it's cheap/discounted or steam-weekended. Mostly for the 40k licence aspect, sicne I still haven't played through any of the original DoW expensions yet.

The campaign is actually a lot of fun. It's arcade-y though, and does not play like the multiplayer units at all (heavy weapons squads deploy once and can sweep their arcs automagically, your grenades explode instantly and gib everything, etc)

WTF?

Essentially the campaign is supposed to be a branching thing with more "raaar, here are the FUCKING SPACE MARINES BITCHES" thing than the multiplayer balance.

So your units are far and away more powerful than they should be (and you customize them with shit you pick up in missions), and set against stupid odds. Also: Boss fights with overpowered named characters.

It's very over the top action RPGish with RTS controls in the single player.

That's just bizarre. I can understand minor changes like "hero" units that are only in the single-player game but I can't be the only person that "practices" MP RTS skills in the single-player game. By making the game totally different in single-player mode nothing I learn there transfers over to the MP game beyond the basic controls.

Pretty much. CPU skirmishes allow you to practice, but in the actual single player, everything you control is a Hero unit.

You have a tac marine squad, but really it's a few tac marines following a hero sergeant with abilities you couldn't get in the real game. The scout squad you get is two scouts and a hero scout, etc. You pick four of them and drop into a mission instead of building units per a normal RTS single player.

It doesn't do anything to help you learn the multiplayer (I'd argue it HURTS you trying to learn the MP, since you'd think tac marines get grenades, and heavy weapons don't require setup time to change facing), but it's actually a lot of fun as it's own side thing.

Oh well. I was hoping for a DoW that had a more tactical feel like their Company of Heroes series.

The single player is far closer to a Diablo feel with RTS units. Multiplayer is CoH with shittier tanks and space elves.

It does have a more tactical feel, just not in the campaign.

Freaking DRM crap.  I have the DVD, why do I need to go through Steam to play the game?

I posted my MP thoughts near the top.

naively i purchased this game already having played the multiplayer portion. Relic pumped the campaign intensely. Such a disappointment. First off the multiplayer and single player are completely different. Units behave differently have different abilities etc. So while playing the campaign you are not learning how to actually play the online portion. The AI is non-existent. You engage little groups of enemies. While battling one spawn of guys the remainder of the maps forces stand still and wait for your approach. They do not adapt to what you are doing in any way. Also, you can reinforce your lost troops quickly and for free while the enemies forces will just remain in their static location. So any battle you can not just attack-move to victory you can return in 10 moments completely healed with the enemy forces are still decimated.

Through one playthrough of the campaign you will have played every map in the game 20 times. There are a VERY limited amount of mission types with a vast majority being. Defend this/kill that guy. The bosses sit stationary waiting till their army is killed in the middle of an arena with a large arcade style health bar over his head. The bosses also just repeat the same short sequence of attacks and also do not change their behavior regardless of difficulty setting. In fact there is no AI difference between an easy level AI or expert. You just receive more damage. Which for a game based on strategy seems hugely half assed.

The plot is generic and the RPG aspects are so shallow that they dont make up for having to play the same map/mission for the 20th time to complete the game. You also have no control of saving. There is an autosave that overwrites itself so you can not go back to any previous battles on your campaign. You have to replay the campaign to change any choices beyond the current autosave. But that doesn't matter because the other choices are the same limited choices of map/objective. The enemies on a given map really dont matter because they all behave the same and have damn near the same characteristics.

The game just seems unfinished.

I am going to have to agree. The game is just "shallow". The monster AI is HORRIBLE for the campaign. And the big star on the map showing where the end boss is just feels cheesy.

I like how they did cover and made it more small scale, but other than that, there are a lot of things that just feel dumbed down and what not.

On review gave the game a 9, saying that all the changes are for the "advancement of the genra", but I dont buy that. It just feels dumbed down.

The single player campaign is somewhat uninspired, I'll admit.  However, the multiplayer is easily the most fun I've had in an RTS in a decade.  The fast pace, and the face that even extremely close games tend to last something like 30 minutes at max means that I don't have devote 2 hours to lpaying just in case a game turns into some epic 9 hour stuggle like in some other RTS games I've played (which to be fair, is hella fun sometimes, but i don't hve 9 hours to devote all the time).

In any event, the multiplayer is just what the doctor ordered for me

Incidentaly, if anyone wants a team mate for co-op campaign or 3v3 games, poke me and I'll give you my windows live id.

Samee here. 

Is anyone playing it? What do you think? I bought it but I'm waiting on a fix for the crashes before I play it much. From the little I played it combines space marines, loot, and some RPGish elements with Soulstorm type gameplay from DOW1. I also enjoy the fact that I don't have to build a damned base!

I like it, but there's more opinions in the Steam subforum on it, it seems most of f13 didn't enjoy the single player at all.

The singleplayer is very lackluster. The multiplayer is much more fun, although kind of intimidating at first if you are not a big RTS multiplayer person.

Duh. I had totally blocked out the fact that it is connected to Steam in my mind. Don't know why. Probably because I'm playing single player and it is very iffy on my ever playing MP at all beyond possible skirmishes with friends. Maybe.

My roommate and I are having a lot of fun with the co-op campaign.  Solo, you're controlling four squads, but with a partner you each control two, as opposed to two full teams of four, which was what I was expecting.  It makes for a very tight, fun experience.

I'm also digging the plot.  Not so much for its merits, it's the standard "fight the bad guys and the Eldar too because they're dicks, even though you share the same enemy" story, but it is well presented and the voice acting is entertaining.  Thule in particular was done well.  Sounds a lot like Optimus Prime, which is a vast improvement over the jackass they used for him in the previous games.  When he

it's a very  :drill: moment.

Even the loot descriptions are entertaining.  Each piece has it's own little story.  My favorite was a jump pack where the original crafter inscribed "Truth Conquers All" on one exhaust nozzle.  Then a later custodian put "Victory Over Truth" on the other.

Anyone having random slowdowns? Game runs fine for a few minutes, then slows to a crawl for 30 sec, then resumes at the normal pace. Tried restarting, running without background apps, no dice.

That's odd, I found the singleplayer to be pretty good.

It was both entertaining and challenging, and I expected the SP campaign to be shit, like every other DoW campaign in the series. But, it was suprisingly good. Made even better by the fact that you could co-op it with a friend if you wanted to.

I disagree with the guys before me. First of all, some guy said that "your units are way more powerful than they should be" and that the game lacks tactical depth. Seriously guy, play it on captain or primarch and tell me you can survive without tactics. Your space marines die horribly if someone just looks at them harshly and you have to actually be tactical and careful with how you play around with your little soldiers.

As for "playing the same maps over and over", yeah that's almost true. However, the maps change drastically depending on infestation which I personally thought was really neat. Overall I thought the campaign was great, much better than I expected. It's probably the most fun single player RTS game I've played since starcraft.

This is most definitely a step forward for the RTS genre in my opinion  :heart:

I think a lot of the gripes with the singleplayer have to do with the very lackluster npc AI. I mean, it amounts to "Span here, wait until aggroed, fight until dead".

Not sure I understand what else could be done?

I mean you had stationary spawns, ambushes or enemies that sought you out actively.

Not sure what people were expecting beyond that.

I disagree. I don't think it can be considered a step forward. Its a step sideways in to a different type of game, not an advancement of the RTS style.

That'd be Halo Wars.

I kid, but Halo Wars sure as hell is a kickass console rts, and has just the perfect mouseless interface.
The fact that it's also fun (and the only halo game i liked since halo 1) helps. Shame ensemble died.

See while i consider myself fairly pragmatic and open minded i just CANT understand where people are coming from. The single player campaign has absolutely 0 AI. Now i am not being dramatic when i say it has no AI. It actually contains NONE the enemy units wont even fucking move let alone respond in an intelligent way. There sole response is to "aggro" when you approach. How can a campaign where your enemies do absolutely nothing in response to you be considered "tactical". I beat the single player campaign on captain testing my theories. You can move-attack,retreat-reinforce using no special abilities and win...EVERY time.

Tactical depth?!?! Where for the love of god is this depth? Oh you find the fact that the maps are repeated with different types of generic enemy that do nothing but stand there and wait to die? Or that every map consists of you walking your little squads as a group down the same path for the 20th time? To engage the same enemies with the same exact lack of response from them?

How exactly is a map "changed drastically" when its populated by non-responsive fodder regardless of faction? And THQ must be some wizards to spin an obviously unfinished skeleton of a campaign as "revolutionizing" the genre.

Its fun to slaughter bad guys with wild abandon but havent you stopped and noticed the bad guys do absolutely dick but let you kill them?

You know you could've just said that this game is as much of an RTS as diablo is an RPG.

Fuck, this game is Diablo.

I expect an enemy that has options beyond "rush forward when aggressed" or "rush forward". The spawns behaviors are scripted individually they have no cohesive strategy. And while entirely scripted battles is not a negative per se. It becomes pretty bad when the only scripted behaviors are "charge when we see them" and "charge" none of the different units have different behaviors or AI to take advantage of their particular skills beyond "throw grenade randomly".

The AI is just utterly unresponsive to what is occurring in the game beyond their extremely limited scripted behaviors.

That would do a disservice to both RPG's and RTS's.

Once again though, what did you expect them to do? The scripted stuff is pretty decent. Like rangers stealthing up to your squads and throwing  grenades at you and such. I guess more flanking maybe? That's the only thing I could think of, and it would only apply to Eldar since orks and tyranids are pretty much "run straight at target and try to murder it".

Overall I just didn't notice any lack in the enemy AI because I was entirely busy trying to stay alive, since the space marines are made out of tissue paper on Primarch.

You're full of it mate. The enemy not only intelligently take cover, they can also do things like stealth up to you, throw grenades at you and can take cover inside buildings as well as deploying any number of special abilities against you. Beside that I don't know what you expected? That every enemy unit on the map is constantly moving around, shifting and homing in on your arrival dynamically? That does not even happen in FPS games, where most encounters actually are pretty much exactly what we get in DoWII. Even so, on most maps they have enemy units hunting you actively rather than "standing still in one area" as you describe it.

As for tactical depth. Here you lose all credibility. There's tons of tactical dept - much more so than I've experienced in most other single player RTS games, where the SP campaign usually comes down to "build strongest unit over and over and send it at enemy base"

Lets make a list to point out some of the things you somehow missed while playing the game;


I mean it's okay if you don't like the game, that's fine. You even have a valid complaint in that the campaign only has a limited number of maps, even if that was something I didn't even notice until several hours into the game, but the rest of your points are just straight up ignorant. If you're going to complain about something, complain about the lack of available units or the horribly bugged and broken state of the multiplayer.

Tissue paper.... That is immortal as long as you have a single hero still standing. That can be reinforced for no cost instantly and be back in the fight. That can "spam potions" which exist in abundance.

The scripted stuff is pretty decent? They only have two scripted behaviors...stand still untill approached and rush forward. They use no tactics based on faction/ability/circumstances. They dont behave as an "army" they are individual groups of mobs that have no overlying strategy and tactics beyond what i have already described. But just for the sake of arguement i guess ill fill in some of the blanks.

The enemy AI should behave as an army. They should be aware that units in said army are under attack and respond accordingly. They should have various modes of attack. They should initiate attacks based on circumstance. They should reinforce their losses when you retreat. They should reposition themselves after you attack them and then withdraw. They should make use of their unit abilities. They should use different paths of attack at various times. They should withdraw when outmatched. They should have some form of behavior other than what is determined by a simple "attack them" "wait till approached to attack them"

There should be maps with multiple avenues of attack with room to allow for some semblance of choice and strategic depth. There should be more objectives beyond "go to the start and kill that guy" "hold this place versus 5 waves of mindlessly zerging enemies". Every mission should not consist of select my units and attack move them to the objective. I should not be able to attack-move retreat-reinforce to victory regardless of "difficulty" setting. Difficulty settings should do more than just increase the damage you take. It should be upgrading the enemy AI. The campaign should consist of more than the same mission 100 times versus the same enemy. There should be an actual story told through missions instead an obviously unfinished voice over of stationary random units.


I loved DoW/CoH. I love warhammer40k. I love RPG's. But when i see people praising the awesomeness of the single player campaign i am seriously at a loss for how these glaring and obvious design failures are seemingly not noticeable.

The game is not finished. This is appalingly apparent with the campaign. But is ever present in almost every facet of the game.
The original DoW's campaign was less than stellar as well so i didn't really have all that high expectations. Tacking on some shallow RPG elements does not somehow equate to "tactical depth" when the campaign is an ever repeating series of maps with the same objectives and same gameplay. Its the same mission repeated over and over and over again with no deviation besides some gimmicky "boss battles". And even those are repeated over and over and over again.

You obviously haven't played the game on captain or primarch. Your marines will die, and they will die a lot. At certain points in the game, many units will one-shot your marines. Only when you get past level 16 and get terminator armor and tons of buffs/heals do you really become able to afford yourself to be a bit more casual to the gameplay. Before that though, if you make a mistake, you'll lose a squad very fast. This leads to tons of tactical decisions you'll have to take. To me, it sounds like we had very different experiences in the SP campaign. Apparently you don't seem to think that loss of time is enough as a punishment for screwing up, but rather want to get a "game over" screen, cementing your failure and forcing you to repeat everything all over again.

As for your whining about the AI, you're pretty much describing AI which does not exist in any game today. Like I said in another thread, not even first person shooters, the genre with some of the best AI can stand up to your standards. Most of your nagging isn't even correct. They do reposition themselves and they do have various modes of attack. Did we even play the same game?

Oh, and there are tons of alternative routes to take in any given mission. The flanking options are ripe, but somehow you seem to have missed them all? Something I find quite suprising, considering how obvious those options are.

And honestly, if you play the game by "selecting your units and attack moving them" then you CLEARLY did not play the game on even captain difficulty. You played the game on one of the easier settings and you seem to be upset that it was easy. To be honest you're the one guy I've met on the internet who is clearly hating the campaign on every single level. Surely, you're not looking at it objectively, and have some grudge against it for some reason? Otherwise you're just being silly, since most of your arguments seem to be made up.

Ya you dont seem to be "Getting it". What the fuck difference does "dying" make when units are reinforced near instantly and for free? When you can AoE resurrect any fallen heroes with an overly abundant "ress potion"? Yes you will lose units. That are instantly replaced for FREE. while the losses the enemy sustains are not. If you cant figure out how this makes it easy you are some form of retard.



The campaign CONTAINS NO AI its based solely on a few limited scripted commands. And if you are finding the campaign difficult on any setting you are just a shit player. Da flanking options are ripe! Yes the maps with only two avenues of approach that both lead the same place are RIPE for flanking haha

Of course i don't need to flank all i need to do is attack-move,retreat-reinforce.

Yes i obviously never played it on primarch! hahaha Obviously never played it on captain durf durf OBVIOUSLY played it on da easier setting durf durf.

I just explained to you how you can win every single battle without doing jack shit. Im sorry if you find this game challenging and "dynamic" and "tactically deep" its not.

I mean i could demonstrate my lack of skill if you like? It is a multi-player game after all.

 :popcorn:

You're just coming off as a bumbling idiot at this point. You apparently want magical AI, which only exists in your demented mind and harsh death penalties where if you lose a squad it's gone forever until the next mission? I'm trying to understand you here, but you must be operating on some other wavelengths. You can't, EVER, be successful on the harder difficulties by "attack moving" with your units into an enemy blob. Your units will die horribly before they're geared out near the endgame. If you actually had a hardcap on how many space marines you could lose in a mission the game would become a complete shitfest on anything but the easiest difficulty.

If you consider "dying horribly and losing tons of time and not making progress efficiently" an efficient way of playing, then I'm not sure I can reach through to you.

So i will assume that is a "No i don't want you to show me how wrong and stupid i am" fair enough i wouldn't either.

Yes i want magical AI that has the ability to do more than "stand then attack when approached" and "run right at them and stand till i die". For surely only sorcery could accomplish this! And yes it is VERY demented to point out that "dying" doesn't fucking matter because AoE res potions exist in abundance (more than you will ever use in fact) and that any squad losses can be easily and quickly replenished for absolutely 0 cost. Hence the "difficulty" doesnt matter because the only thing increased is the damage you receive and not the difficulty of the AI.

Fucking brilliant.

I offered to show you you declined. Yet persist in inane sniveling. why?

Are you seriously waving your dick around on the internet? You just proved you are incredibly thick, since challenging me in the multiplayer means jack shit since the single player is almost a completely different affair. If you had any grasp on things relating to this game, you would fucking know this. I mean, really guy, do you think at all before you type? I'm going to dismiss you as a raving fucking clown now, if that is okay with you. :uhrr:

Co-op campaign you fucking moron.

So you want to show me your "mad skills" in a coop game where I control 50% of your forces? This just gets better and better. I mean, even disregarding the fact that co-op is twice as easy because you only need to micro half as many squads, it's a pretty dumb idea in general.  If you want to though, I'm up for it  :uhrr:

I love how you edit every post you make in an attempt to somehow mask the fact you are a dipshit. Dis gets betterz N betterZ!  :why_so_serious:


You asked me to elaborate on exactly what i found lacking and how to correct this. I responded clearly and specifically defining what i found wrong. And all you have done is snivel and whine making moronic comment after comment. Anyone who wants to verify my claims can easily do so themselves.

I claim that the AI in the game is almost non-existent with the only actions being those of a few simple scripts. These scripts do not adapt in any manner. This is not a fucking opinion. I claim the game recycles each map around 20 times a campaign play through. This is not a fucking opinion. I claim the game feels extremely unpolished with a pretty glaring lack of content. From character models and unit types to sound effects. This is an opinion but a pretty fucking substantiated one.

And you retort with name calling and false equivocation providing nothing of substance to base your contrariness on.

BTW what is your GFWL I.D. I wish to observe your completion of the campaign on primarch.

Solution:
Go play Empire: Total War (a real man's RTS) when it comes out   :drill:

The demo was trying to cause my computer to explode.

Gryeyes is the seme, and Zzulo is the uke?

Ya that campaign is just FULL of tactical depth. :why_so_serious:

The multi-player is just as unfinished and shallow as the campaign. I don't even need to get into the completely sparse army lists. Multiple redundant models to pad the already sparse lists. Broken abilities,shit pathing,lack of game types,lack of maps and absolutely unacceptable multiplayer. 

As to da complex AI behaviors.


1. All units automatically seek cover when they stop moving. The AI is scripted to have them attack-move to a location at which point they automatically seek cover. And will not move for any reason until dead. The point is "they dont respond to your actions" not "there is not a handful of scripted behaviors". There is no true AI. Yes some units will start stealthed charge straight at you throw a grenade...and then remain stationary while you shoot the shit out of them. There are several abilities that are scripted. But the usage of their abilities is not beyond a simple script to use that skill right then. They will not retreat/reinforce/reengage they wont even pursue you back to the reinforcement spot a majority of the time. They are not "intelligently seeking cover" they automatically take cover with no thought of its direction or their position. As to units purposefully taking cover in a building in response to my actions? I have NEVER seen that happen. The houses are almost always pre-occupied.


2. You are on fucking drugs. Other than the enemies scripted to "zerg" you at the start EVER unit on the map sits in its predefined position. They do not fucking patrol. They do not reposition in a different location. And they sure as shit "dynamically seek you out" whatever the fuck that means. You can see the stationary units while in battle very often. They sit until you enter their "aggro" range and then they attack.


I cant even decipher your inane babbling about FPS and "dynamic seeking" is :why_so_serious:. The maps are fucking tiny with if you are lucky two symmetrical paths that lead to the same fucking place. A couple little branches for the optional objectives off of the main path. 99% of the missions. Dynamically seeking apparently consists of walking down the only fucking path available. But once again they do not "patrol" they remain static untill told to suicide at you. Or remain still until you choose to engage them.


But at this point this is a bit silly. You are resorting to making shit up and being dishonest in an attempt to somehow hide the fact everything ive said is accurate.

Dynamically seekz!  :awesome_for_real:

I merged the discussion about the released game from the Steam Beta thread into here.

Edit: typos

You give me such a headache. First you say that there is no AI and how the only thing it does is to stand still and wait to die. Now you concede that there is AI but it does not live up to your standards. What I'm saying is that the AI is as good or better than in any other RTS ever made of this type. You apparently can't see that at all. And once againt you keep spouting off shit that is not even correct. Enemy units do fall back and retreat, and they do take cover in buildings. What they don't do, is run back to you once  reinforced, because that would mean you'd end up with the possibility of having to deal with tons of reinforced warbands coming back to bite you in the ass when you've advanced to another position where you're already busy fighting other enemies. What you want would make the game incredibly frustrating.



You didn't read what I wrote. I was calling you dumb for expecting such AI to be in an RTS game of this sort. If the enemy units were all moving around and repositioning themselves as you wanted to, the game would be largely impossible to beat on the harder difficulties. It's designed so you go from cover to cover and area to area, clearing things out as you advance in smaller portions. If we had the pools of enemies all react at once whenever you entered a given hostile area, while patrolls walked in on you from behind,  the game would suffer immensely from it. Surely even you must be able to realize this? I can think up several scenarios where such AI behaviour would break the game and guarantee you a loss.

And there is enemy AI which seeks you out. There are buildings in the game that spawn additional enemy forces, and these forces will pursue you until you can get rid of them, so no, not all the enemies are stationary blobs.



I brought up the FPS genre because you obviously want AI similiar to what you find in those games. I was telling you that it was unrealistic to think so. I also said that even in first person shooters, the enemy encounters are usually stationary blobs of enemies who aggro if you get too close. Your idea of what AI does in most games seem skewed.

As for the map variety, I've already agreed with you. There were not enough maps, neither in SP or MP

Im not going to respond with a wall of text this time so ill summarise.

1.Its not that the AI is limited its that "auto seek cover" is an automatic behavior with all units. Including the ones you control. Its not a behavior that is triggered in response to your actions. So its not an indication of AI existing. My issue with the AI is that it does not appear to exist in the campaign.

2.None of the faults with the AI not existing is some hugely unreasonable claim. Its been pointed out by many others and is not my imagination. Justifying an complete lack of AI is just silly. While the campaigns of many RTS's are scripted to some degree. I can not recall this degree. I honestly believe that beyond a series simple scripts there is no active AI.

And if you haven't noticed the campaign maps are to a large degree the multi-player maps. They are just camouflaged nicely.

And honestly the AI or lack thereof is really just a symptom of the real problem. The game was just not ready to be released.

The real problem is that there's been no such thing as "AI" in any game ever created.  So this one, just like every game before it, suffers.  Kind of a moot argument that's done for just about every game... even when the "AI" is very difficult to overcome.  Gaming AI (and lack thereof, because it doesnt exist) is the weakest element in development, so get used to it I guess.

(http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ka2erEVw_jO1QM:http://www.americansweets.co.uk/ekmps/shops/statesidecandy/images/a1_steak_sauce_from_the_stateside_candy_co_www.americansweets.co.uk_(medium).jpg)

I haven't played the game at all, but the AI is probably lacking because there really is no resource management for them in campaign side is there? Do they even gain requisition points to spend? Can they upgrade their weapons? If not, then seeing all they do is 'aggro' means we're just playing DOTA v CPU in W40K skin.

Given DoTA's popularity, i'm fairly certain that's exactly what they were going for.

I think the disconnect here is that Zzulo is talking about the enemy NPCs once engaged, and everyone else is talking about them BEFORE being engaged. Once engaged the enemy scripting is "decent", but its the before aggroing that people are complaining about.

I'll tell ya I frankly didnt buy this game because with 2 humans vs 3 CPUS on the hardest difficulty we still owned and never went past tier 1 production.  Maybe a bit of tier 2 but that's it really.
Their "AI" amounts to varying degrees of difficulty with regards to amount of spawns and timing on early rushes and that's it.  Which is basically just built into how well the CPU manages production.  So yah, the units themselves are generally pretty dumb imo.

I was never really talking about the skirmish AI, which I think is atrocious. It's just buggy and badly constructed. I've been in skirmish games vs Expert CPU's and they never built anything, or only sent a tank against my entire army and so on. In terms of the campaign though, I thought the AI fit in very well, and meshed with the whole concept of the small tactical squad warfare.

Alright, jumped straight to the 2nd highest difficulty and blew past 6 missions with not much of a 'this is hard' moments. Except when I faced the first boss and was totally unprepared for anything. I realized later this is easily countered by just pumping the force commander with moar HP and clicking the instant heal pot when he's at 10% hp.

There's no boss that survives a good orbital strike on top of them so far. That they give you an item that makes your team invulnerable only improves this tactic.

I found out a bit late that the mecha wasn't affected by invulnerability. He died for the greater good.  :awesome_for_real:

Started playing on hard, restarted on normal because I could never seem to get 14 points on a mission - either I was too slow or didn't kill enough creatures or one of my guys died. I thought you had to be that good to unlock bonus missions, so i restarted on normal. Later I found out you didn't have to as long as you held the structures, oh well.

Beat the game on normal, it becomes trivial once you start to get good items. Rally+call to war is a free heal, plus you have a heal and invincibility and orbital strikes and cyrus for the headshot of any annoying units. I think I got lucky and had a good item for my heavy bolter squads, high damage with a bonus aoe damage, I just stacked +% damage items on them and it was great once I got to the 'don't need to set up to fire' level.

A good little game, I'd have enjoyed it more if I could play as the necrons! I don't mind the non-building combat, I think it's more fun this way. I'll probably replay it on the hardest diff so I need to use more tactics than just 'walk at them, force commander in front to draw fire'. A little more variation in the maps and objectives would have been nice.

Quick edit: I really really wish they had the balls to end the game like how I *thought* they were going to end it - the last part of the last mission as progressive waves of harder and more numerous enemies, with a score tally at the end and a ranking for how many you were able to kill before you were finally overrun. That would have been sweet. But no, it was just a mediocre ending with a 'last boss' just like every single other mission in the game.

Seems like Cyrus made Tyranids trash mob hunting much much easier. I don't know the name of the Tyranid unit, but it's larger than the small ones, but it dies on one hit of High Power Shot. And everytime it dies, the small ones would start turning stupid and start circling around n hit each other. Cue the heavy bolters coming in with focus fire and the tac nades followed with Force Commander To Victory! Not to mention the bosses doesn't even react to Cyrus sniping him 9 times to 50% hp. Wtf?

So stat builds are probably easy to mess up early game cause you're not sure what you need. But I've been going with.
1.Force commander: Most on HP, Some on Melee. A human battering ram and boss tank if needed. Carry meds and invul on him.
2.Cyrus: Energy till Stillness then rest on Ranged Attack - Sniper for High Powered Shots.
3.Devastators: Ranged All the way. -Hvy.Bolters are the only ones I've got now with Turret Accessory just spam 4 on boss fight for max dmg.
4.Tac Marines: HP and few points on ranged. I took Energy to unlock 2nd accessory slot cause it's really great having Grenades & artillery to tear through the trash mobs. Otherwise their dmg output is really low compared to Devastator or the Single target specialty of Scout Snipers.

Ok did i somehow miss the librarian? I do not recall him ever making an appearance but he was stated to be in the game.

Is he really not in it or did i miss the correct mission?

So, um, what's the competitive multiplayer like? Frothing to a minimum, please.

Also, what's this about the box version requiring Steam? If I don't like Steam is there any advantage to buying the box?

And, perhaps a silly question, but can two people play with one disc?

Online play ignoring the pretty horrible GFWL stuff is entertaining. But it is very limited in a variety of ways. Limited maps and the available maps are extremely generic. Also imo the maps are really small for 3v3 extremely limited approaches etc. Many of the features are poor implemented. Many abilities,pathing and the like are bugged or broken. Within the most recent patches from beta the unit balance has shift hugely. All of the factions being equal in a competitive sense is going to be a distant goal.

Battles are short and the gameplay a little shallow but still very entertaining. But in any competitive sense the game is not really finished/refined enough.

Matchmaking is horrible,7 maps in total to choose from and sparse unit lists.
All versions require Steam activation i believe.

Picked this up recently, i have really enjoyed the co-op campaign. Multiplayer online is just  :drill: I really like how it feels somewhat like CoH.

Coop was fun, i admit, i've more or less given up the multi due to very few maps, and repetitiveness of the games.

i dunno, i wanted to love this game, srsly.

oh yeh, it could just be australian net, but the netcode can't seem to handle 3v3, more often than not you'll get 1 person drop and the moron CPU kicks in.  That was a real thorn in my paw.