Posted March 01, 2011
The tutorial is surprisingly well done. It's delivered in a story driven mission which does the normal tutorial duties whilst managing to avoid being boring, definitely recommended for everyone even if you already know how the entire game plays.
There's no save game importing so your previous squad levels and equipment are gone but you're not playing as the same team anyway (at least not yet, the only returning playable character so far is Cyrus) so its not really a loss. You can import your stats for Last Stand and multiplayer army paint jobs and the like though, I'm SO glad I've not lost that level 2 mekboy I was working on!
The start of the Space Marine campaign is a massive spoiler for Chaos Rising (summarises the story of the last 3-4 missions) so whatever you do don't play as the Marines without finishing Chaos Rising first.
They seem to have changed the structure of the game quite a lot, the static squads are gone in favour of a hybrid of DoW1 & 2, you don't seem to have an onscreen base but you can requisition various units who can be teleported in at the beacons. One other odd thing is that reenforcements for squads cost requisition so you can't just win by attrition since resources are finite and because of this, they've made the reenforcing of squads a manual process so you don't waste resources reenforcing a scout squad when what you need is another devastator.
All of the hero abilities seem to be energy based now but the energy recharges quite a bit slower so you can't just sit behind a wall and toss grenades every 20 seconds as you could in DoW2 where the energy recharges about as fast as the cooldown timer on the grenade. Grenades also have a 1 second detonation timer when they land, not a lot but it might require a bit of planning when attacking an advancing enemy. Tarantula turrets are also not just a fire and forget item, they require the unit who deploys them to actually set them up and be unable to defend themselves (for about 10 seconds) as they do.
I just finished the first Blood Ravens mission and aside from the usual wargear reward, you go back to the sector map and can select one of three things, another 2 bits of wargear (missile launcher and shotgun for me) or unlocking a new unit type (in my case the tactical marine squad). Seems like they've made a lot of changes but they seem largely beneficial so far.
My fears of the game not being as strongly story driven seem to be unfounded which is quite a relief, the first Blood Ravens mission sets up a strong story with a well definied antagonist and a protagonist who looks like he'll take to the hero role pretty well. Rather nice to have a commander with a voice again.
Now I have to decide if I want to continue the Blood Raven campaign or try the first mission for the other races. I'm tending towards the latter I think, shall post any notable updates as I go.
Initial Verdict: Very good, the Emperor would approve.
There's no save game importing so your previous squad levels and equipment are gone but you're not playing as the same team anyway (at least not yet, the only returning playable character so far is Cyrus) so its not really a loss. You can import your stats for Last Stand and multiplayer army paint jobs and the like though, I'm SO glad I've not lost that level 2 mekboy I was working on!
The start of the Space Marine campaign is a massive spoiler for Chaos Rising (summarises the story of the last 3-4 missions) so whatever you do don't play as the Marines without finishing Chaos Rising first.
They seem to have changed the structure of the game quite a lot, the static squads are gone in favour of a hybrid of DoW1 & 2, you don't seem to have an onscreen base but you can requisition various units who can be teleported in at the beacons. One other odd thing is that reenforcements for squads cost requisition so you can't just win by attrition since resources are finite and because of this, they've made the reenforcing of squads a manual process so you don't waste resources reenforcing a scout squad when what you need is another devastator.
All of the hero abilities seem to be energy based now but the energy recharges quite a bit slower so you can't just sit behind a wall and toss grenades every 20 seconds as you could in DoW2 where the energy recharges about as fast as the cooldown timer on the grenade. Grenades also have a 1 second detonation timer when they land, not a lot but it might require a bit of planning when attacking an advancing enemy. Tarantula turrets are also not just a fire and forget item, they require the unit who deploys them to actually set them up and be unable to defend themselves (for about 10 seconds) as they do.
I just finished the first Blood Ravens mission and aside from the usual wargear reward, you go back to the sector map and can select one of three things, another 2 bits of wargear (missile launcher and shotgun for me) or unlocking a new unit type (in my case the tactical marine squad). Seems like they've made a lot of changes but they seem largely beneficial so far.
My fears of the game not being as strongly story driven seem to be unfounded which is quite a relief, the first Blood Ravens mission sets up a strong story with a well definied antagonist and a protagonist who looks like he'll take to the hero role pretty well. Rather nice to have a commander with a voice again.
Now I have to decide if I want to continue the Blood Raven campaign or try the first mission for the other races. I'm tending towards the latter I think, shall post any notable updates as I go.
Initial Verdict: Very good, the Emperor would approve.
