ddickinson: Good day, everyone!
I hope you are all doing great today and are having a lovely day?
*morning hugs and silly waves*
ddickinson: Awww. Would it have killed you to lie and pretend it was due to me having super powers. :-)
I was going to ask if that was the game I thought it was, but then I Googled it. I am not sure where I have seen it before, but it was the game I thought it was. Are you enjoying it at least, despite it's difficulty?
I wonder why Relic decided to change the format of DOW so much? Probably to cut corners by using the Company of Heroes engine. I know my brother did not like the upgrade feature for each character. He said it was nice at first, but they don't let you unlock enough points to earn all the upgrades, so you have to be careful what you choose. This is despite DOW 2 letting you continue to fight, you just don't get any more upgrade points. I don't like games like that. I prefer to be able to max the character, but that is just my preference.
I remember you telling me about the Terminators just smashing through things, and when I had a quick play on my brothers computer I noticed that myself. He said that the cover became pretty useless anyway, especially on the later games as you make your character stronger. It was a nice idea for WW2, but I don't think it works with 40K. He said a similar thing to you, that there was no real strategy or tactics involved, especially once your team was quite strong.
I was not a fan of Dark Crusade. I it looked nice, but the whole skirmish maps made to look like a single player campaign was horrible, and from what you tell me it got even worse in Soulstorm. I liked the end mission for each faction, where there was a bit of story and the enemy had a prebuilt base. It was more challenging and more like a regular RTS game.
My brother also told me about the cutscenes on Retribution, and how they were horrible short and often not really that good. Tyranids congratulating you? That sounds so silly. Why the hell would the Hive Mind care about you, you are nothing in the grand scheme of things (and by you I mean the player, not you personally :-)). I guess it's like you said, to praise the silly gamer. But it's not very fitting with the lore. But then neither is the way the Exterminatus was handled. From what I hear you are one one planet when it happens, yet you somehow have time to escape, and then you fight on another planet that had previously suffer an Exterminatus yet people are still there and have been for some time. That is not how an Exterminatus works, it's not just a simple ariel bombardment or cleansing, it renders the planet uninhabitable (generally permanently), and not just to humans but to all life, Xenos included. That is why it is an Exterminatus.
The strange thing is, I would still play them if they came to GOG. I would not pay full price for them (I have heard more than enough to make me think they are not worth the price), I would only get them on a good sale, but I would play them, just to experience it fully for myself
Ixamyakxim: I've actually always wanted to give these games a shot. Now that the Warhammer "seal" is broken, I wonder if they'll end up here - you don't happen to recall their publisher do you?
ddickinson: It would be nice to have them here, especially the first DOW game. It would be even better if it had widescreen support. My disc version does not. The only problem I really had with the very first game was the unit cap, but that can be easily modded to increase the limit. I was about to answer your question about the publisher but I see Crow beat me to it (thank you Crow).
Good afternoon. Hopefully you're continuing to feel better. =)
Well, I guess it depends on how you look at things.
You might not have a literal superpower, but I actually give enough of a crap about you that I responded when you mentioned me. ;)
I have issues with how some things are handled in Orcs Must Die (getting three skill trees but only being able to use one per mission, having to start from the very beginning if an enemy gets through, being on a timer but not getting to see the timer until the mission's complete so you sit there biting your nails hoping you didn't just run around spastically clicking your finger off only to not get a perfect score because you went over the time allotment,
not being able to hear the antagonist deliver exposition because they do so quietly and during gameplay so it's like they're mumbling at you), but overall it's still fun, and it's a nice change of pace from boring standard tower defense.
Your brother ran into the level cap, just like I did. I don't mind not being able to be the absolute master of every single thing, but them expecting a player to want to keep playing what amounts to skirmish levels in the sole hope of picking up loot when your character is already extremely powerful is a bit much to ask.
The ability to keep leveling, even if it's a small increase, is a very good motivator for players to keep putting time in when they'd otherwise quit doing so. Once you hit the level cap, that entire part of the experience is over.
The game could've been balanced for higher difficulty within a single game after you reach a certain level, but that would have taken more work, something it feels like they wanted to avoid as much as possible given how much they copy/pasted out from a preexisting game.
Dark Crusade could have been vastly improved if they'd put the time in to make each map special in its own way.
One of the best experiences is trying to clear out a huge encampment of orks without the ability to reinforce.
Even on normal mode, that level wiped me out more than once because you had to think to get through it.
But they didn't, so the levels definitely start to run together for the most part.
Yes, the cutscenes aren't great by any means. And yes, the escape from Exterminatus is a timed level wherein you're fighting enemies while running and dealing with bombardment that does light damage to your troops if you're caught in it.
Not even including what you're saying about it being a process that goes beyond simply using explosives, the whole thing is ridiculous. When you're on the planet, the artillery is light but it's destroying the planet, and when you're done, it shows a cutscene of some ship firing one massive round that destroys the entire planet's surface.
Why they wouldn't do that to begin with, I don't know.
And yes, the Tyranid thing is blisteringly stupid. I don't know all the lore by a long shot, but when they put it in the story that your Hive Lord is digested, reabsorbed back into the psychic bullshit monster template maker so it can be remade on another planet, you're not going to think that your character is a unique snowflake.
Ran across another problem that ended up being a dealbreaker for me.
The difficulty modes are all screwed up. Normal is way too easy, and hard turns into nothing but an exercise in skull-pounding frustration.
I could beat my head against that hard difficulty brick wall, but with a bad story and gameplay that was done better in other games, other entries in the series, what's the point?
