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First off, here are all the screenshots I've been given by THQ:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-4786-13518_Dawn%20Of%20War%202%20Retribution%20Screenshots.html

Excuse the format of this, I'm not a journalist for a videogames site but thought I'd say what I've seen. Friday, I was invited to preview DoW2 retribution, with all races playable for the first 3 levels and then skipping with level up to the final level. Multiplayer and Last Stand were also playable but I did not play standard multiplayer, just last stand.

The Good:
- The game is once again an improvement on the last. The campaign is very similar in feel to Chaos Rising. The last level was great.
- Army Painter shows far more units
- New last stand map, that starts on hard waves instead of the boring ones at the start of the normal map. The interface has the capacity to add more maps in the future, so hopefully we'll get a patch with another level or more in the future.
- The end sequence - not going to mention it, but the video was fantastic and really matched my mental image of those events. Much more interesting than the chaos rising ending.
- Voice acting was all solid with one exception (nid hive mind), and fit nicely. No spess mehrines at least.
- 6 campaigns = 6 playthroughs and lots of fun levelling and items to collect. The levelling system is improved, each point gives a new ability now instead of working towards abilities slowly.
- You can have more than 4 units finally. Extra units spawn in the field from captured HQs and are bought with resources acquired from crates. All crates contain resources instead of +1 grenades and things, so all medipacs/grenades/etc are purely energy based now which makes the game flow a lot smoother. You can choose to deploy heroes for the bonuses they have, or infantry/vehicles in their place, and deploying non-heroes increases your population cap, allowing bigger armies. The nids and guard can actually play as hordes instead of groups of heroes. Nids especially as the hive tyrant can spawn units with energy alone instead of resources.
- Chat is present throughout the menus instead of just in the multiplayer windows so you can keep talking to the same people if you bail out of a menu.

The Bad:
- The campaigns all appear (from those 3 levels) to be the same levels with different enemies and thats it. Could be some annoying repetition that removes replayability after you've played it through a couple of times.
- A few issues occur because of the previous point - 'vehicle' tooltips for tyranids appearing, no explanation for moving between planets as nids, and things like that. Hopefully they'll get sorted for release.

The Meh:
- Voice acting for the hive mind is a bit annoying as it speaks english in a growly voice. Subtitles and some hissing/clicking noise would have fit better imho. Using the space marines to do the bulk of narration for the nids is a good save though.
- They only mentioned future patch support, would not be drawn into any talk of a further sequel.
- Games for windows is ditched so no XBL achievements now, but less annoying to install and play at least.

The oooh:
- The Space Marine game previews will be coming in the next few months.
- I heard a mention of the 40k MMO still existing and progressing well.

Locclo wrote:I'm curious to know, how does the 6 campaign deal work out? While I'm excited to finally play as someone other than the Space Marines through the campaign, is it something like the Dark Crusade/Soulstorm route (in that there are 6 different endings to what is essentially 6 races warring over one planet)? Or is it one campaign, told from 6 different viewpoints? And do the various races each have their own storyline going through the entire game, or is it the more Risk-style gameplay of Dark Crusade and Soulstorm?

It is one campaign from 6 viewpoints, they all seem to have the same ending video. They all have their own proper storyline unlike dark crusade/soulstorm.

Slarg232 wrote:Any word on another hero per race for the Last Stand?

Is the new map that starts harder give more experiance?

The Lord General is the new character in Last Stand but alas there are no new heros for existing races. I suck at last stand with any character that cant warp around so did not use him much, but I did play with him on my side and saw him bring down ogryns and gun turrets as support which was useful.

I'm not sure about the experience, we were levelled up to 20 to let us play with all options so I didnt see the comparative experience rewards.

If I remember right, the first hero is mandatory, the rest are optional. The inquisitor was a little underwhelming but might be more interesting in the middle section of the game.

The hive tyrant / hive lord is the only hero for the nids, they always just get standard infantry to go with him.

The general is a fantastic hero, the sniper rifle is invaluable and he has amazing bonuses for supporting infantry. The inquisitor is best for tank busting early on but is otherwise a bit less interesting. The 'burn heretic' type abilities are slow and underpowered to begin with.

The inquisitor is the lynchpin behind the entire plot for all races so she is the most important person in the game - I dont think you'll need to imagine too hard!

One other thing, someone mentioned in the other thread wondering how the hive lord gains upgrades and how it moves around the different planets in the system - it renders itself into a digesting pool and is reborn on other worlds with upgrades. You see it go to the pool at least once too.

I skipped the intro movie for the guard so that I could get down to playing, but he is brought in by the inquisitor, rounds up some men and is basically there to do the inquisitor's bidding.

He comes with a powerful sniper rifle by default which is very good and has a high powered anti-infantry ability associated with it. Some of his abilities include giving all nearby units bonuses to their attack and defense when he shoots, which is also extremely useful, especially with big blobs of guard.

Raxor wrote:Who is the ancient? And who was the traitor from Chaos Rising?

The limited version we played didnt go into it in that much detail beyond start and end sequence and I didnt play the space marine, eldar, ork or chaos campaigns due to lack of time.

As for MMO info, I shared all I have, sounds like it will probably be previewed this year though. Was a DoW2 event so obviously they were not going to talk about it.

Murray wrote:how did you find the t1 units of IG compared to the more powerful t1 units of the other races (space marines equivalent).

They hold up pretty well. They die quite easily, but once you upgrade them to have a flamer they kill things very quickly at close range. They suck at long range, suck at close combat but are excellent in the mid-tier which 95% of skirmishes in DoW2 seem to be.