Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising Review

Welcome to the grim darkness that is the far future where there is only war! Welcome to Dawn of War 2's first expansion/standalone Chaos Rising.

Picking up after Dawn of War 2's campaign, which left the sector devastated but recovering from a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan. A warp storm appears and births the planet Aurelia. At this point a signal, a Blood Raven signal, starts transmitting from the surface drawing the Force Commander from Dawn of War 2 to investigate.

As soon as the marines hit planet side things go bad. Traitor Guard start firing upon the Marines. Thus starts the campaign against traitors and unveiling a dark plot corrupting the Blood Raven's themselves. As the campaign progresses it seems that there is a traitor amiss the Blood Raven's themselves who is working with the Black Legion to protect themselves and sacrifice the sector to the dark gods. As things begin to look grim as a rebellion begins on Meridian. It is reviled that the Governor of Meridian is the leader of the traitor Guard.

 This is the sector Aurelia that you must protect.

Game Play:

Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising has very familiar controls, game play, and user interface. This is nice but also contains updates to the controls and user interface. The battlefield is very familiar to those who have played Dawn of War. The controls are standard for modern real time strategy games. Basically right click is god. Personally wish more developers allowed you to switch left and right click bindings in strategy games, whatever it works and I can live with it. The cover system is very intuitive, there are dots where your guys are going to stand, yellow is half cover which is better than no cover. Next is the green dots which is great cover, and then there is the option to garrison buildings which is very good cover. The multiplayer has great AI, for those who are like me and are frightened of playing online. Last stand, thanks to a friend, I got to play, quite fun and actually a good challenge. Personally I also enjoyed the inclusion of army painter, one of the things that Dawn of War spoiled me with was the option of making a very customized paint job for my multiplayer units.

 Lots of variety in the army painter, but there could be more.

I would have enjoyed it more if in the multiplayer you where able to go and focus more on the chaos gods. Because you have three of the four and personally I feel that you should choose which god your army is worshiping and that effect your units early on. Surprisingly the campaign kept a nice difficulty curve through out it, only a few times it spiked, and it was a negative spike with the space hulk sections, still a decent campaign and good story.

One of the best features is the custom load out in campaign and that in this we are given another squad member for our fight against the enemies of the Imperium of Man.

Balance:

Surprisingly well balanced for a real time strategy game with five different races. Well to be fair Chaos Space Marines and Space Marines are pretty similar, heretics instead of scouts, summon able demons, and towers of Tzeetch instead of turrets. The five races you get to play as are the Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, the Eldar, the Orks, and the Tyranids. They all play and feel different which is surprising as most games barely can manage three unique armies. Though there are differences from the tabletop game as there are units left out, but this in my honest opinion is it is a good thing. However, not including some of the units it makes it easier to balance and have less options bogging down those not familiar with tabletop units. Though the units left in are some of the most iconic units, and given the battlefields you see them in it makes sense that you don't see vindicators, or defilers, or any super heavy's or aircraft.

AI:

The computer in this game is good, very good. If you are not the best at strategy games easy computer is pretty good challenge. I have played against Easy and Medium and Medium was tricky to fight and it was a hard fight, easy was a good challenge after the campaign. The strategies employed by the AI is pretty simple, but in the campaign most of the time you attack the enemy they don't really move around, however that is taken care of in later missions where they are actively patrolling and hunting. You get the feeling you are in a actual battlefield where there are routines and what not for the enemy.

Replayability:

The campaign sadly is not very replayable unless you want to get the three or so other endings for various levels of corruption. Unlike Dawn of War 2 you can easily do every mission, and most of the wargear is worthless. You get something strong and you can run with it for quite a long time in the campaign. I feel it is a pretty good and memorable campaign but too memorable so it will take a long time before I feel that I have forgotten enough of the campaign to enjoy it fully again.

Final Verdict:

DOW2: Chaos Rising is a decent RTS and trumps Supreme Commander 2 in RTS of the year in 2010. Personally I say if you enjoyed DOW2 or any of the Dawn of War games before Chaos Rising pick up Chaos Rising. It is a decent game, rather fun, but predictable story. At times it can be mean in the missions, though this is par for the course with DOW2 campaign missions. Thankfully there are less time dependent missions and now also Space Hulk which was quite fun, to the point I hope in Retribution they add Space Hulk as a additional mod like Last Stand was. I do quite enjoy the bosses and the characterization of the enemies and allies throughout the game. If you have not gotten Dawn of War 2 already I would recrommend getting that before picking up Chaos Rising, there is a lot of plot and it too is very fun, along with your level and traits carry over from the last campaign.

The Planet Aurelia falling apart due to Chaos.

More screen shots of Dawn of War 2 are in my Photobucket.com album for this review here.