Since I haven’t been playing WoW lately, I’ve been looking for other ways to amuse myself.

I’ve spent a good chunk of time working on my Warhammer 40k models.  If I ever actually get new batteries put into my camera I’ll have some new pictures up.

I re-installed Soulstorm.  I know I have frequently claimed that it is the worst of the Dawn of War games, and that hasn’t changed.  However, it is the only Dawn of War game that lets you play as the Sisters of Battle.  So, crappy as it is, it’s what I’ve been playing.

I also finished up the single-player storyline in Dawn of War II.  Very satisfying.  I only wish they’d let you keep playing in a sandbox-type mode…  It is fairly obvious that the xenos aren’t completely gone.  There’s Tyranids everywhere, and I’m sure there are still some Orks and Eldar hanging around.  It would be fun to keep slaughtering the foul creatures.  But you can’t.  And the only thing left in DoW2 is the multi-player, which I haven’t been impressed with.  So I guess I’m waiting for an expansion pack now…

I re-installed Fallout 3, re-loaded my saved game.  Turns out that finding your father in that vault isn’t the end of the game.  He heads back to Project Purity and there’s still some plot left.  Unfortunately, that plot isn’t terribly satisfying.

It all happens very quickly…  You’re helping out at Project Purity, then the Enclave attacks.  You run away and hook up with the Brotherhood of Steel, who send you off to find a G.E.C.K.  Then you fight your way back to Project Purity with the Brotherhood of Steel, turn it all on, and the credits roll.

Not only does the game resolve itself very quickly…  But there’s no wandering around after the fact.  No sandbox mode.  Nothing.

I found another game that looked interesting – Cthulhu Returns.  It’s some kind of Lovecraftian MMORPG.  Looked like a good way to kill some time.  But the installer wanted to do some weird things in my system32 directory, so I didn’t wind up playing it.

I fired up Left 4 Dead again…  But, despite a number of patches, there really isn’t any new single-player content.

I wound up digging through my pile of old games…  Re-installed Wheel of Time…  I never did finish this game.  I bought it back in the day, when it first came out, back when I was really into the Wheel of Time books…  I made it through Shadar Logoth, but then basically stopped playing for some reason.  I thought it would be fun to actually play through it to the end.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that is going to be possible.  The game, amazingly enough, runs great on my computer even without any patches or updates.  But the graphics are horribly, painfully dated.  The textures are very flat, the effects are very simple, and it is all giving me horrible motion sickness.

Worse, that motion sickness means I’ll probably have a hard time playing through other old games like Thief, Undying, and System Shock 2.

Logged in to Steam tonight, got some updates, and an announcement that there’s now a single-player demo for Dawn of War II.

It’s been a few months since Dawn of War II was released, and I’ve finally gotten over the bad impression that the multiplayer beta left on me.  So I decided to go looking for a single-player demo.  Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there is one.  Or, if it exists, it is hidden too well for me to locate it.

So I grabbed a copy of the game from ThePirateBay.  Yeah, I know, I’m a horrible pirate…  Aren’t I just awful?  Hard to believe that someone would actually want to test out a game before they buy it, isn’t it?

I have to say that they really did themselves a dis-service only releasing a multiplayer beta.  The single-player is, in my opinion, a much better game.

You start out racing to defend your planet from an Ork invasion.  You’re dropped right into the gameplay – right from the start you’ve got storyline, exposition, action, and gameplay.  The tutorial is woven directly into the first few missions.

As you work your way through the storyline you slowly come to discover that the Eldar are using the Orks – directing them against the human settlements.  This is where I really ponder why they didn’t release a demo…  They could easily have released the first few anti-Ork missions as a demo and not given away anything significant of the storyline.  And it’d give people a great introduction to the gameplay.  And then you could end with the realization that the Eldar were working behind the scenes, giving people a plot hook to make them want to buy the game.  But, no – no demo.

Anyway, it turns out that the Eldar were using the Orks to slow down a Tyranid invasion.  Before too long you’ve fighting a battle on three fronts, and struggling to keep up with the overwhelming tide of xenos.

The gameplay is a lot more reminiscent of the tabletop game that previous Dawn of War titles.  It really isn’t an RTS at all.  There’s absolutely no base-building, no resource management, none of that.  Instead it is a straight-up realtime tactical game.

Before each mission you’re given a briefing that tells you, roughly, what to expect.  You then get to pick your squads and equip them for the battle to come.  Those are the only squads you’ll have at your disposal.  If you don’t drop down to the planets with some scouts, you won’t be picking up scouts anywhere along the way.  So it is fairly important to pick a decent team before heading down.

Once on the planet the gameplay is pretty similar to modern character-driven RTS titles or RTT titles.  You order your units across the map, kill everything in your way, and eventually achieve your objective.  Along the way you get experience for killing the badguys, and sometimes they drop new equipment.

You use that experience to improve your troops.  And, obviously, the equipment makes you more durable and more able to kill things.

To a certain degree you’ve got to choose where to make your stand.  There are frequently more battles than you can fight.  You might be facing attacks on three different planets at the same time, and you can only actually fight one battle.  You have to choose what you can afford to lose, and what you have to hold on to.  This adds a very interesting element of large-scale strategy to the game.

I can’t stress enough how little the single-player resembles the multiplayer that I played in the beta.

You don’t get to choose your avatar…  You can’t be a techmarine or an apothecary – you’re stuck with the force commander.  You also don’t have access to tanks and things like that – just infantry.  You don’t need to capture points or gather resources or anything like that.  You don’t build units at all.  You drop down to the planet with all the troops you’re ever going to have – the trick is to keep them alive long enough to accomplish your objectives.

Without that odd RTS-y base building tacked on it all plays much more smoothly.  It’s fairly obvious that DoW2 was built up from an RTT engine and the base building was almost an afterthought.

The storyline is quite interesting and very engaging.  Especially with the addition of some great scripted sequences.  And there’s a real feeling of impending doom as the Tyranids slowly spread across the planet.

Really, if I’d played a demo of this single-player content instead of the multiplayer stuff I never would have canceled my pre-order.  I would have happily purchased it.

Sure, ultimately they’re still getting their sale.  It’s a good game and I’ll happily pay for it.  But they could have had my money months ago.

Every time I play Dawn of War, I want to try my hand at Warhammer 40,000.

I used to attend gaming conventions with some regularity.  Went to TwinCon several years in a row, and actually made it to GenCon a couple of times.  I’d always see folks with huge tables set up…  Beautifully landscaped…  Giant armies of intricately painted miniatures everywhere…  Very impressive.

I always wanted to play…  But Warhammer 40k has never been a cheap hobby.  $50 for the rule book…  Another $20 for a codex…  Then you start buying your miniautes – $10 here, $50 there…  It’s very easy to spend entirely too much money very quickly.  And, at the time, I had no real income of my own.  It was all I could do to buy a new Rifts sourcebook once in a while.

Well, these days things are a little different…  I now have some disposable income, and they now make a relatively cheap starter kit.

So, I have acquired a Black Reach starter kit, and I’m eagerly awaiting its delivery.

It’s February 19th, and that means that Dawn of War II is available in stores.  I had originally thought that I’d be rushing out to a store to buy the game today…  Or maybe eagerly waiting for it to activate on Steam…  But playing through their multi-player beta curbed my enthusiasm.

So, instead, I’m searching around on-line to see if there’s any kind of single-player demo available…  And, so far, I haven’t found anything.

A couple sites are referring to a multi-player demo, but it looks like they’re talking about the beta that I played.  It doesn’t look like there’s anything else available…

What ever happened to demos?  Used to be that pretty much every game had a demo out…  Either on a disc that came with a magazine or something you could download.  And usually they were pretty long, too.  Gave you a good feel for the game.  These days it seems like they don’t want you to test things out…  They’d rather you just hand them your cash and trust that it’ll be worth it.  And when it isn’t?  Well, that’s too bad, because they can’t accept returns on opened merchandise…

Bah!