Rather than bringing back the increasingly corrupt band of increasingly crazy brothers we've been playing in the last two games, we get a new team with only one familiar face. But that campaign is kept relatively fresh in a clever way. There are so many wonky and exotic options in the new races that it's hard to imagine someone picking the Space Marines.
One of the most beautiful sights in the game is this guy squirting his horrible plague spreader into a fortified bunker, corpses falling out of the windows, then getting back up again and joining in the siege as zombies. A whole set of late-tier abilities cause the enemies he kills to come back as Nurgly diseasezombies.
He can spread a disease that heals Chaos units and rots enemies, and even 'detonate' the infection to wipe out a whole squad in an instant – or bring a pestilent friend back from the brink of death. If I'd leant towards Khorne, shrines would periodically spew out daemons, while Tzeentch shrines cloak your units and fire doombolts at enemies.īut the highlight of the Chaos roster is the Plague Marine. With Nurgle, they can worship on the battlefield to heal nearby Chaos units, and even build shrines that can then summon reinforcements from the warp. I levelled up his health, enabling him to channel disease-god Nurgle in what is presumably Relic's idea of irony.Īs well as the usual tanking abilities, this changes the way your Chaos Cultists minions work. Instead, your commander is a Chaos Champion who can choose his allegiance: each branch of his level-up tree serves a different Chaos God. Kinky porno-god Slaanesh doesn't get a hero – he's always been the black sheep even in a family of pitchblack bloodgargling daemon deathsheep who burn in perpetual agony with the searing fires of the warp. The god of violence is represented by a heavy weapons marine, the god of magic and change has a chaos sorcerer on the team, and the god of decay gets a brilliant muckspreading Plague Marine as his representative. The units, heroes and abilities of the Chaos faction are split between three of their four gods. Nice, but at that point aren't you just shooting the enemy? Is that really something that needs to be unlocked? In fact, a sadistic number of the Commissar's upgrades revolve around his Execute ability, including a perk which lets you use it on enemy squads to demoralise them.
They're not going to make the Fortune 100 for best places to work, but it's satisfyingly effective. And after the fight, he can have a new stormtrooper dropped off to make up their numbers so we can do it all again. The behatted Inquisitor can then cast a protective shield on the General so he survives the onslaught. I like to have my Commissar use Execute on a Stormtrooper to kickstart that squad's damage output, then cast Draw Their Fire on my General, forcing enemies to attack him instead. The Commissar is a more sinister officer who can spur a squad to fight harder by shooting one of them – not that the Imperial Guard need any help getting themselves killed.
#DAWN OF WAR 2 REVIEW GAMESPOT FREE#
The Lord General is a terribly British chap who can call in free reinforcements for squads who've lost men. I was rude about Guardsmen earlier, and I will be rude about the rest of the Imperial Guard later, but for what it's worth they do have a formula of their own. The static explosion is a perk for upgrading Nailbrain's damage to level 3.
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Those can be upgraded from zero to five, and almost every upgrade comes with some ability or perk that changes the way the hero works. Each hero of each race has three stats: health, damage and energy. That part of the Ork's combat formula is a result of the way I'd specced my Nailbrain. And since it is an ability, it also causes him to explode. Damage taken to his forcefield also charges his static blast, an ability that causes him to explode. He can then turn on his force field so that incoming damage will drain energy rather than health when everyone gets back up. So when he teleports, he also explodes, flooring everyone. He can teleport into battle, and one of his perks causes him to explode every time he does anything. I mentioned the Orks earlier: as well as the commando/commander switcheroo (where Spookums can swap positions with Bludflagg), their ranged specialist Nailbrain is ridiculous. I added a few heavy weapons squads to support my biggest gunner, and the occasional vehicle when I could afford it, then spent the rest of my money on upgrading and reviving my heroes. So for the most part, you slip into playing Retribution much as you did Dawn of War 2: four heroes, each with special abilities that mix with each other in excitingly brutal ways.