Dawn of War 2 Hands-on Preview
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

As with the first DoW (and indeed the excellent Company of Heroes), winning battles with your Blood Ravens will require a good degree of careful consideration. Simply rush into a large mass of Orks and you'll likely get shot to bits; pin them down with artillery fire, send someone to flank them and you'll reap the rewards. We grew particularly attached to our scouts, with their sneaky cloaking and their tower-demolishing satchel charges.  You might prefer to use your commander to tie the Ork up in melee combat, buying time for your heavy gunners to pummel him in the back. The slightly shorter-than-normal missions should also mean that you'll play through more battles within a set period of game time. We didn't get to the stage where we were fighting on multiple fronts (the Eldar had just showed up in the story by the time we finished with the single-player campaign, and we had yet to see the Tyranids), but once this happens you'll end up choosing between missions on different planets - a setup that should enforce the idea of a huge, galaxy-spanning conflict.

The single-player levels we tried out had an average length of around 15 to 20 minutes. While we're sure that some of the later quests will last longer than that, we get the impression that Relic wants to offer a higher volume of missions with a shorter duration than normal. This structure fits the need to regularly reward the player with XP and war gear.These guys are obviously great for reconnaissance, but they also proved invaluable against Skykilla - an Ork Flyboy Nob who acts as a boss for one of the early quests. This chap launches himself sky-high before crashing down on your hapless marines, but by laying down explosives in the area he was about to land in we were able to swiftly deplete his health bar. Of course, that was how we chose to play.