Warhammer 40:000: Dawn of War II Preview

This guy may look scary, but he'd probably taste delicious if you boiled him and squirted lemon juice on his face.

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. 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. 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 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. 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 initial campaign that will ship with DoW 2 will focus entirely on the Space Marines. While the game's other three races will almost certainly get their moment in the sun via future expansion packs, fans of the Eldar, Orks and Tyranids will at least be able to flex their tactical muscles in competitive multiplayer and skirmish matches. The gameplay here is perhaps a little closer to more traditional RTS fare, but there's still a fairly strong emphasis on the value of your units. Unlike the central campaign, you do have a base in multiplayer battles, but there's still comparatively little in the way of building construction. Resources and energy are both delivered via a steady stream which can be increased by capturing command points and power points dotted around the map. Acquiring these will speed up the flow of your supplies and will eventually hand you victory.

Your choice of units is determined via a fairly trimmed-down tech tree that is linked to the level of your base, which can be upgraded if you have the resources. Aside from these improvements, the only structure that is immediately available for you to build is a substation for any power station under your control. Setting up one of these will obviously increase your energy flow, but if the station falls into enemy hands then the benefits will transfer to them. During our test matches, control of these buildings changed back and forth fairly frequently - so we'd say that upgrading a power point is something to be carefully weighed up.

Red and white camoflage? In the jungle? Doesn't seem too smart to us...

While your troops are undoubtedly more transitory in a multiplayer game than in the campaign (in the sense that when they're gone, they're gone), the make-up of your army will reflect the high expense of your units, and the relatively strict limitation on your headcount. Unless you're doing particularly well, it's likely that you'll only possess a handful of squads at any given time. You can upgrade them, of course - but to get ahead you'll need to make careful use of your commander unit. Each of the four races has a choice of three leaders, chosen at the start of the match - and the option you pick will largely define your approach to the following battle.

The Space Marines, for example, get a choice of a Force Commander, an Apothecary or a Techmarine. Sticking to what we know, we started out by choosing the first option. The Commander specialises in standard combat, but we found that he kept getting overwhelmed by the combined forces of our opponents (we were playing 3 versus 3 matches, and the other side was a bit more organised). After a few shameful defeats, we decided to switch leaders. The healing tactics of the Apothecary sounded a bit wimpy to us, so we tried out the Techmarine - a sort of armed boffin who has the ability to set up automated gun turrets. Once we got the hang of this, we found this skill was ideal for safeguarding key areas of the map - an advantage that allowed us to swiftly capture a large number of control points. This eventually let us build some really cool toys, like a pair of Dreadnoughts (giant, mech-like walkers) and a beefy-looking tank. These powerful units allowed us to repel our rivals' Tyranid menace - salvaging a small amount of pride in the process.

Of course, we're sure there's an effective way to overturn this tactic. A choice of three leaders per side may not sound like much, but it's actually quite a lot when you consider that this essentially gives you 12 different generals. The hero units appear to fit into one of four or five specialist areas, so while the Techmarine and the Ork Mekboy have technical skills and bonuses, the Kommando and Tyranid Lictor work better with stealthy sneak attacks. To be honest, there's a huge amount that we've yet to see, but we're pleased to see that the unit models have all the attention to detail you'd expect from an official Games Workshop title - we particularly liked the Ork Dreadnought, which lurches about like a terrifying killer dustbin on legs.

As we say, there's so much to see in this game that we feel like we've barely scratched the surface. That's perhaps inevitable on a project this size, but we were certainly encouraged by how much we enjoyed both the single and multiplayer elements of what we've played so far. The customisation afforded by the RPG-like touches seems like a particularly smart move - and we've yet to see how this will work in a co-op campaign. Will Relic have us elbowing our mates in a rush to grab decent loot? Or will the spoils of war be divided equally? We don't know yet, but on the basis of our trip to Nottingham, we do know that DoW 2 is going to be a lot of fun - with or without your chums.

Dawn of War: II will be out next spring on PC.