Recent reviews by Rocket-Propelled Shark

This is a fast and straightforward RTS with some unconventional elements that work very much in it's favor.

The gameplay is tight and intuitive. Instead of the cursor you would traditionally find in other RTS's, you control a flagwaving character which you use to scout, place structures, and order your units around. At first this may sound like an unflattering restriction, but it actually works out quite well. You always feel like you're in control of your army, and having played a few less-than-stellar strategy games this is definitely appreciated.

I'm not usually big on multiplayer, but this game's multiplayer is pretty darn good. Matches are short and sweet, with a lot of variety to them. You choose which units you take into battle and lock horns on procedurally generated maps. This, combined with the fast-paced gameplay and nuanced combat, helps keep matches fresh and engaging. Winning feels pretty good and losing doesn't feel too bad.

The game's setting is terrific. A sort of Redwall meets Russian Revolution where anthropormorphic animals brutalize each other in the wake of a horrible famine. The single player let's you wander about each faction's respective headquarters in between missions and hobnob with some of the off-duty units. There's a ton of personality and flavor behind everything and I love it.

My only gripe is the story. The setting is great, but the narrative that ties the singleplayer missions together feels pretty flimsy at some points, with the story shifting between playable characters without much fanfare or any particular sense of accomplishment. That and the ending just sucks. I won't spoil anything for you but suffice to say, it's pretty disappointing. I would love to see the story expanded on with a real ending at some point.

But when all is said and done this game definitely feels like more than the sum of it's parts. Give it a look.

I think a lot of folks went into this expecting something similar to or "better" than Dawn of War 1 or 2, and that's really not the case here. This game plays fairly differently from both of those games, which is, honestly, something I can respect. But if you're expecting something similar o those games, you're gonna be disappointed.

The single player campaign is actually pretty solid. Unlike the previous games in the series, it plays as more of a linear, story-driven game where all the races and the main characters have a part in it. While this does kind of skew the difficulty curve a little bit, and there are times where the game doesn't really give you very many resources to work with, for the most part I found it to be rather enjoyable. If nothing else, the story kept me intrigued through most of the way through.

The multiplayer is where things fall apart. Admittedly, I'm not much of a multiplayer gamer, and I didn't really go into this expecting to have a particularly good time, but wow. Relic dropped the ball here. The multiplayer manages to feel simultaneously impenetrably complex and incredibly barebones. Every race has, like, two unique mechanics exclusive to them and almost every buildable unit has 2-3 abilities to them and they also have 2-3 doctrines you can equip them with, not to mention the elites and the abilities and doctrines they provide. Take into account that the game can move pretty fast and things get out-of-hand uncomfortably quickly. You really, REALLY need to know what you're doing in this game's multiplayer, because if you don't, you're gonna have a bad time. None of this is helped by the fact that it's very hard to know what you're doing wrong when you lose a match.

It also doesn't help that there's only one game mode either available either. The game mode basically boils down to 'Destroy this thing, then destroy that thing, then destroy the bigger thing,' and it gets real old real fast. There isn't even a simple 'annihilate the enemy base' mode. It's really diappointing. I'm also really disappointed by the lack of any sort of simple co-operative game type, like DoW2's The Last Stand.

I don't hate this game, I really don't. But it's hard to justify getting it right now. I'd definitely recommend waiting for more content. Or at least wait for it to go on sale.