Every once in a while a game comes along that just really clicks with you and you can just keep on coming back to it and still be immensely entertained. Other games will come along that are more fancy, luring you away with flashing explosions and displays of cutting edge technology, but eventually their charm will fade and you'll look for that comfortable, form fitting embrace of your old trusty favorite game.
This is the experience I've been having with Dawn of War 2 lately.
I've sunk countless hours into the competitive multiplayer of Dawn of War 2 ever since it was available for open beta play several months before its release back in February 2009 (so like 50 years ago in internet age).
Plenty of other games have come and gone in that period but somehow DoW 2 still feels as crisp and appealing to me as when I first started playing it over three years ago.
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| A Land Raider and Terminators. Someone is about to have a very bad day indeed |
I have to say though, that when I started gearing up to play Star Wars: The Old Republic back in December, I really felt that I was done with DoW 2.
I had stopped watching the commentated video casts of matches and I had gone many weeks without logging into the game at all. And indeed, once I got my hands on SWTOR I dumped all my gaming time into a galaxy a long time ago, instead of into a galaxy a long time into the future.
But sure enough, eventually the strong glare from SWTOR faded into little more than a weak flashlight and I pulled the plug on my account, sending me into a temporary gaming void.
And in that void I found my old friend, clad in polished power armor and ready to take me back with not even the slightest of bad feelings.
Despite several months of absence and a few balance patches having been applied, my hands soon remembered their old routines and familiar build orders came unbidden into my mind, dragged from the dusty corners of my memories. Soon I was felling Orks, Eldar and Chaos scum with glee, once again feeling the simple joys of sending in a giant Land Raider into the enemy base and watch them panic and scatter, or the tense moments before the first engagement where you have no idea if your opponent is going to stomp your face in.
I'm not sure why I find DoW 2 multiplayer to be such a perfect game for me.
Perhaps it is the setting, which uses Warhammer 40k, one of my favorite science fiction universes of all time.
Or maybe it's the simplicity of the game design, where you have pretty much no base building and can just focus of fielding units and then controlling them tactically to win the day.
It could also be the wonderful detail in the animations, which do a great job of conveying the visceral and brutal nature of the combat to you.
Whatever the case, I'm just glad that I'm playing Dawn of War 2 again and still having loads of fun.
It won't last forever, but three years of entertainment is pretty good for a game, I'd say.
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