Rants and raves about anything and everything, no holds barred.
THQ - how much crack did you smoke to do this?
Published on March 7, 2009 By RainElf In PC Gaming

My retail copy of THQ's Dawn of War II has been sitting on my desk for nearly a week. It's been teasing me you see, but I've been unable to rip into its tight shrinkwrapped innerds because I just moved. Tonight I finally got my gaming rig back setup and went to install the Warhammer goodness I've been waiting to savor.

Problem is, I'm still waiting.

Why? Steam.  For some inexplicable, moronic, braindead reason THQ chose to force all Dawn of War II customers to use Steam to install, run and update the game.  Why did I pay for a retail box at all? The disc only installed the filthy Steam client (didn't even give me the option of installing to a different drive) and then downloaded the game off the Net. WTF?  I'm sorry, as a consumer I had rightly expected that I'd be getting a game on my DVD, not Steam.

Gets better from here.  So Steam downloads and installs my "retail" game, forever tying me to using what's a pretty shit poor client (yes some folks hate Steam - they just get deleted off their forums for speaking out). I figure I'm good at this point, but nope, there's apparently an update. Can I play DoW II while this update downloads like I could've on Impulse?  Nope.  Even worse, the Steam client - in true fail fashion - just keeps switching from "Download starting..." to "Updating...0%" to "Download starting..." and it won't let me play the game at all.

What the hell did I pay for?

Although I haven't bought it, I hear the Empire: Total War release (which also forces Steam upon everyone) has been an even greater debacle of fail akin to the Half-Life 2 release years ago. Wow, way to go publishers!  Your incredible stupidity seems to grow by leaps and bounds with each passing year. Why don't you do your customers a favor and stop tying us exclusively to one service?  PC gamers already get boned as a matter of course, we don't need more. K, thanks.


Comments (Page 1)
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on Mar 07, 2009

I love Steam. Have bought quite a few games off it over the years. Will inevitably end up buying more. It's a wonderful platform.

But, I wholeheartedly agree that this was a terrible move by THQ. Some people bought it and couldn't even get as far as patching because it simply wouldn't unlock due to Steam not letting them unlock it yet. So essentially they bought an empty box, because that's all it was good for until Steam started verifying people's installs.

I don't think this is really something you can blame Steam for, since they obviously want as many games using their service as possible. But publishers obviously have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to making things available via Steam.

Hopefully a few of them are presently looking into Stardock's Impulse Reactor stuff, too.

on Mar 07, 2009

If it's anymore disappointing i found  the game to be pretty damn mediocre

on Mar 07, 2009

I have never had major problems with any of Valve's games. But they do have a history of problems with thier third party titles. To give you a recent example the demo of Grand Ages: Rome which I was looking forward to does not download properly. Even if you manage to get it onto your PC the demo won't run anway.

on Mar 07, 2009

The use of Steam by itself isn't bad. To force us to use Steam even to be able to install the game is bad bad bad bad...

on Mar 07, 2009

The game looks pretty, but I didn't like it when I was playing it on my friend's PC.  What's the point of hiding behind of a wall when it's going to be blown apart in couple seconds anyway?  The hero units are going to ruin some parts of the game just like WC3 did, you just wait.  I am waiting for a DWII Dota, that's for sure. 

on Mar 07, 2009

The game itself (at least the SP campaign) is awesome.

You put your ranged units behind cover to protect them somewhat and to prevent suppression. You have a melee unit/units out front getting the face of things to prevent them steamrolling the units behind cover.

You can't just go running headlong at the enemy or you will get stomped.

on Mar 07, 2009

What?!?!?! So you buy the box and if you have dial up or even *GASP* no internet your stuffed? What is the purpose of this?

 

And how big is this game? How much of my bandwidth do I lose to download it, plus future patches. Then if I want to uninstall it to make room for something, then I guess I have to re-download it. What a pain.

 

I'm interested in finding out how well sales go, its a pity we don't have an alternate reality world to compare sales with and without this method of distribution.

on Mar 07, 2009

I've no idea what the TC's talking about.  The game requires you to install Steam if you don't have it, but the game then installs from the disc.  It'd have to, or I'd have spent hours downloading instead of hopping on after a few minutes and playing.

SP Campaign from the little I've seen so far requires no tactics, or really I should say very little.  Stand all men behind cover.  Point guns toward enemy.  Repeat.  On Primarch, the highest difficulty, the AI isn't the least bit smarter but just has extremely high unit stats.  It feels ridiculous because I can have heavy bolter teams in heavy cover with their special ability activated to initiate HUGE damage and one or two orks will drop before my team itself has taken enough ranged damage to have to retreat.  You can't face buildings at all it seems without using the stealth unit and his mega-uber demo charges that destroy any of them in one shot.  The one saving grace of the campaign is the collection and distribution of wargear which is somewhat fulfilling in a Diablo sort of way.  Leveling up your troops and giving them better and/or shinier equipment is pretty fun.

Fortunately, I bought it for MP mainly.  Unfortunately, just like in the beta races are generally well-balanced with some extreme exceptions.  One being the Tyranids again like during the beta when Venom Cannons ruled all.  Note that VCs still are pretty overpowered as they shred both infantry and vehicles pretty damn easily.  So what's the new ridiculous 'Nid feature?  Ravener Alphas, one of the commanders, can build as many tunnel structures as he feels like.  They turn invisible and there are very few detector units.  After which, he and even his non-Tyranid allies can enter any of them instantly and pop out of any other one with no travel time.  They can just teleport across the entire map without you and your team dedicating your lives to finding and destroying tunnels.  Usually you'll be too busy getting your ass handed to you by enemies appearing behind you and retreating to another hidey-hole if they take significant damage.

Stuff like this makes the game feel rushed, especially after the embarrassing debacle of waiting three weeks now to fix an issue that by their own admission took about 15 minutes to code.  Population caps break when you reinforce troops.  So we keep waiting and Relic says they'll get a patch out soon once it clears QA.  Three weeks later. 

I'm regretting my money spent even though I got it 30% off.  Oh well, here's hoping it's just from its new arrival and not going to be a sign of things to come.  Mainly just replied here to dispel the wrong information about the install process, but I think my rambling may be of use to other folks interested in DoW2.

on Mar 07, 2009

Wait a sec, are you saying the game was not installed from the disk, but downloaded by the Steam client?  If so, that's bat guano stupid! 

on Mar 07, 2009

Dont bring the bats into this. Bat need friends, too.

on Mar 07, 2009

The game installs from disk but first it must check that you have the latest Steam version installed... which means that you need an already up to date Steam version installed or you need an internet connection(as the box already advertises anyways) to update the ones that comes with the game.

on Mar 07, 2009

I can't play it simply because it looks so mega-crappy.  No antialiasing, no nothing.  My card can do all of these things, but the game doesn't allow my card to do them for some reason.  And I can't play a game that looks 10 years old graphics-wise, so the game just sits there.

on Mar 07, 2009

Just to throw some oil on the fire here, DoW2 requires not one but two third party programmes:

1. Steam for DRM and patching.

2. Games for Windows Live for multiplayer (disfunctional skill level matching included), DLC down the line (gogo microtransactions!) and slowing down the patching process. (hello, 1-2 week certification process!)

on Mar 07, 2009

Reading on other forums other issues have come to light. For example people that have internet access, but from behind a restrictive firewall (eg university students living on campus) can't get the game to work because the firewall blocks Steam. People have pre-ordered the game and not realised the internet condition, then they can't play, a couple of GI's have said this. Steam apparently requires a credit card number to have an account, so you paid for the game and then are asked for a credit card number, even though you may have no intention of buying anything. Too bad I guess if you have no credit card, or just don't like the idea of comprimising your own security. Lastly people have got everything needed but Steam doesn't allow them to authenticate.

 

I don't actually know whats going on, these are the complaints I've been reading.

 

As far as the "authentication" goes, I've been reading of download times of 1 hour up to 14 hours. No matter what your connection a simple authentication should not take 1 hour.

 

Probably only the people with issues post stuff, but there seems to be a few posting these sad tales.

on Mar 07, 2009

MichaelCook
Steam apparently requires a credit card number to have an account, so you paid for the game and then are asked for a credit card number, even though you may have no intention of buying anything. Too bad I guess if you have no credit card, or just don't like the idea of comprimising your own security.

Steam does NOT require a credit card. I played the DoW2 beta and had steam installed for it. At no point did steam ask for a creditcard.

(quite a useful beta for me, I found out that I did not like A. DoW2 B. Steam C. GfWL)

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