Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution

I don't know if a lot of people were fired or if Retribution was simply given to the C-team portion of Relic and rushed out in under a year but this game is awful, not awful by rts standards (which it still stands out more or less) but by the standards of the past two titles in this series.  

Dawn of War 2 and Chaos Rising had incredible campaigns, engrossing focused stories with good narratives, brilliant voice

work, epic mission design, thrilling boss encounters.   You had a likable interesting group of soldiers at your command, loot was plentiful and satisfying to obtain and the game just felt good to play.  You wanted to keep on playing those games, in comparison Retribution is one giant slog of mediocre uninspired re-hashed design built on bare-bones pre-existing assets and gameplay.  Not a shred of innovation or any major update of significance to the established formula and as a fan of Relic games in general this is near heart breaking.  

The last time I had an experience as awful as this with a DoW title was with original Dawn of War's Soulstorm expansion pack and that game wasn't even made by Relic and just like it this one feels like a fan-mod at best. 

It isn't all bad, the added steam support is much nicer than games for windows live, but then what game isn't better off with it. Last Stand; the free update to the first Dawn of War 2 is now slightly more fleshed out and features a new hero unit, a new map and some added achievement based loot.   It's as fun as ever fighting waves of enemies using team work and skillful play as is the case with all games sporting a horde mode of sorts. While this is great, its sad that this is really the only good part of the game. You can even buy it stand alone for a mere ten dollars and I highly recommend people do so.

The multiplayer remains broken, boring and tedious when compared to original Dawn of War's more traditional game style.  I'm sure some people enjoy it but it remains very much so not to my liking. Read my Chaos Rising review for more elaboration on my opinion of it.

Its a shame that their isn't an excellent campaign to make up for it in this case.  Relic boasted a multi-race campaign for this release and yes indeed it is there but play through more than once and you will very soon begin to notice that they actually made just one and the others are all just copy and pasted with a few lines of dialogue either changed or removed and some light alteration to events every so often.  In the case of the Tyranid campaign you only get one hero unit and the explanation for why the popular zerg-like race is doing the same things the humanoid races are is laughable at times. Lazy super budgeted design at its worst.

Whatever Relic does post Space Marine it better be the next Dark Crusade or a full on Dawn of War 3, because anything less at this point will be nothing but disappointment for this once super loyal fan of this franchise.