DOWII single-player demo out now

By Robert Purchese Published 15 April, 2009

Relic the RTS story.

THQ has released a single-player demo for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. The 2.5GB file can be downloaded from Steam now.

The sampler offers the story-driven side RTS, which is a bit like Diablo but with squads, so stats and loot and experience all feature.

We're also told patch 1.2.1 was recently released, adding the Tiber Outpost map for teams to fight on plus numerous player-versus-player tweaks.

Dawn of War II launched for PC back in February, in case you hadn't noticed, and received significant praise across the board.

Head over to our Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II review for our thoughts.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Gurrah #1 3 years ago

    I really don't know why they don't add more maps to the multiplayer game. Is it so difficult and time consuming to build maps for the next-gen RTS games? I still remember messing around with the Warcraft 2 editor and having playable maps ready in a matter of minutes. I can understand that it's more time consuming due to the fact that the environment ist destructable, but apart from that it shouldn't take months to deliver some more 1v1 maps.

  • Plewt #2 3 years ago

    Play the demo 30 times and you get the same experience as the full singleplayer game.

  • Mooks #3 3 years ago

    Requires pixel shader 3.0 ... fail

  • Gnort #4 3 years ago

    I thought the single player game was rather weak, only worth playing due to the strength of the Warhammer 40K license.

    The multiplayer, however, is awesome. I agree with Gurrah, though, we need more 1v1 maps. Adding another 6p map is well and good, but how hard would it be to churn out 2 or 3 new 2p maps?

  • Gnort #5 3 years ago

    @Gurrah

    I remember churning out workable Starcraft maps in 15 minutes or so, as all you needed was start points with resource fields, a few extra resource fields and a bit of terrain for scenery. Map design is a lot more complex in DoW2, as you have to worry about the placement of cover, structures, requisition and victory points or the map will be unbalanced. That said, it shouldn't be taking them months to do them.

  • qoobah #6 3 years ago

    Play the demo 30 times and you get the same experience as the full singleplayer game.

    The truth.

    Also, it rather doesn't feel like WH40k. Too few bodies, too little doom, gloom, and grim darkness of the future tbh.

  • UncleLou #7 3 years ago

    I loved the single-player. Yeah, it was a bit repetitive, but in the "good" way, like Diablo is. Granted, a few more maps wouldn't have hurt. Couldn't be bothered with mp, personally.

  • seasidebaz #8 3 years ago

    RTS? What RTS? The strategy involves going into cover and perk spamming :)

    It's just like World of Warcraft only with much less Tolkein and much more Awesome.

  • legendmir #9 3 years ago

    "RTS? What RTS? The strategy involves going into cover and perk spamming :) "

    NO THEYVE DISCOVERED MY SECRET!

  • Ryuken #10 3 years ago

    Requires pixel shader 3.0 ... fail

    Step into your time machine then and go back to 2005 or so.:)

    One of the best multiplayer games out there, despite the rampant bugs (UI, connectivity, crashes). Singleplayer was ok, kept me away from the mp a few days but it needed more useable squads and more diverse levelup options and more varied missions and more randomisation. Needs a lot of extra stuff then but its structure clearly has 100x more potential than any other DoW sp campaign.

  • skillian #11 3 years ago

    I'm on my 4th play-through of the single player campaign (twice just me, twice co-op with a friend), and honestly that is basically unheard of for me. Most games I don't finish and I don't think I've finished a game more than twice since the days of Streets of Rage and Castle of Illusion.

    Something about this game (oh who am I kidding, it's the PHAT LEWT) just completely grabs me and it's my favourite game for a long time. Yes it's repetitive, but as long as you keep getting different weapons and perks you don't keep playing in the same way.

    I was reviewing this officially I'd probably give it an 8 or something as I can see the flaws, but personally this is a big fat 11/10 for me and my GOTY. I love it!

    Edit: I haven't bothered with the MP either, apart from one quick tester. UncleLou, if you ever fancy a MP game without the pressure of playing a veteran who is playing to win at any costs, let me know :)
    Edited by 1 at 16/04/09 @ 09:55

  • GreyScale #12 3 years ago

    Too few bodies, too little doom, gloom, and grim darkness of the future tbh.

    WH40K hasn't been about doom/gloom/darkness for quite a few years now has it? The darkest it got was with the original Rogue Trader stuff, now it seems to be all bright colours and Tau.

  • BobsUncle #13 3 years ago

    CRASH! AhhhAhhhhhh!

    I stopped playing this shoddy game after the last update which rendered it usless on my machine. I even bought a new Gfx card solely for this game.

    And I still never got the Achievements for completing it. It's bug tastic!