Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Just down the road, Metrux Ltd sells vans. In the building opposite the Nottingham Textile Group responds with urgency to the great fabric issues of the day. You can only imagine the caustic, and perhaps wistful, glances their employees throw at the network of buildings collectively known as Warhammer World.

Few workplaces have a hulking granite statue of a Space Marine in the car park, and even fewer have a fully operational Dwarven bar. None at all have an echoing hall full of excitable men (some pony-tailed, I'm not going to lie) in surroundings made to look like the ramparts of a fantasy castle.

The day that Eurogamer visits, though, is no ordinary day. According to excitable whispers, someone has rolled 108 dice in one go during a successful Ork charge against a squadron of miniature Space Marines. Less excitingly, it's also the day that Relic has taken up residency to let journalists once again joyously romp around the code of Dawn of War II; each of them racing ahead in the single-player in an attempt to get to the part where the Tyranids enter the fray.

In this aspect, reader, I failed. But I at least came back from this wonderful corner of a Nottingham trading estate with the full knowledge that Dawn of War II is going to emerge in March of next year as a deep and important notch on the bedpost of strategy gaming.

It begins, as is the demand of the Warhammer license, in a gruff and no-nonsense fashion. No need for delicate plotlines, there's only the most fleeting of introductions to your various Space Marine squad commanders and the introduction of yourself (with whatever name you choose; I picked HelloKitty) as an extra-badass Space Marine who's fresh to the fray. The Orks have been stirred into action by an unknown force on the planet Caldarus, so you're off to kill yourself some warbosses.

The first Dawn of War game scored a healthy 8/10, making it as good as Halo.

From the outset it's clear that much has changed. Levels are compact affairs, nearly always ending in boss battles. Combat is squad-based, infused with the rough and ready grit of the Company of Heroes series.

Most of all though, the game rewards you with loot like Space Woolies is going bust. Success delivers constant MMO-esque weapon drops and upgrades, efficient combat skill delivers experience points to be tucked into relevant upgrade slots and beefing up your allies in this fashion inevitably leads to even more ability unlocks further on. Dawn of War 2 just doesn't know when to stop giving, and you can't help but love it for that.

Your character is a Force Commander - armed with a chainsword (yes, a chainsaw within a sword) that supplies many varied, beautifully animated and extraordinarily bloody, finishers on the poor Orks, Eldar and Tyranids it connects with. The squads with whom you must co-ordinate an attack, meanwhile, are headed by gravel-tongued Avitus (heavy-gunning), sneaky Cyrus (infiltration/sniping), everyman Tarkus (assault) and valiant Thaddeus (jumping on foes with big stompy metal jet-boots).

Relic has an impressive pedigree, having also made Company of Heroes.

None of these marines can die. They become incapacitated and in need of revival, but the two men accompanying each (both wearing the metaphorical Star Trek red-shirt) are very much attached to this mortal coil. As such, progress through the level revolves around capturing various reinforcement points dotted around.

For example, you could find yourself garrisoning Avitus in a nearby building to supply covering fire, sniping with Cyrus from a conveniently placed ridge and ploughing into the Orkish warhost with your own solitary melee specialist.

Each map you choose to fight on contains optional outposts that you can capture en-route to the mission's final confrontation. So you might unlock the power of orbital strike laser blasts, say, that will no doubt come in useful on your next, tougher, planetary touch-down.

The end result is the story unfolds at its own pace - but the way in which you weave your way along its none-too-complex threads feels relatively non-linear, and certainly provides a taste of freedom.

If there's one caveat to that, it's the decision to have a boss enemy frequent the most distant part of every map. In Relic's drive to give the game an episodic drive that ends a play session with a bang (rather than the sorry, endless pursuit of one rogue Eldar across the map), boss inclusion can perhaps be understood. However, the fabled RTS genre isn't one that naturally gels well with this sort of thing.

Different bosses display the abilities that will, presumably, be yours to command in future Dawn of War 2 campaigns, and will certainly be yours to command in multiplayer. You'll face down a gigantic Ork Warboss with a flair for sweeping melee attacks and grenades, for example, and an Eldar with the ability to teleport himself around the boss-arena.

I can't speak for later set-tos in the game, but early mission-closers do tend to play out in a similar fashion - setting up squads behind appropriate cover, dashing away from hurled explosives and giving frantic 'run away' orders whenever the fiend gets too close. Upon this part of the Space Marine's working day, the jury is most certainly still out.

DOW 2's mission statement is to open up the strategy genre to a wider audience. Any such attempt is always going to open the floodgate marked 'angry fanboy stampede'. Relic, however, is going about it in a remarkably cogent and balanced fashion.

In single-player RPG hallmarks and short, sharp levels are now part of the firmament, while base-building and in-game resource economics are nothing but a distant memory. As soon as you log onto the Games for Windows Live-supported servers however (terrifying, I know), the fearful shall be joyously reunited with the old-school.

With so much loot about, every day feels like Christmas. In space.

That said, it's an old-school bearing the camouflaged marks of what has gone before in Company of Heroes. The basic set-up for multiplayer is a three-on-three fight for domination on a battlefield with Power, Requisition and Victory capture nodes scattered liberally over its grassy knolls, ancient temple steps and ravaged human settlements. Raised power gives you access to bigger and better units, requisition points give you the means to purchase your kit and Victory points gently nuzzle the success-o-meter in your direction.

It's a great system, with added as depth your pre-built unit-spewing base can be upgraded. Plus your Force Commander, already chosen from three different varieties of badass, accrues experience while throwing himself around in the fray - and as such can be heftily upgraded within a 20-minute game.

With so many levels of upgrading complexity, when compared to the easy learning curve of single-player, playing online can at first seem like jumping into a nightmarish vortex.

This is further underlined by the fact that you haven't yet been trained in the more bizarre capabilities of the Eldar and Tyranid host - the former bearing all manner of quasi-magical hi-tech psychic palaver, and the latter more content to cover the landscape with filthy biomass flob and to spike Space Marines through the chest and violently shake them up and down.

Relic's clearly worked hard to smooth over some of the previous game's rough edges.

Once you've mastered it, however, the tactical nuances run deep - with the three varieties of capture point allowing for many different styles of play, complemented by the fact that three minds are expected to work in unison rather than the traditional two.

When Dawn of War II is released you can almost guarantee that familiar voices on familiar forums will mutter dark words about dumbing down, but I honestly don't think that's the case. Relic, probably the most astute strategy designer out there, has recognised that within the ranks of PC gamers there are countless numbers who'd appreciate RTS gaming but have been put off by their assumed complexity, the amount of time they consume and their cruelty when victory conditions aren't reached.

RTS gaming has been playing to an increasingly shrinking audience, and in Relic's eyes there's a silent majority out there just waiting to become fresh meat for the 40k grinder. Once they've been reeled in by the allure, rewards and beautifully rendered violence of the Space Marine campaign the plan is to drown them in the deep waters of multiplayer and, hopefully, ensure that they never leave strategy's shores.

Who's to begrudge a master of the artform like Relic re-rolling the dice? From the way Dawn of War II is going they could have thrown all 108 of them, and they'd still have come up with sixes.