Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Hands On

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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.