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Well, Chaos Rising is out for the majority of the planet, apart from Europe (we get it tommorow)- any North Americans/Ozzies and the like have it yet?

The update has given Vanilla owners the extra units for the existing armies and the Chaos army painter, and its nice to see the Chaos Lord has some rather snazzy horns this time.

So whats the campaign like? I've been reading that Relic has done something about the repetitive missions, and has added in a few more objectives/terrain stuff (even a Space Hulk )

Opnions? thoughts? Pet hates?

I was never into DoW too much, but today I saw DoW2 + Chaos Rising in a single box for $79.95 at EB, and decided it was a really good deal. Haven't installed or played either yet.

Does Chaos Rising include a single player campaign for the Chaos Marines?

No, Chaos Rising continues your original Space Marine campaign.

Although I am displeased to note that most of my wargear did not carry over. That may be due to completing the campaign in an unusual order (started campaign a few months ago on then-current version, did most of it, installed Chaos Rising patch [which caused some bugs with existing campaign], nearly completed, installed Chaos Rising proper, finished campaign, then transferred over to Chaos Rising campaign). Most of my cool gear was gone and some of it replaced with a generic assortment of mostly low-level junk. Only some very specific blues seemed to stay (and not all of them), such as all three Terminator sets I'd collected.

I'm only a couple missions in but it seems solid. IIRC, the Librarian is the same guy from Winter Assault, so it's nice to see continuity there. What little I've seen of the maps so far suggests less generic, more specific, smaller, focused maps for each mission more in the style of traditional RTS campaigns where each map is tailor-made for the mission (though there still seems to be a few in the DoW2 style of persistent areas)

The new level 30 stuff seems cool, though practically speaking you're probably only able to get 2, maybe 3 new abilities per squad. It does give you a respec after the first mission, but I was happy with my builds so I didn't use it. A little bummed by the level-scaling; by the end of the original campaign I had a team of unstoppable badasses, in the start of CR I had afore-mentioned generic equipment and struggled against squads of mercenaries.

I just enquired at my local game store how much this was going to cost, as it comes out tomorrow in the UK, but the interwebs is being a little unclear.

The lassy said £39.99.

I almost said, " My fucking bollocks" in response.

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:No, Chaos Rising continues your original Space Marine campaign.

Although I am displeased to note that most of my wargear did not carry over. That may be due to completing the campaign in an unusual order (started campaign a few months ago on then-current version, did most of it, installed Chaos Rising patch [which caused some bugs with existing campaign], nearly completed, installed Chaos Rising proper, finished campaign, then transferred over to Chaos Rising campaign). Most of my cool gear was gone and some of it replaced with a generic assortment of mostly low-level junk. Only some very specific blues seemed to stay (and not all of them), such as all three Terminator sets I'd collected.

I'm only a couple missions in but it seems solid. IIRC, the Librarian is the same guy from Winter Assault, so it's nice to see continuity there. What little I've seen of the maps so far suggests less generic, more specific, smaller, focused maps for each mission more in the style of traditional RTS campaigns where each map is tailor-made for the mission (though there still seems to be a few in the DoW2 style of persistent areas)

The new level 30 stuff seems cool, though practically speaking you're probably only able to get 2, maybe 3 new abilities per squad. It does give you a respec after the first mission, but I was happy with my builds so I didn't use it. A little bummed by the level-scaling; by the end of the original campaign I had a team of unstoppable badasses, in the start of CR I had afore-mentioned generic equipment and struggled against squads of mercenaries.

When you mouse-over the Terminator armor in your inventory it says that it needs repair, so I'm expecting you can unlock it a bit later in the Chaos campaign. (Most of my gear was locked out as well, so I don't think order matters). Assault Jump seems to be considerably more effective, though I could be imagining things.

Good. Terminator armour is too effective not to use, and too ugly and inflexible with regards to equipment to really enjoy using. Plus having your basic infantry units destroy cover in a cover-based infantry tactics game was perhaps the stupidest idea ever devised.

Terminators are not "basic infantry"

Also, ugly? Wtf? Some of the equipment restrictions were silly, though at least they have at long last finally added lightning claws.

Apparently, you can really screw yourself over in the campaign like I just did. It gives you two missions, one with a bad-ass power sword reward and the other to rescue your Techmarine... I did not realize that these are apparently mutually exclusive missions and you can only do one. I went with the power sword, so I didn't get the Techmarine to repair my Terminator armor.

White Haven wrote:Good. Terminator armour is too effective not to use, and too ugly and inflexible with regards to equipment to really enjoy using. Plus having your basic infantry units destroy cover in a cover-based infantry tactics game was perhaps the stupidest idea ever devised.

But then once you've got Terminator armour, you don't need cover, because they can't use it. I would have liked some wider array of equipment for termies in the first one, but they were so rock hard once you got them that it didn't really matter. I mean you could frag a building, or you could just point Avitus at it and watch everything die.

That would be meaningful if everyone got in Terminator armour. You can only ever get 3 suits in the original, and that's only at the tail end. In the mean time, you're faced with Avitus covering up and raining death down on someone right when the idiot pathfinding AI decides to have Tarkus take a leisurely stroll through the aforementioned cover and leave your heavy weapons team with their ass hanging in the breeze.

What happened to the 360 release? Maybe if I played it again the campaign wont glitch out.

Stark wrote:What happened to the 360 release? Maybe if I played it again the campaign wont glitch out.

Didn't get released? I seem to remember seeing it in one of my friend's game list.

It's on my game list too; the PC version. I want to double up!

Has anyone had a problem with their savegames just being.. gone? I played through the campaign back when it first came out, but haven't really messed with the single player since.. and now I go to load it up after getting chaos rising and I can't find my original campaign at all. I even checked the folder where the save games are stored and its empty.

SylasGaunt wrote:Has anyone had a problem with their savegames just being.. gone? I played through the campaign back when it first came out, but haven't really messed with the single player since.. and now I go to load it up after getting chaos rising and I can't find my original campaign at all. I even checked the folder where the save games are stored and its empty.

I haven't noticed this, but why would it matter if it's stored in your folder? Steam stores all your save files on their servers. You did sign into your GFWL account right?

No Chaos Marine campaign? Suck my balls, why the hell not?!

Oh well.

Woops, I'm retarded. The Techmarine mission was just on a different planet and I didn't recognize it.

Anyway, I beat it - rather on the short side. The quality was pretty good though and considering it was only a $30 expansion it wasn't that bad. Some good mission design that got away from the same old search & destroy stuff in the vanilla campaign:
Spoiler Given the content of the ending (I did everything 'right' and was 100% pure by the end), it looks like the next instalment is going to be a bit more traditional tactical/RTS fare, though I'm sure the DoW2 style approach isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Addendum - Vympel, you can become Chaos Marines through the campaign.

Well that is interesting. I jsut bought the game on Steam, and it seems the update the day before included the game. The game loaded up almost immediately.

Stark wrote:It's on my game list too; the PC version. I want to double up!

Sorry, I meant to say on xbox live in the achievements section.

Yes, it's on mine too (I'm 'nullstark' look it up). GFWL = uses your Live account = listed in same place. I have Fallout 3 on twice, one is 360 and one is PC.

Well I didn't know that. Sorry about the possibly misleading statement.

I had no interest in playing F3 on 360 until I found out.

As of early 2009 apparently a port was 'planned', but I guess it never happened.

White Haven wrote:That would be meaningful if everyone got in Terminator armour. You can only ever get 3 suits in the original, and that's only at the tail end. In the mean time, you're faced with Avitus covering up and raining death down on someone right when the idiot pathfinding AI decides to have Tarkus take a leisurely stroll through the aforementioned cover and leave your heavy weapons team with their ass hanging in the breeze.

That's why you put Avitus in terminator armour first (because you did concentrate on useful traits, didn't you)? He tends to spend most of his time standing still at the back, so he doesn't flatten all of your cover. That and Assault Cannon + Focus Fire = lots of dead people. Although he's the character who can equip it first, Tarkus seems to gain least from terminator armour, and certainly lost out most from losing access to most of the equipment. (overall I thought his were the least useful squad, possibly tied with Thaddeus, who tended to be a bit fragile and needed babying around so he didn't fall to bits in the middle of a fight.)

It's a pity the 360 port of DoW2 died, certainly in campaign mode the fact that you are controlling a limited number of squads would have made the normal micromanagement fiddle and crap much more manageable than in other RTS attempts.

I found Tarkis pretty useless too, but he needed less micro than the scout.

And yeah, I would have had a blast pew pewing with a controller. Oh well.

Stark wrote:I found Tarkis pretty useless too, but he needed less micro than the scout.

Depends, Cyrus could also stand at the back and pew at things with a sniper rifle, so you could generally just leave him at the back well out of harm's way in real fights and get on with microing your force commander to smack people in the face more, maybe occasionally taking time out to use his assassination move on a warrior with a barbed strangler or a zoanthrope (he was less good against Orks or Eldar, but against Tyranids he was a deathmachine), and if you were inclined to micro him he could basically solo entire maps thanks to infiltrate and his many many explosives.

I think I used Tarkis as a nadespam guy, actually. I dimly remember giving him piles of nades and a shield because he was always the first to die.

And yeah, soloing him was soooooo boring.