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Today, on steam at least, DOW2 is available for download.
Why they didn’t allow preloads is beyond me, although the jaded cynic inside notes that THQ direct downloads have apparently been available for a while. I haven’t confirmed this, but THQ are renowned for playing silly buggers for weird marketing reasons (hello region restrictions on downloadable content!)…
Anyway, with the beta now behind us, we are faced with the ‘real deal’ and I’m quietly confident in my purchase. The game is really an RTT, so people should set their expectations accordingly. I think relic have almost got the game right, but there are still some tweaks that need to occur. It SEEMS I am in agreement with their lead designer, who has very interesting things to say in the linked article. Definitely worth 5 minutes of your time, if you are interested in game design decisions and relic’s approach in general.
One point I wish to take issue with is the assertion in the article that relic are attempting to ‘save’ RTS games. RTS is doing fine as a genre (witness Halo Wars on the 360 and SC2 development), but the profit expectations are not likely to be met with straight-up hardcore games. Jonny Ebert nails it when he states that
“Most genres, like first person shooters and massively-multiplayer and free-to-play games, the ones that are experiencing strong growth, were constantly working to simplify themselves and make themselves more approachable, where RTS is going in the opposite direction. It seems like each one was more complicated than the last. The other genres were having constant breakthroughs in pacing, reward structure, drawing players systematically into the experience, whereas RTS had stayed the same across the board.”
The key point here is not to ‘dumb down’ games, but to make the entry point easy and the difficulty curve lower in slope. Basically, make it easy to learn, but hard to master. This allows you to cater to the widest ranging audience.
Have Relic done that with DOW2? I’ll keep you posted 
- Scoobs
Oh, you can discuss this in the forums HERE
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