February 06, 2010 12:25 PM EST
Chaos Rising is the first expansion for real time strategy game Dawn of War II. We get a look at the new faction and a new multiplayer mode that redefines the meaning of "chaos."
Fans of real time strategy (RTS) games are no strangers to expansions. The reason gamers never got into the first Dawn of War is because it had three heavy-hitter expansions that you needed to buy in order to keep up with your friends online -- and this was even before developer Relic Entertainment announced a sequel. Now that DoW II's been out for almost a year, though, I guess it's high time for the sequels to start and Chaos Rising leads off.
Expect the usual laundry list of new maps, units, and campaign sections, but I was pleased to see that Chaos Rising adds a little pizzazz to DoW II in the form of the gruesome Chaos faction. These guys were Space Marines, but after a trip through something called the Warp, they've become something else – something corrupted and bloodthirsty. The story behind the expansion campaign is that a planet lost in the Warp reappears a year after the events of the base game. As the Space Marine faction, you explore this icy, strange planet to find clues about where it's been and what happened to the Space Marines who held it. The campaign introduces players to the Corruption System where certain events in the game corrupt units under your command depending on the player's choices (which in turn changes their skill set and personal attacks). Presumably this is what happened to the Space Marines who held the missing planet after they went into the Warp, and this is where we get the flashy Chaos faction from.
"Chaos brings a lot of charisma to the game," Producer Jeff Lydell reported during a multiplayer preview event. He a little demo of the "mark" system that the Chaos faction uses to summon huge area effect attacks that look like burning crop circles. I appeared to be pretty fancy. The Chaos faction had three out of four heroes to show off during the preview event – the skin-banner-wearing Chaos Lord, the Plague Champion, and the Chaos Sorcerer. Games journalists had the chance to try out each class in at least one player-versus-AI match and two matches of the new Free For All multiplayer mode. The defense-oriented Plague Champion worked well in the AI match.
Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising is available March 11. Once the game hits the shelves, Relic Entertainment plans on rolling out all the new maps and units included in the pack to base game users for free. Wow, how about that.......
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