Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War II

Dawn of War II isn’t like strategy games such as Command & Conquer, where the focus is on base building and producing enormous armies.

Here, you only control a limited number of squads and the focus is on gaining experience and upgrading your units, rather than assembling a huge army.

Instead of directly harvesting resources, you capture control points. The more territory you control, the more resources trickle in.

Winning or losing depends on your use of terrain. Nearly every object can be used as cover, so your heavy troops can rain fire from a safe distance, while your scouts move in close.

There’s also plenty of variation between the units on offer. Each army has scouts and regular infantry, but there are also units with jump-packs, warp abilities, melee specialists, vehicles and artillery.

As you complete missions in the campaign mode, you uncover new weapons, armour and abilities. The desire to discover what equipment will become available provides another incentive to plough through the missions, in addition to the excellent storyline and well-scripted cut scenes, although there is only a campaign mode for the Space Marines.

The other armies are accessible when you play a skirmish, or online. Multiplayer is handled by Games For Windows: Live, an interface similar to Xbox: Live. You can host your own game and invite your friends, or rely on the game’s matchmaking feature to select opponents for you, supposedly of a similar skill level. However, the first time we played online, we suffered an embarrassing early defeat.

The game requires fast reflexes and knowledge of each unit and how to use its abilities. It makes great use of the Games Workshop licence and although not every army or unit from the tabletop game is included, there’s still plenty for fans to enjoy.