I bought the day it was released and didn't post anything because I was so pissed off.

The box i bought said it came with free gear and extra maps, but apparently that was for the first 10000 people to register, so people who lived farther west were screwed. I don't really care about the gear so much as the extra SP campaign stuff, but the fact is the box said it was "included" not that it was limited availability. Not only that, but apparently there was a way for a single purchase to be used 5x over to get the different sets, so thats shaves the 10000 number down significantly.

Then the game not only requires steam, but windows live. So I gotta be running two applications just to play the game. Sigh. I got people sending me steam pms and windows pms and my head is about to explode.

MP: streamlined. HQ builds everything, except the power stations you put on conduits. And engineer classes can build turrets.

The units are also streamlined as far as number of vehicle variety, etc, which I also think is an improvement.

There is a max squad limit and an overall population limit, which means usually about 6/7 max squads out if you are mixing infantry with vehicles. No more zerging shoota boys by the 100s.

Bosses can level up to 10, at which point they are fairly uber, and units can level up to 4. The retreat button comes in hella handy here as u can have 1 unit left in a squad, send him back, reinforce him cheaply, and save the time and money of having to buy a fresh level 0 unit. Also, retreating units run faster.

I also like how allied bosses can revive each other for free.


SP: Campaign is way cool, as the characters and their stat/level up abilities kind of reminds me of the old XCOM standard. The level cap is 20, so mid-maxxing seems the way to go.

I'm not too thrilled at the thought of MP co-op because I hihgly doubt I'm going to find someone to play out a full campaign with me in multiple settings, and that being said, I don't want others leveling my dudes. I can see it now, my friend stops playing and I want to continue, I log on to find out that he's been making a melee scout and a heavy weapons crew that uses flamers. Oh boy.

I may enlist someone to help me towards the end, when the templates are set, but to me the best part of the campaign is specializing the teams and swapping gear around as needed. I have 6 squads to choose from, one of them I hardly ever use, and my commander and HW squad are level 20. I still have to fight the farseer and locate the big hive, so not sure how close I am to the end.


HINT: If you want to get your squads some levels then on the campaign maps where you have to destroy multiple troop making bases of the enemies, then set up a defensive near your drop pod and go afk. The hordes will come and come and come. I recommend Tyrnaid maps because they don't throw grenades.

I did this on accident on caldaris where I had to take out 4 or 5 hives, left all my units by the pod while I went to take a shower and thought I paused the game. I came back 20 mins later to find loot all over the place and my ranged units all went up 2-3 levels. If anyone died, they would just respawn at the pod.

another note about the campaign: aborting a mission counts towards a deployment, u keep your experience and loot. So if you get off to a bad start and you were shooting for a high mission score, you might as well fight it out and try to get to the boss before starting over. You can actually kill the boss, get the loot, and start the mission over.

Also, if you have extra deployments saved up from uber mission scores, you can go in, claim a strategic asses, abort mission, come back and claim the other strategic asset. I found this out on accident, too, but didn't use this method because I don't really like the stategic asset powers and would rather use other gear in those slots.

I've played lots of MP coop vs AI but havent played any vs people. The one thing that irritates me about the control points is that a unit taking a point can be under attack and the capture won't be interrupted, which makes the tyranids and the eldar swarms of little fast troops really irritating to play against. You will literally take a point, walk away, and 30 seconds later its gone even though you parked a tank there to defend it. yay.