Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising Expansion Gone Gold, Pre-Order Bonuses Detailed

25
Relic's standalone strategy expansion Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising (PC) is off to manufacturing and will indeed meet the projected release dates of March 11 (North America) and March 12 (Europe), publisher THQ has confirmed.

Playable with or without a copy of the original Dawn of War II (PC), the $29.99 expansion packs a new fifteen-mission single-player campaign, a higher level cap (from 20 to 30), new items, new units, new multiplayer maps, and a new playable army: the Chaos Space Marines.

In addition, THQ has pulled back the curtain on the game's pre-order bonuses. Those that pre-order from Steam, Best Buy, GameStop, GameTap or Metaboli net a free copy of open-world gangbuster sim Saints Row 2 PC, while those that pre-order from THQ.com get both Saints Row 2 PC and a "Librarian Wargear Pack" for Dawn of War II.

And for those interested, there's a hour-long gameplay video hosted over on Xfire.

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

Filed Under
From The Chatty
  • reply
    February 22, 2010 10:40 AM

    That pre-order is pretty weak. It's not really focused on people who might buy an RTS and the game isn't highly thought of on the PC. Surprising that THQ kept the better stuff for itself. Combine this with the lack of DLC support shown so far and I'm probably going to wait until it's a bit cheaper.

    • reply
      February 22, 2010 10:43 AM

      that one free DLC pack was pretty good but with only one fuckin map it was not something you could play for more than a few hours without getting bored.

      • reply
        February 22, 2010 10:55 AM

        Yeah I completely forgot Last Stand. Had they had allowed a variable number of player I might have played it more.

    • reply
      February 22, 2010 10:44 AM

      Er what? The lack of DLC support? The original DoW2 got two or three huge free content packs. One of them added a new co-op styled mode to the game. That's a lack of DLC support?!

      • reply
        February 22, 2010 10:46 AM

        No shit, lack of DLC my ass. Who puts out all of that content for free any more?

      • reply
        February 22, 2010 10:47 AM

        They added 2v2 and Last Stand. The rest were desperately needed balance updates.

        • reply
          February 22, 2010 10:57 AM

          [deleted]

        • reply
          February 22, 2010 11:22 AM

          They also added a huge map pack. I know the game shipped with very few maps initially, but any other dev could've just left it there but Relic went on and like tripled the number of maps over time.

          • reply
            February 22, 2010 11:57 AM

            Relic's model is to sell a game, then keep it alive with expansion packs. They needed to keep the community alive in order to make the expansion packs worth while.

            Leaving the game in a very unbalanced state with around 6 maps would have caused it to die out long before Chaos Rising was released...

      • reply
        February 22, 2010 10:59 AM

        Pretty much - Last Stand was ok but adding in a missing map type from launch isn't something I got excited about. Everything in this expansion pack was stuff I'd been expecting to be released as smaller DLC (paid/unpaid) packs rather than as a separate product.

        • reply
          February 22, 2010 11:26 AM

          So a whole new race, 15 more levels of single player (and according to previews, much better single player), and new units for each existing race you expected to be released as smaller DLC? Dream on...

          • reply
            February 22, 2010 11:29 AM

            I really did expect them to release new units.

            • reply
              February 22, 2010 11:31 AM

              At the very least. I also didn't think it was that much of a stretch to think they would introduce a new army or a chain of missions as DLC.

        • reply
          February 22, 2010 11:26 AM

          [deleted]

Hello, Meet Lola