Try Some Relic Games!

[Weaver]

Hi everyone!
It's March Mayhem again and we're approaching the great 8. One of the things I notice every year is that not many people have played many of Relic Entertainment's games. I personally adore this studio. But why in the hell would you take MY word for it? You should trust yourself and try some of their games for yourself! I've compiled here a list of demos via Steam and traditional download methods (Note: steam doesn't have everything).

Also note that Homeworld is fairly old (I think it was 1999?) so its not going to look too hot. Aside from that Dawn of War should run just fine even on a cheap laptop now a days, and Company of Heroes will run on a low end gaming machine. Without further ado:

[HEADING=2]Demos via Steam[/HEADING]
If you have steam and want to use it, this section contains links to all of Relic's demos (chronologically organized) via steam. If you don't want to use Steam, see the next section.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
Dawn of War Demo: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9320/
Dawn of War: Winter Assult (1st expansion) demo: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9330/
Dawn of War: Soulstorm (3rd expansion) demo: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9440/
for some reason there is no Dark Crusade demo (2nd expansion) which is a shame, because IMO it was the best thing to happen to that game.

Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes demo: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9300/

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2
Dawn of War 2 demo: http://store.steampowered.com/app/15680/



[HEADING=2]Demos via Traditional Downloading[/HEADING]
For downloading not on steam. I tried to find sites that required no account to login!

Homeworld (NOT ON STEAM)
Homeworld Demo: http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/569/Homeworld+Demo
Homeworld 2 Demo: http://www.gamershell.com/download_3274.shtml

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
Dawn of War Demo: http://www.gamershell.com/download_6943.shtml
Dawn of War: Winter Assult (1st expansion) demo: http://www.gamershell.com/download_10944.shtml
Dawn of War: Soulstorm (3rd expansion) demo: http://www.gamershell.com/download_22778.shtml
For some reason there is no Dark Crusade demo (2nd expansion) which is a shame, because IMO it was the best thing to happen to that game.

Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes demo: http://www.gamershell.com/download_15378.shtml
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts demo: http://www.gamershell.com/download_22134.shtml
There was NO opposing fronts demo on steam for whatever reason!

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2
Dawn of War 2 demo: Dawn of War 2 uses Steam as DRM and thus REQUIRES it. It also requires a GFWL login... trust me, we bitched at Relic fairly extensively about all of this and I think at least they want to drop GFWL for future products, but they have a contract with Microsoft for DoW2

 

[Weaver]

No takers, eh?

 

[Neonbob]

No takers, eh?

Well, I would, but I already own most of the games on there.
Still, I applaud the time you took to put that together.
I do hope someone is able to use the links to spend some quality time with the games.
They are all great fun.
also, quite possibly poorly concealed bump

 

[Amnestic]

Might want to give it more than five minutes.

Big fan of Homeworld, could do with another one. Might get around to checking out Company of Heroes. Played the rest of 'em already.

Also Soulstorm sucks schlong.

 

[Angry Caterpillar]

I played the demo for Dawn of War 2 a week ago. I've been wishing I had cash since then.
Or at least more than usual.

 

[Weaver]

Might want to give it more than five minutes.

Big fan of Homeworld, could do with another one. Might get around to checking out Company of Heroes. Played the rest of 'em already.

Also Soulstorm sucks schlong.

Original post: 10:32 pm
Bump: 11:37 pm
I gave it an hour!

No takers, eh?

also, quite possibly poorly concealed bump

I admit to resorting to horrible bump tactics.

 

[Amnestic]

Might want to give it more than five minutes.

Big fan of Homeworld, could do with another one. Might get around to checking out Company of Heroes. Played the rest of 'em already.

Also Soulstorm sucks schlong.

Original post: 10:32 pm
Bump: 11:37 pm
I gave it an hour!

Why so you did. It's 3:45AM and thus I blame earliness for my inability to read. Apologies.

 

[Neonbob]

No takers, eh?

also, quite possibly poorly concealed bump

I admit to resorting to horrible bump tactics.

heh. Well, at least you're honest about it.
Now the healing can begin!

Spoiler: Place your hands in the cleansing...

FIRE!

Don't worry. I'm certified.

 

[Weaver]

Might want to give it more than five minutes.

Big fan of Homeworld, could do with another one. Might get around to checking out Company of Heroes. Played the rest of 'em already.

Also Soulstorm sucks schlong.

Original post: 10:32 pm
Bump: 11:37 pm
I gave it an hour!

Why so you did. It's 3:45AM and thus I blame earliness for my inability to read. Apologies.

lol no problem, I know how that is O_O

 

[Nouw]

REJOICE FOR A RELIC THREAD.

Already have most of those games anyway. About to play COH right now...

 

[Keava]

Well Soulstorm wasnt made by Relic so dont blame it on them! Its Iron Lore responsible for that one and got closed down right after it, so the product lacked polish.

Alose Homeworld was one of best space sim RTS, shame they did not continue the IP :<

 

[Laft Kranz]

Alose Homeworld was one of best space sim RTS, shame they did not continue the IP :<

Try Sins of the Solar Empire, I read somewhere it was made by the same people that made Homeworld/Catacylsm - its quite fun (BUT the games take ages to finish)

 

[Omegatronacles]

Might want to give it more than five minutes.

Big fan of Homeworld, could do with another one. Might get around to checking out Company of Heroes. Played the rest of 'em already.

Also Soulstorm sucks schlong.

No it didn't. it's just that the air units were over hyped and thus when they turned out to be tanks that only some of your units could fire at everyone felt let down.

But other than that it was just Dark Crusade with Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar.

 

[Weaver]

Might want to give it more than five minutes.

Big fan of Homeworld, could do with another one. Might get around to checking out Company of Heroes. Played the rest of 'em already.

Also Soulstorm sucks schlong.

No it didn't. it's just that the air units were over hyped and thus when they turned out to be tanks that only some of your units could fire at everyone felt let down.

But other than that it was just Dark Crusade with Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar.

I really hated the air units too. Also when it launched sisters of battle had basically an "lol" level exploit. If you built a relay on top of a resource node, then upgraded it, but canceled the upgrade, you got more money back than you spent on the upgrade. So people could just mass a shit ton of resources incredibly fast by just mashing the upgrade and cancel hot keys as fast as they could.

 

[The Madman]

Yep, love me some rts, and no one can make em quite like Relic!

For some time I played Company of Heroes online regularly, but sorta lost interest as certain strategy became so prevalent that matches swiftly devolved into a set of pre-memorized tactics to ensure the optimum 'winning chance' regardless of how fun it might be. As I recall when I quit playing it was shortly before the last expansion, and the 'trick du jour' was... what did they call it? The 5 min Panther or somesuch? Basically the general gist of it was to get out a pair of Panther tanks as fast as humanly possible then to simply rush the Ally base before they could set up anything capable of stopping armor that heavy so early in the game. If you could pull it off quickly, it was a guaranteed win pretty much. There was an Ally equivalent as well, but I can't remember it right now.

Had some amazing matches however, both with friends and strangers. I have a friend who likes to play the slow and careful route, whereas I'm a fan of swift and sudden strikes. He'd play British artillery, and I'd go Americans. Between the two of us we actually made a surprisingly solid team. Fun times yelling into my mic 'Damn it man, I need artillery here NOW or I'm going to lose my position! There's too many for me to hold back, I need support, get over here!' and then surely enough the dull 'thud thud' of artillery would be heard in the distance and suddenly everything in front of my lines would be bathed in fire. My soldiers slowly advancing behind a wall of explosions being thrown down by my friend.

Glorious times!

Most recently I've been really enjoying DoW2 multiplayer and have had some equally epic matches. Unfortunately the friend above isn't a fan of DoW2 because it forces a more fast pace on its multiplayer matches. But me? I *love* the chaos of it all! The split second decisions and the sheer brutality of the Warhammer 40k universe brought to life.

Oddly enough before the expac I used to play almost exclusively as Eldar. I just enjoy their style! But since the expac I just can't seem to win as Eldar, whereas for mysterious reasons the faction I played for fun and usually lost with before, the Ork, I've yet to have lost a match as. Fine with me, the added novelty of playing as another faction online most often as well as the new units and Chaos enemies has really rejuvenated the game for me and I've been playing it more now than ever.

 

[Naso]

Well having played everything on that list i can assure everyone it's worth the try.

 

[Marine Mike]

Got all of those except DoW2, I absolutely love the Homeworld series. CoH has been eating my time and soul for the past couple weeks though, I try to mix up which commanders I use but there is such joy in turning the tide of battle with a single well-placed flak-88.

EDIT:

"FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPEROR!"

Chaos all the way, baby!

"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"
Or as Kharn so elegantly put it:
"KILL! MAIM! BURN!"

 

[The Madman]

Probably the most insanely close online game I've ever played was in Dawn of War 2 a few months back:

Spoiler: Avatar of Khaine vs. Carnifex, GO!

I quite literally stood up and cheered after that match, the last ten minutes were white-knuckled concentration where any skirmish could win or lose the whole thing. Everyone had the biggest and best units out and no one was hesitating to pull out the special abilities in every little fight. Anything to win! It. Was. Glorious!

Had another match like that just recently too. Something like 20 points left on either side, coulda gone either way. I love matches like that, they're the type I record and re-watch later for entertainment as well as the most fun to play! Even when I lose battles like that it's supremely satisfying, and the farewell gg's are honest at the end of the match.

Relic are amazing for making RTS full of such moments!

 

[Ashhearth]

Honestly I would try to play them but the instant I would download them my computer would probably crash. (Note that I am on an old desktop that only has xp without either of the service packs which also somehow prevents me from getting steam )

 

[Delusibeta]

Honestly I would try to play them but the instant I would download them my computer would probably crash. (Note that I am on an old desktop that only has xp without either of the service packs which also somehow prevents me from getting steam )

Why don't you download the service packs?