So I quickly "gave up" on these two games. I'm going to forgo the normal format, and just make a few comments on each.
Magicka
I originally bought this with Cody on the cheap so we could coop it up. I don't remember much about those few days, but I remember having some fun. When I went back to try and finish the campaign by myself, I was bored out of my mind. The problem I have with this game is the combining of spells is much more complex than it needs to be. Here however, lies the rub. The fun of this game is the needless complexity, it is fun to move your fingers really quick to cast big spells. Once you get over the fun of the complexity, which wore out quickly for me, you find that you only need a few selection of spells. I bound those spells to various macro keys on my keyboard, and that basically killed the game for me. Blasting through enemies quickly became tedious. The game lost all the fun. The art style is cool and the spell effects are really fantastic
All in all, I think you need to play this game in coop.
What did I pay: $11.88
How long did I play: 3 hours
Dollars per Hour: $3.96
What would I pay? $5
Why? I remember having having when I played with Cody, so I think that's worth something. Five bucks is worth a night of fun if you ask me, so I think that's about right.
Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II
I tried really hard to like this game. I love love love love love the Warhammer universe, and I think I need to start reading those books. Beyond the franchise, I really like leveling the heroes. Gearing them up is fun, and they have a ton of personality. However, I just get bored going through doing the same thing in each level. The single player campaign has a boring story, and it just isn't fun. The encounters are all very similar, and again, I find myself just doing the same few actions with my heroes over and over. Perhaps this is a valid criticism for most games. I don't care, I felt it in this one. The other problem with this game is I can't tell if the game wants to be about the heroes or about the troops. The units are cool too, but I just don't care to use them. I wonder if the direction for this game would have been better if it was more similar to how Warcraft 3 was originally, squad based RTS with heroes. *shrug* maybe its just not for me. I don't know.
I tried Last Stand mode, which is basically horde mode with a single hero for each player. This mode confused the hell out of me. I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to play it. The only method that worked was using my teleport ability to kite enemies around while other players shot at them. This was incredibly boring. I don't get why its hard to make this mode work. Make weaker enemies that are easy to kill, but they eventually will overwhelm you if you don't properly use your abilities.
What did I pay: $4.29
How long did I play: 3 hours
Dollars per Hour: $1.43
What would I pay? $2
Why? Basically I would only pay to support the franchise. I don't really care for this game, and I think it maybe that I just don't care for RTS games in general. More on that later though. I wanted to like this game a lot though, I just couldn't get into it.
I had almost the same experience as you with Magicka. I actually got it for free using a code from E3 Denis gave me or something. I played it coop for a bit, had some fun. Then when I went back to try and finish it, I got annoyed with the complexity and quit the game.
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