So, borrowed a friend's copy of Chaos Rising and have to say it was a pretty decent expansion. At only 8 hours long (give or take) it is rather short for 30 bucks, but it had a decent story and some nice improvements upon the original - notably the introduction of multiple objectives within a mission. The addition of the Corruption mechanic means I will get around to playing it twice, to see what the differences are if you go to the dark side, as it were. (I recall it being said the ending is different)

Not sure I liked the way the final boss looked - a little too cartoony if you ask me - but the fights were good for the most part. I did lament the fact that cover seems to play less important a role in this game and often fealt my characters were being left standing out in the open to be shot where in the last game they provided a great deal of terrain to provide a better illusion of point-to-point combat.

Jack of Tears said:

Starting off at a high level meant that the expansion campaign did tend to focus around utterly annihilating anything that strolled into your line of sight due to all the wargear and abilities you have at your disposal. I definitely approved of the lack of randomly generated/filler missions though. Each one was unique and I'll gladly take quality over quantity.

As for corruption, all I'll say is this; the penultimate mission can be far more interesting if you're not going for a completely puritanical playthrough. That and there are about 5 different endings rather than a straight pure/corrupt split.

The endings can be watched, since they are standard video archives. Just look inside the installation directory. Sadly, only one or two have sound.

I couldn't pass the traitor (the techpriest for me... ******* tank...), too low FPS to be able to dodge the tank assaults :S. Also, the explorers are imba in doing the mission, but quite useless against end bosses.

Bombernoy said:

Now I'm curious, what dickery did the Eldar do this time?

Argus Van Het said:

My basic strategy against every boss was to have one squad back(the rez squad, usually cyrus), have the Force commander beat on the boss with tarkus giving him invul whenever it was up and avitus with a signum spamming artillery strikes on the fc who would take no damage from them allowing avitus to stay out of the way, I would also have Tarkus' own invul on and make sure that he carried the revive packs. Only time this changed was the final boss, who had a ton of hp. Also, the Eldar were just d&cks, I can't say much without it being a spoiler, but just plain d&cks