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180 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What Winter Assault should have been!, 4 Sep 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
As bang for buck, value for money goes this expansion is looking to be a very meaty addon. I will be the first to say Winter Assault didn't live up to my expectations about what an expansion pack should be. Which quite simply is content, and lots of it!
The campaign, while less story driven will be much longer due to a new global conquest campaign. Rather than linear missions one after another, followed by a pretty meagre "one side or the other" choice at the end, Dark Crusade offers a completely non linear campaign, playable with any race, that's 7 whole new campaigns! While I doubt we will see a great deal of voice overed cut-scenes as were abundant before and after each mission in WA, Relic have said that each campaign will be story driven. Whether this will come up in text form or proceduraly generated cutscenes has yet to be specified. As your progress you will unlock equipment and your armour which can be added to your commander, taking him/her from powerful command unit, to a gleaming one man/woman death machine.
As well as this Relic are going to add yet another unit to each current playable race, the additions are as follows:
Space Marines: Grey Knights: Small, elite, melee proficient squad who specialise in Daemons. They are the Holiest among the Space Marines Chapters, and also gifted psykers which could mean a special ability or two. Each carriers a storm bolter and a Phsycically charged Polearm known as a Nemesis Force Weapon.
Orcs: Flash Gitz: A very neccessary addition for the Orc faction due to the New Long range heavy Tau race. The flash gits are large Nob class orks, but with very big guns. They are very similar to The Imperial Guard's Ogryns in terms of apperance,weapons and animations(Relic cutting corners? Perhaps but a very useful addition none the less.) They deal high ranged damage, but are quite weak at taking it.
Chaos: Chaos recieve the mighty Daemon Prince. Much like the Space Marines Chaplain, except very very large, the Daemon Prince is a melee whirlwind. Weilding a large Nether Sword, and some sort of glowing corrupted artifact, the Daemon Prince obliterates his foes with brute force and sheer presence, his placement on the battlefield causes serious moral drops in his opponents as they cower in fear of a Space Marine who has been totally lost to the warp.
Imperial Guard: Heavy Weapons team. Much in the trend of the Imperial Guard's advance, fortify, advance, fortify style of play, the heavy weapons team are a mobile defense platform. Two Imperial Guardsmen carry one of three heavy weapons: A Heavy Bolter, Lascannon or Heavy Bore Cannon. On the move they have no attack capabilities and must be defended by your other units untill deployed. It takes about 3 seconds for the pair to unpack and assemble their weapon and place some sand bags, but once assembled the Heavy Weapons team will shred their foes with awesome fire power in any direction.
Eldar: Harlequins. No real details on these units have been released by Relic, and even in the Gamesworkshop world they are quite are rare and unknown force. As far as I can tell the Harlequins are a completely independant section of the Eldar race. Not tied to the usual bonds of an Eldar clan they act as mediators for their Eldar cousins in political and diplomatic matters, but in war they become feared assasins, who specialise in melee combat.
As for the two new races, the Demo which allowed the Tau to be played for 2 missions showed alot of promise.
Tau: The tau are a fragile, civilised race who specialise in long range combat. They are unique in the fact they have no Defensive constructions, excluding of course upgraded listening posts. They do however have allies, the Kroots and their large Krootox cousins make up the melee arm of the Tau, engaging and occupying the enemy while the ranged Tau vapourise them with incredible efficiency. A few important units:
X15 Stealth Suits: These are you first units and act as a permanently cloaked, but weak offensive force. They can be upgraded to have jetpacks, and once the Tau versions of the armory is built, fusion Blasters which are effective and vehicular weapons. They can be very useful scouts in the later game, creating safe line of sight for your weaker troops to lay down heavy fire.
XV25 Commander Battle Suit. You primary commander on the battlefield is a one man ranged army. With several upgrades which allow him to be effective against any foe, when kept relatively safe your commander will be the core of your fire power. And if things get too hot, he can always jetpack to a safer positions.
Kroot Carnivores: The first of the Kroot family of units are melee specialist with some weak supressing ranged fire. Up against the real melee heavy hitters like possesed marines these boys will go down fast, but as melee fodder simply to keep you opponents at bay while your main troops lay down fire they handle themselves well, and once upgrade can leap into melee range to avoid being cut down by enemy guns.
The Necrons: Unfortunatley the demo did not allow me to play any of the Necron Units. From what has been released so far, the necrons are expensive and slow, but are unmatched in strength and reslience. In a one on one fight a band of necrons will easily take down their enemy counterparts. However their speed does leave them vunerable to hit and run attacks and artillery.
The Necrons entire plan of battle is decided around your monolith. A giant floating pyramid structure that have begun to resurface after 60 million years under the sand. At first your Monolith lies Dormant buried beneath the sand. It is your job to gain enough power and resources to bring it back online. It's hard and expensive and will take a significant amount of time, but once done, your monolith becomes your ultimate weapon. A flying fortress that will tear any and all units to shreds, a unti that will take the combined effort of all your opponents artillery and armor to take down, and even then only if they're luckty or if they have allies, the Necron Monolith is by far the greatest unit in the game.
So I recommend any RTS fan, or any gamer out there for that matter, buy a copy of Dawn of War (it's very cheap) and then invest in this expansion (£17.99) and you will have one of the most full and engaging RTS experiences of your life. 5/5, 10/10, this is what an expansion should be.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Game, Great Visuals, Great Buy, 2 May 2007
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Okay, so, heres the deal.
I bought the DOW + WA dual pack a while back, had a great time playing on it. It was just, fun. Hard, evil, blood-spurting fun, but nevertheless, it had some areas to improve on.
Next, comes a long Dark Crusade. Now, i wait for a bit before buying becuase im a bit dubious of how good its going to be - then a few friends bought it and i succumbed to peer pressure...
So, after playing the originals with friends, Dark Crusade was like trying a new game! Its been a while since i've been so slow to tech up with a new race - it improves the game so much over its predecessor, immersis you in so much more, i can't imagine why you haven't bought it.
The two new races are different and diverse - the Tau favour long ranged assualts (INSANE firepower btw) while the Necrons, slow to develop, are immensly hard to stop once they get going (their robotic warriors pull themselves back together in battle). It just adds more depth to the game, especially if Space Marines was too in your face, Chaos too clichéd (see that? aliteration that is), Eldar just too, well, ethereal (and again! im on a role!) and orks just too....well....unskilled mobbing is a good tactic...
The single player campaign, while not brilliant, IS more diverse than the scripted versions, insofar is it follows a Total War set up - choosing what to conquer on a planet size scale. Its not brilliantly executed but it IS going down the right track.
The AI is good, but i have to say, nothing will beat playing with other people - first time i did it, it was so much more intense than an AI battle - nothing like watching your army decimate someone else's while they are powerless to stop you!
To conclude - your getting a great add-on, or stand alone game (i would recommend getting the first 2 parts first though) for a low price in todays market - if its not your thing, its not a huge deal - but i garuntee you will enjoy watching your enemies splat across the landscape.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Relic raise the bar once again, 7 Nov 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
This has been my most anticipated game for a long while. And it certainly lives up to my high expectations. I didn't doubt the game would dissapoint, but perhaps it was never going to be as good as people were saying it would be. Thank the stars then, that Dark Crusade is amazingly good.
Dawn of War is easily my favourite game for about the last five or more years. So to have a second expansion was always going to be a high point of the season (if not the year). Fortunately this expansion offers FAR more than Winter Assault ever did. Let's look at my personal pros and cons of DC.
Pros:
2 new playable races - Tau Empire and Necron. This is enough to buy the game on its own. Bringing the total number of unique races to 7, which is unprecedented. Not only that, but they're both very different from the standard 5. Moving on...
20 new multiplayer maps - I think it's 20, but whatever, that's an awful lot of new maps to blast your way around. It brings the total to about 75 which is certainly more than enough and they're all rather interesting and appealing too, which is more important.
New units and abilities - it's also nice to see that Relic have introduced some new units and abilities to step up the standard 5 races. Orks definitely need Flash Gitz for long range, powerful fire power, and Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons are useful considering their troopers and weapons are relatively weak. Plus Grey Knights are tres cool!
It's also great to finally see the computer using ALL unit types and various strategies. It was a shame the computer would easily neglect certain units in the other two games. Now you actually see Eldar using Vypers and Rangers!
Plus, the change of the basic function of cloaking is now vastly improved. And for the first time ever I'm using the Skull Probes!
Main single player feature - The conquest of Kronus. It's a good idea actually. Although actually playing through all this isn't massively exciting, it would have been more boring if Relic just created another linear irrelevant storyline. Plus, having an Honour Guard and being able to use existing buildings in new battles is a nice features and essentially allows this to work.
Sound and Graphics - both have been improved. Units say more things, plus battles have been upgraded in both departments. Skirmishes sound better and look better than they ever did before, which is great.
Cons:
Unit limits - Limits have been put on certain units such as Predators and Terminators, amongst others. Surely this has been done to even the playing field, especially with regards to net gaming. It's a shame though that it restricts single player versus computer.
Loading times - Well, they were never fast, but they've certainly gotten way too slow. Oh well, at least it gives me the time to do the odd job round the house. ;)
Lack of bikes - I'd love to see Space Marines sport bikes and assault bikes. It's a shame they've not been added for this new edition.
...
Well, there aren't a whole lot of cons, which is a good thing, and the ones I've come up with on the spot will only ease over playing time. Generally though, what it shows is that it's an almost flawless game. It still has the amazing gameplay as it has had since day one, but now it's just been vastly improved. I would highly recommend it to anyone, especially those who enjoy fast paced sci-fi RTS games, because this is definitely the best since Starcraft.
Plus, for newcomers to the series you don't even need the original game. This can be played stand-alone, albeit with only Tau and Necron, but that's enough to get anyone started on the series.
10/10
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