Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (PC CD)

The second I started to read the manual I was filled with nostalgia, suddenly all the names flooded back, Farseers, Howling Banshees, Warp Spiders, The Avatar oh yes!

Next came the intro movie! Wow! For the first time this imaginary world was alive. The film is a brilliantly rendered scene of Space Marines battling Orks and the movements and sounds all seemed incredibly authentic.

So at this point I was pretty excited. I couldn't wait to play the Eldar campaign... Hold on, where's the Eldar campaign!? Sure enough, there is only one campaign and you can only use Space Marines (Eldar, Chaos and Orks can be used, but only in Skirmish mode, or Multiplayer). The campaign itself is still very good, after finding the first two missions incredibly easy, I set the difficulty to Hard and it posed a pretty reasonable challenge from there on (however, I should warn you that I'm no expert at RTS so many people will still find this too easy). At this point I was about to come on Amazon and rate the game 3 stars. It's great to see the characters of Warhammer 40k embroiled in violent war, but the game just doesn't deliver in terms of length. Also I hear the Multiplayer is good, but I don't have broadband, so I can't really review it.

Anyway, I WAS going to give it 3 stars until I visited the relic site and discovered the modding tools available. It is relatively straightforward to build campaigns for Dawn of War. I'm currently writing an Eldar campaign but don't hold your breath as I don't have much time to spend on it. However others in the community are in the process of adding entire armies to the game (some of the Tyranid models look fantastic).

So in conclusion, this game is too short at the moment, but there are sure to be a host of excellent official and unofficial mods and campaigns available for this game in the future. Also the development tools are great fun to play around with adding a whole new aspect to the experience. I'm reluctant to give it 5 stars as it lacks a lot as a finished package, however I'm pretty sure it will be worth 5 stars in a year or so.

So why only three stars? Well, because great graphics and animation alone do not a "best game of the century" make. It seems to me that they spent so long working on the graphics and animation that they forgot to actually write the rest of the game. The level design is basic, dull and uninspiring on every single map, and there is just nowhere near enough content. There is only one single player campaign with a pathetic total of just 12 missions, and you can ONLY play as the Space Marines. I loved playing this game and tore into it, finishing the Space Marine campaign in a couple of evenings on the standard difficulty level, and was left really wanting more. I was really looking forward to going on to play as the Orks, Eldar and Chaos Marines, as promised. Except you can't.

Now I know that still leaves the other races playable in multiplayer, but it's simply not good enough compared to other truly excellent RTS games like Warcraft III and Medieval:Total War that excel in both single player AND multiplayer gaming. I'd also say it's definitely not value for money (although Amazon's price is reasonable), and doesn't come close to meeting the expectations that people had for this title.

This doesn't feel like a stand-alone game, there's less to it than some expansion packs! The fact that it's such fun to play makes it all the more disappointing that there isn't more of it. In my opinion, it'll be a great game - when it's finished.

This new and refreshing look at RTS will be a whole new game experience.

Yes, you still have a base to build and a tech tree to develop. But the 'strategic point' element makes it vital for all players to start the game as soon as they build their first unit. In stead of mining for minerals you need to capture strategic points to gain quicker access to reinforcements. Luckily your first units (scouts) can be build from your primary building which makes the game move on a much faster pace than any other RTS. So, no more fortifying for half an hour before starting to play because you WILL be overrun.

The graphical details (smooth at 1280 x 1024 and all options running) are stunning to say the least. Units have multiple graphic sequences for the same style of attack. In close combat enemy units get picked up, smashed, bashed and thrown away or simply clubbed to their deaths by your Dreadnaughts. This can be done with or without a scenic bloody display.

The terrain is also a usable feature in this game. It can give you more or less cover making you harder or better to hit by enemy forces.

With the introduction of 'morale' indicators another new feature is introduced to common RTS. Units who have lost the willingness to fight will fight less effective than those who still have full confidence. A tactical retreat might save your day.

Units fight in squads. Squads are automatically coupled together as an effective fighting group. You can still group squads together using CTRL-# but you don't have to in order to keep your force controllable. Special characters can be added to the squads so they will give their abilities to the rest of the squad without having to control them separately (you can if you want to).

Units and squads can be upgraded with heavy and assault weapons. Warhammer players know that heavy weapons can only be fired when a squad has been stationary. They need their time to bring the heavy weapons to bearing. This is represented in the game by the model aiming his weapon and a time line filling up before firing the weapon.

Squads that had casualties can be brought back to strength while in battle. New units will be teleported directly into the existing unit. This saves on time moving to the building that produces the units neither for stacking the build queue nor for having them to move all over the screen before being ready for action. This also improves on the effective game time. Naturally you can't add to a squad that has been wiped out.

Before running out of my available 1000 words I would love to add the unique building sequence. No longer do buildings appear out of thin air. They now drop from the sky! Pre-fab buildings are dropped as reinforcements either with drop-pods or 'Thunderhawks' (if it's really big). Servitors will then install the pre-fab buildings until they are fully operational. This way new units are imported as well. The buildings don't "build" units out of nothing. Instead they receive drop-pods from the orbiting carrier and act more for unit deployment that unit building.

For as far as the demo shows the storyline I believe the cut-scenes and pre-/post-storytelling is best compared to that of Warcraft III or better (fortunately it does not have the slow ass controllability of this poor sequence title).

In all, the game is fast, good looking, refreshingly new and worth your while!