All four of them are RTS (Real Time Strategy) games, released from 2004-2008. In the campaign of the first game, you play as the Space Marines, encountering Imperial Guard, Orcs, Chaos Space Marines, and Eldar. Winter Assault branches out and lets you play as all four of the encountered factions but not the Space Marines. Winter Assault also adds the Necrons as an enemy towards the end of the campaign. Dark Crusade and Soulstorm’s campaigns are a “conquer the world” scenario, like Rise of Nations or even Star War’s Battlefront II. Dark Crusade allows you to be any of the aforementioned races and adds the Tau Empire to the mix. Lastly, Soulstorm builds off of Dark Crusade and adds the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Elder for a grand total of 9 playable races. I should mention that this applies specifically when you have all of the games. From what I understand, playable races are limited if you only have one specific game in the group.
Now, as far as gameplay goes, the graphics are decent enough for me. I wouldn’t say it looks good, but there’s certainly detail in unit designs and they're all unique enough that I don't get confused. For a game that started it’s release 15 years ago, it holds up for me. Troop composition is well done, there are effective counters, lots of options, and overall solid balance. I didn’t feel like there was so much as to overwhelm me, but enough that I wasn’t bored making a bunch of the same units over and over. The biggest problem I have with the game is how easily units get stuck on each other. I've never seen it be much of a problem in other RTS games but in Dawn of War (I say Dawn of War now to mean all four games) units jam up like nobody’s business. In reality they’re actually all up in each other’s business. It’s like one big hockey fight or like the ball just snapped in football, except there’s no opposing team: it’s just a bunch of my own guys bunching up. In particular it gets really bad whenever you have infantry mixed in with vehicles. I play now with vehicles as one army, and infantry as a separate army, and I try not to have them get too close to one another. But too many vehicles will also get stuck on one another as well. The problem is you have to spread out your guys, but that’s a terrible idea tactically telling your troops to charge the enemy base in small groups.
That aside, perhaps my favorite thing about these games is the story. The world of Warhammer 40,000 is awesome and I absolutely love it. Each faction of units is unique and different from one another, and in general I love the dialogue of the units. Space Marines are seriously the coolest and I love them just like everyone else. All the main characters are impressively done and have my respect. In my opinion Dark Crusade in particular has the coolest bunch of commanders who each represent their factions well. It would have to be my favorite game to play. I love the interactions between the different commanders when you invade an enemy stronghold. That was probably my biggest letdown playing Soulstorm. I’ve only played it once but the dialogue seems disjointed. In Dark Crusade, commanders have different conversations entirely depending on what race you are playing as. Soulstorm lacks that. The other advantage Dark Crusade has over Soulstorm is that your base stays after you conquer a territory. In Soulstorm, whatever you built is wiped, and when you have to defend from an enemy attack you start with nothing, so you have put garrisons on territories and whatever effort you put in on a previous territory is lost.
All in all, I think that Dawn of War is enjoyable, but more because I love the story and played it as a kid than anything else. I like to play it on the easiest difficulty and just blow through it, much like I play Fable, Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy, and occasionally Halo. I like to play it in a breezy manner, feeling stupidly powerful and enjoying the story more than anything else. If you’ve never played, I’d recommend starting with Dark Crusade to see how you like it. Maybe wait till there’s a sale and get it for three or four dollars like I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment