Can't we all just get along?
The Warhammer 40,000 universe is one of science fictions greatest achievements. Over the years the franchise has had time to grow into one of great depth, with many fascinating stories, intriguing lore and a mixture of different human and alien races existing to annihilate each other, which of course is one of the reasons why the table top game is still so successful to this day. For those of you who haven’t been exposed to the war-torn universe of Warhammer 40,000 it goes something along these lines. It’s the 41st Millennium and the empire of man stretches over a million worlds. It is a grim period for humankind as they battle for supremacy, in some of the most horrific, gruesome war engagements ever known, against some of the most evil creatures in the universe.
Relic from the start said they weren’t planning in making a title which converts the table top rules into a game, but instead a real-time strategy game that incorporates the rich fantasy setting of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. Relic wanted to capture giant armies clashing on the battlefield, ripping each other apart with fantastic weaponry, bigger-than-life heroes, and bigger-than-a-house tanks and creatures all colliding in all-out war, and somehow they have managed to do this in the realm of a real-time strategy setting.
Who's winning is anyone's guess.
This means WAR
Dawn of War features four popular races from the table top game. The first faction is the Space Marines who are imperialistic solders of the Empire, highly advanced and augmented troops who serve without question and are highly religious and fanatical. They are the user-friendly team for beginners, who are good all-rounders and for those who have played Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, are reminiscent of the Human Alliance featured in that game, due to their versatility and capabilities to be ready for any given situation. The Orks on the other hand are green-skinned warriors, who prefer to mass numbers over advance technology. While not being partially skilled fighters, they are cheap and dispensable and can be thrown en masse at your opponent in the hope they will overwhelm in a sea of green. The Chaos pact, are former traitorous Space Marines warped by demonic energy, who have given up their old ways of serving the Empire and instead kill in the name of the chaos gods, who bolster their forces with terrifying demon creatures. Finally comes the Eldar, who are your technological, psychic alien race, which have many speciality units and can move swiftly to engage the enemy.
Each race has their own unique buildings and traits and like most real-time strategy games, there is normal base building stuff, which grants you access to better units and more researchable technology. In saying that though, if you play one race, then you won’t have great difficulty playing another, as they follow the same patterns (especially Space Marines and Chaos) but there’s definitely enough race specific elements to keep the feeling that each team plays differently.
The interface is clean and easy to use, and resembles Warcraft 3 in format. All the various commands are present as you would expect for a real-time strategy game and important game notices such as your men are under attack appears on the left hand side of the screen. Dawn of War presents all unit information in its interface and like other real-time strategies; you can use an assortment of hotkeys to increase your playing speed. The interface can also be moved off screen at a click of a button, to temporary make room in important battles.
No more peasants for us!
Gone is the traditional resource system in favour of a more influential capture system. There are two resources players will need to utilize to construct buildings and train units in Dawn of War and they are power and requisition. Power comes from building power plants and like (depending what race you are) and will deliver a steady stream of energy into your stockpile. Requisition however, comes from capturing strategic and critical points around the map. Capturing these points is done with infantry units and takes time. Once captured you will want to protect these areas, as the more you have, the more requisition points and subsequently the more you can train new units and increase your chance of defeating your enemy. This resource system puts an emphasis on offence, forcing players to leave the safety of their base to capture strategic points, and is a great way to stop players from turtling in their base the entire game.
Critical points are like strategic points, but are fewer on the map, take longer to capture and provide a greater requisition bonus, and also included on the map are relic points which when captured allow each race to build their most powerful units in the game. With this resource model you no longer have to worry about protecting the “worker” unit, nor do you have to train a mass amount of them, like in older real-time strategy games such as Starcraft. The capture and hold system in the end just comes across as more logical and allows each game played to retain a sense of intensity as you struggle to protect your own areas while trying to assault your opponents.
The Chaos marine goes for the new world record for the "balancing on horns" act.
Have it your way
Units are broken up into infantry and vehicle. Infantry units come as squad groups and will move together as one and share life vitals as one. A nice feature is that you can reinforce the numbers of an infantry squad at any time, as long as you have the resources, so this allows a squad who was just horribly slaughtered to regroup and become a full squad again over time, as long as at least one person survives. Furthermore once a building requirement is met, squads can upgrade their weapons to how you see fit. Different infantry squads can use different types of weapons and though you’re a limited to a certain amount of weapons per group, this feature allows you to customize your army to counter out your opponent(s). Got a lot of enemy tanks coming your way? Outfit your men with missile launchers. Having troubles with Orks in melee combat? Why not use some flamers and burn them back. You are also given the freedom to customize a squad the way you want it, so with this versatility you can fit squads with one of each weapon type so you’re ready for anything!
Vehicles are controlled singular and not as groups like infantry, but are more powerful and less seen on the battlefield. Throughout each game you will always being using some type of infantry, if only for the fact that they are the only units which can capture points on the map.
Hooray for heroes
Dawn of War also mixes hero units into the fray; with each race having they own exclusive heroes. Unlike Warcraft 3, these heroes will not progress with experience or collect items, as Dawn of War has no role-playing elements involved. Only one type of each hero can be in play at any given point however, and they can be improved with special abilities and strengths through researchable upgrades. A few units, including heroes can be attached to normal infantry squads to boost the squad’s effectiveness or provide other neat bonuses, for example the Space Marine apothecary, which will heal units of a squad while it is attached.
Other units in the Dawn of War are faithful to the table top game and consist of a great variety of units including the Space Marines terminator squads. These are high powered versions of normal space marines encased with terminator armour who wield extremely heavy weaponry. Another interesting unit is a thirty foot winged chaos demon, who is given the pleasant name of the Bloodthirster and carries a giant bloody axe.
It's a bad day to be a space marine.
It is nice to see some features of the table top game included in Dawn of War. Each infantry has a morale rating which will slowly decrease if they are under heavy fire or being attacked with certain types of weapons. (such as flamers or sniper rifles) When a squad’s morale is reduced to zero, the squad “breaks” and becomes ineffective in combat. PALGN discovered that at this point it’s recommended to move your units out of harms way and this can be quickly accomplished as “broken” squads get a movement speed bonus. Cover is important in the table top game, so it’s no surprise that it plays an important role in Dawn of War. Units in cover will receive less damage from all attacks so it’s an important tactic to move from cover to cover. The game has two types of cover, light and heavy and is easily identified, as the cursor will change on screen when placed on an area of cover.
There's a single player campaign?
The single player game mode is the most disappointing aspect of Dawn of War, not because it’s any bad, but for the reason that it lacks depth. The single player game only contains an eleven mission Space Marine campaign in which you play as the Blood Ravens and follow a pretty predictable plot which is shown through in-game cut scenes. Surely including story based campaigns for the other races should have been mandatory, especially after Warcraft 3 which also had four races. There is a skirmish mode however, where you can play against intelligent A.I, with any of the races, in any of the twenty-one maps that ship with the game, which thankfully is a substantial number as there’s no map editor. People buying this game for simply its single player experience should look elsewhere because they will be severely disappointed.
Kicking ass - multiplayer style
Multiplayer is where Dawn of War shines and includes online play through Gamespy, local area network play and direct connect games. Online play allows for up to eight players and while the service held is no Battle.net, Gamespy does an adequate job at providing auto matching and ranking service online. Another awesome idea in Dawn of War, is the ability to develop a custom paint scheme for your army and use it in play which allows everyone online to have a distinctive identity. There are few different multiplayer game types and range from the basic annihilation setting which is kill everyone and everything, to capture and hold type games where the team with the majority of strategic/critical points triggers a count-down timer to win.
Killing people in a shower of blood and gore, never looked so good
Dawn of War is the best looking real-time strategy game to date. It really does capture the chaotic warfare that you would expect from a Warhammer 40,000 game. You can rotate the camera in both directions and zoom right in at the action. Dawn of War includes an automatic translation of ranged and melee combat between units and works seamlessly, so one moment you squad of space marines can be firing their bolt rifles at incoming orks, then the next carving them up with combat knives in close combat. Units have their own killing animation which is visually appealing to watch and incorporate variety, for example a Space Marine dreadnought will pick up an enemy unit and rip it half with its power claw showering the area with blood, or how about the Bloodthirsty who will send his bloody axe into a unit before he literally has to shake the axe around to fling the now lifeless corpse off.
The sound in the game is of a high standard, especially the voices for each unit. It is particularly entertaining to here ork boyz shout “SOD off” or feel the mighty power of the Eldar Avatar when it spouts such things as “I walk again, a God among mere mortals.” The sound effects are also a satisfactory quality, so expect beefy explosions and satisfying death screams.
This is the dawn for war
Overall Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, is one of the best real-time strategy games in a long while. If you’re a fan of Warhammer 40,000 this game will probably appeal to you. If you’re a fan of real-time strategies this game will also probably appeal to you. If you are a fan of both, then you just lucked out big time.
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