Relic breaks with tradition by making a great RTS that is also a good interpretation of the Warhammer 40,000 setting.
User Rating: 8.9 | Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War PC
As a longtime fan of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, I’ve been sorely disappointed by all of the previous attempts to translate 40k into a compelling video game. Not only have the games been categorically dreadful, they rarely manage to capture any inkling of the feel of the genre. Generally, the closest they get to the feeling of the game is by somehow harnessing the mystical hypnotic power Games Workshop holds over Warhammer fans. Even though all previous Warhammer games have been bad, similar to how I’ve bought every edition of the game, I keep coming back for more. My impolite term for it is the Battered-Spouse-Space-Marine-Syndrome. One moment here to preach slightly off topic: The setting is, in my opinion, not just the best reason, but the only reason to play the tabletop game. The detailed history, and the compelling imagery and figurines are exceptional. The gameplay itself, on the other hand, is only perfect for selling miniatures, that’s about it. So, as usual my hopes were high my expectations were pretty low. Boy was I surprised. Relic has built a genuinely good game that happens to harness the feel of the Warhammer setting very well. It’s by no means a revolutionary RTS game, but it is the first sci-fi RTS game I’ve found compelling since Starcraft. I can’t, however, divorce my enjoyment of the game from my enjoyment of the setting, so I may be overstating its value as a pure RTS game. Although I’ve yet to complete the last few missions, the single player campaign is generally pretty fun. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the game for a non-Warhammer fan who is only interested playing a single-player campaign, but it serves as a nice intro to the game. As with most FPS’, the single player is an entirely different experience from the multiplayer. If you do what I did and play multiplayer first, you’ll find the single-player far too easy on the standard difficulty level. The single-player cut-scenes are fairly awful. Using the gameplay rendering wouldn’t have been a huge problem if the dialog were better written and delivered with a bit less camp. Although it has gotten less dark over the years, the world of Warhammer 40,000 is simply not campy. Aside: normally I feel that game developers waste too much time and energy on the intro movies – something that has very little benefit to the game purchaser. Dawn of War’s intro movie, however, is so fantastic that it completely makes up for the poor single player cut-scenes, and then some. It is simply the most spectacular intro movies I’ve ever seen. As a long-time player of the game, I feel it is the single best example of what makes the setting so compelling. Perhaps I’m biased, as I’m such a fan of the genre, but I feel it is one of those moments where everything came together perfectly. Even if you don’t buy the game, download the demo just to watch the movie. If you are a 40k fan, it is absolutely imperative you do so; you will not be disappointed. The multiplayer aspect (and vs CPU Skirmish) of the game is what I have found to be most fun. The races are different enough to require different strategies, but not so different as to be unbalanced in any way that is obvious to me. Relic did do a couple of pretty clever things: squad based infantry, and strategic objectives as a measure of resource income. Both give the game a different feel that other RTS games, but aren’t so revolutionary as to be disconcerting for beginners. From a Warhammer setting standpoint, the four races chosen were perfect, but I hope a later expansion will add some of the missing troop types that might have been strategically redundant to add. (Marine Chaplains, Eldar Shining Spears, Ork Battlewagons, and other Daemons anyone?) Edit: I forgot to mention that the game manual is inadequate. It has some basic information but glosses over other important information (how exactly does multiplayer shared resources work?) Advice: DO NOT buy the strategy guide for this game. It is the penultimate example of an awful strategy guide. It includes no numbers whatsoever for comparing the troop types, and fails to cover even the basic material that the game booklet missed.
