In the grim future of 41st century, there is only WAR... and this game nails it right in the bullseye!
User Rating: 9.5 | Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War PC
In case you weren't living under a rock for the past 15 years, you would notice the ever-growing list of titles that had the "Warhammer 40.000" prefixes attached to them: Chaos Gate (first WH40k game that captured the look & feel of it's universe), great Rites of War and not-so-good Fire Warrior (the only WH40k FPS that sinked due to many inconstancies with it's universe and lore). Yet none of these games managed to show you how deep and immersive the lore of WH40k is as the original Dawn of War did. Story-wise, it may feel a bit of cliche (a planetary invasion behind which much darker purposes existed) but the celrofascism and righteousness of it's protagonist captain Gabriel Angelos, along with malice of Sorcerer Sindri and Lord Bale, wisdom of Farseer Macha and Librarian Isador Akios and doubtfullness of Inquisitor Mordecai Toth - it pulls you in, wanting to grab a chainsword and head into battle yourself in the name of the Emperor! Truly amazing, didn't have this much fun in a campaign since the days I played War3 and it's expansion. As for the graphics, they are stunning even if a little bland and with some poor textures: the particle effects are great (explosions, laser/gauss/plasma beams, fire) like someone from 22nd century made them, models are even better than the painted ones in TT, sync kills are a great addition and add to the grim atmosphere of the 41st century war. Sounds and music are perfect, it seems as if they have nailed every race with their own theme music, and unit responses are true to the source material and with great voice-over. Gameplay is a step forward in the direction of a new RTS genre, where tactics, strategy and offensive play are more important than "mass-zerg" spam type of RTS with resource gathering and turtle tactics.
Overall, Dawn of War is one ambitious RTS which paved way to it's sequel (DoW2) quite nicely, amassed a good amount of players under it's banner and introduced many more to the grim and ruthless universe where only the survival of the fittest counts. Hands down, Relic.
