Experience the brutal carnage of war in the 41st millennium. Dawn of War delivers some of the most visceral front-line combat we've seen in an RTS game. It's also visually impressive, sounds fantastic, and its epic battles create a distinctive and totally accessible RTS experience. It's extremely hard though, so RTS first-timers will have to be patient in order to fully grasp the complexities of this thoroughbred title. While the game is based in the Warhammer 40,000 setting, it will appeal to anyone who enjoys real-time strategy games. Just don't expect anything new in the gameplay department.
Pros: Faithful to Warhammer brand; extreme action
Cons: Nothing really new in terms of gameplay; very difficult
Dawn of War (Best Current Price:
£11.99) is a real-time strategy (RTS) game based on the world of Warhammer 40,000 - the dark, futuristic, fantasy universe from Games Workshop. Developed by THQ's Relic Entertainment, Warhammer 40,000 originally shipped to retailers worldwide on September 20, 2004, but has recently been updated with various patches and modifications, eight new multiplayer maps, and a collectible concept art 'book' (more of a pamphlet) detailing the new units in the Dawn of War: Winter Assault expansion pack. As BIOS has only just started to review games, we thought we'd take a look at the all-new 'Game Of The Year' Edition (GOTY).
A real-time strategy (RTS) game like Dawn of War is a popular type of strategy game which does not have turns like conventional turn-based strategy video or board games. Rather, game time progresses in real time; that is, it is continuous rather than turn-by-turn. Dawn of War is also a micro-management game that allows an army and base to be built, but it limits the size of the army (sometimes, rather severely). The unit cap varies from race to race with an absolute ceiling of 200 population (the combined total of Squad cap and Support cap).
The purpose of this is to create more of a tactical atmosphere, and to prevent one side from simply cranking out units and throwing them at the enemy until he/she collapses. By limiting the size of the army, the game requires you to intelligently utilise 'partially' limited troops. To simplify the control, however, you can combine individual units into groups. It also allows you to control one of four unique races in head-to-head or co-operative multiplayer action (2 to 8 players via LAN or Internet).
Dawn of War showcases four races from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 setting: the tough and austere Space Marines, the raucous and destructive Orks, the enigmatic Eldar, and the malevolent forces of Chaos. With a unique battery of units and structures at its disposal, each race fields weaponry and powerful special abilities suited to its particular style of warfare. Thankfully, each race is relatively well balanced and offers large enough differences to make you want to play each one.
Having said that, players experience the single-player campaign from the perspective of the Blood Ravens, an entirely new chapter of the Space Marines created by Relic Entertainment and Games Workshop specifically for Dawn of War. The single-player story has you commanding the Blood Ravens through Brother-Captain Gabriel Angelos, and his trusted sub-commander, the powerful psychic Librarian Isador Akios. In the multiplayer game, you can select any of the four full races included in the single-player game.
A neat feature is the way you can reinforce squads on the fly, and adapt them on the battlefield to engage specific enemies by adding heavy anti-vehicle weapons, rapid-firing anti-personnel armament, or wargear designed to crush the morale of your opponents. You can also attach commander units to your squads to gain additional offensive and defensive capabilities, deploy mixed forces of infantry, armoured vehicles, lumbering war machines, and daemons in your struggle for dominance.
You typically command squads of units, rather than individuals. Issuing orders to a squad causes all members of that squad to respond to the command. Squads may be reinforced on the battlefield, and the weapon configurations of individual squad members can be customised, allowing you to modify the combat effectiveness of particular squads versus specific target types (say anti-armour, or anti-personnel). Leader units exist as individuals and can be attached to squads, which typically lends the squad certain offensive and defensive bonuses. Vehicles also appear as single units.
Dawn of War offers you the ability to customise you armies through the use of the Unit Customisation tool. This tool allows you to select colours for units' bodies, shoulder pads, kneepads, eyes, and badges and banner heraldry. You can also select how your armies will look in multiplayer games, including re-creating the specific colour and badge markings of renowned chapters from the Warhammer 40,000 mythos. You starts each mission with a pre-selected group of units, which can be enhanced as you take control points and build up base facilities. Unfortunately, you can't have a persistent army to carry from mission to mission.
A very welcome touch is a modification of the familiar 'resources'. In Dawn of War you do not harvest resources, per se. Rather than forcing you to build hordes of peon units and manage the collection of coal or the chopping down of trees, Dawn of War makes use of a streamlined resource model. All battlefields have locations of strategic importance, things like bridges or bottlenecks in the terrain, which in the overall context of a war represent the physical areas that give you tactical advantages over your opponent. These are called Strategic Points.
Controlling Strategic Points increases the rate at which you receive Requisition, which represents the degree of importance an unseen 'high command' has placed on your operations. If you control several strategic points, your efforts carry a greater degree of strategic importance within the context of a greater battle, and therefore it will be easier for you to gain materiel (units, vehicles, structures, and so on).
You spend Requisition points when calling squads, through battlefield reinforcements, requesting vehicles or structures, researching an upgrading technology, and so on. Requisition is generated continually at a rate determined by how many Strategic Points you control. In addition to Requisition, each race has the ability to generate power (through things like Plasma Generators). Power is required to maintain certain units, vehicles, and structures.
Dawn of War: Game of the Year Edition comes with Patch 1.4 which addresses a few notable balance items, and also adds Persistent Bodies and Decals. These options (accessible from the menu) allow you to control how long the bodies of the fallen warriors remain on the battlefield. We set it to high and it didn't take long for the whole screen to become littered with bodies!
Patch 1.4 also makes a few gaming differences. For instance, Balance Changes have been altered, so the cost of the Chaos Sorcerer has been increased to 200 requisition 100 power, for instance, the time taken to train a Space Marine Dreadnought has been reduced to 50 seconds, and the fact that Scouts were inadvertently given an accuracy penalty while moving has been removed. There's a host of other rules changes too, such as the reduction of recharge times, code and performance optimisations for low-end systems, full front-end now reloaded after switching mods (games), two new graphics options (Persistent Bodies, Persistent Decals) and improved system performance detection capabilities.
The 3D graphics engine is sweet, textures are nice, particle effects are great, gore is plentiful, but the voice-overs for the main characters are mostly average to bad. Unit acknowledgements are pretty good and sound effects are more than impressive, but there's nothing really new or special in terms of gameplay. That's not a bad thing, but veteran RTS players looking for something innovation may be disappointed. But for the rest of us, the game's style, polish and gripping single-player storyline are more than enough.
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