Gameplay
Gameplay
So what is ‘Warhammer’? You may have stumbled upon the name before. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are tabletop hobbies where you buy lead/plastic figures, paint them and then fight battles using strict rules. Warhammer is based on the fantasy realm, with elves, dwarfs and such, whereas 40,000 is based on the future, with space marines and weird alien forces to contend with.
Don’t be under any illusions here though, just because this game is ‘based’ on the 40K series doesn’t mean a turn based, dice rolls, and strict rules. No this is a true RTS PC game, simplified down from the table top game to be bristly with action and adventure. While this might alienate a few die-hard fans of the tabletop game, it instantly makes the title accessible to those who either don’t like the table top game or have never heard of Warhammer. After all this is not meant to be a computer clone of the tabletop game, but a RTS game based around the concepts of the Warhammer 40K universe. So you can put away your 12 sided dice now.
Your opponents in war
As stated, Dawn of War is based upon the popular 40K range, and from the many races that are represented in that universe this game allows you to play with four of the more well known. They are: The Space Marines (humans with special suits of armour), the Eldar (like Elves, but futuristic), the Orks (Orcs, but spelt with a K) and The Realm of Chaos (evil, corrupted humans).
Graphically all of the sides look the business, but for fans of the 40K series there are also many familiarities that will please them. Relic has done a fabulous job of recreating the 40K universe, and for fans and non-fans alike this detail is a real treat to play with.
These four sides all look and play differently. The Space Marines are considered one of the strongest forces to use, but they are very generic with no real advantages in one field or another. The Eldar are physically much weaker than the other races, but are fast and have a far longer weapons range than the other respective races. The Orks excel at brute force for offence, but suffer badly under defensive situations. Finally the Chaos’ are fairly similar to the Space Marines except they have powerful abilities to call upon, at the expense of having slightly weaker armour. Plus there’s rumours that Relic are considering adding more races in as add-on packs! I hope that’s true.
Ok so the sides aren’t drastically different from one another if you stripped all their units/structures down from their polygons. However these slight differences in strength and ability mean that one side cannot be exploited to have an unparalleled advantage over the others. Those who recall C&C Red Alert for instance will remember that the Soviets had a far superior advantage (made even worse by the later add-on pack that meant to put it back in favour of the allies). A good player with the allies could probably be whipped by a novice soviet player, simply because the allies were so disadvantaged in the unit types they had.
So DoW does have subtle advantages for its forces, yes, but battle altering advantages?? “Only in the right hands” is the answer I give, which is the correct way a RTS should be. A good RTS player should be smart enough to exploit the weaknesses of his enemy, not be given to him easily on a platter. DoW achieves this.
The Campaign trail
The Single Player Campaign for DoW is nothing remarkable. It isn’t poor by any stretch of the imagination, but because of the very linear style of maps (and lousy enemy A.I during the campaign) it’s not superb either. To put even more of a dampener on the campaign is the woefully bad in-game cut scenes to tell the tale. You see despite DoW’s awesome visuals in game it cannot achieve lip-synch with its characters. Mouths just open and close randomly; it’s so silly that you just wish they hadn’t off bothered adding the moving lips at all.
So while the single player campaign isn’t remarkable the skirmish mode you get with the game is FAR better. This, and the online battles, is what really makes the game great. A.I for a start, on the appropriate setting of course, is far more advanced and a challenge than that of the single player campaign. In saying this the A.I. often walks the fine line of being challenging and frustrating, frequently jumping over that line with barrel rolls! I have often got very angry by being beaten time and again by the skirmish A.I so be warned that it make take you by surprise…
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