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Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War Review September 29, 2004 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
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Summary: THQ is making a big push for hardcore respectability and signed on Relic Entertainment, makes of the Homeworld games, to create Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. It's been getting a lot of buzz since the open beta, but does the final product stack up? Read our review to find out!
Beware the Mutant, the Alien, the Heretic.
 Overview | Page:: ( 1 / 4 ) |
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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is, quite obviously, set in the highly detailed Warhammer 40k universe. This isn’t Warhammer’s first entry on the PC, but it’s certainly the first real-time version. Unlike real-time RPG conversions such as Baldur’s Gate, Dawn of War doesn’t try to directly transfer the combat system from the tabletop wargame. Instead, the developers – Relic Entertainment of Homeworld fame – have put in a more standard system with hitpoints and damage ratings, and abstracted hits and misses.
The four most popular races from the Warhammer 40k universe have made it here into the game: the Space Marines, the Eldar, the Orks and the Chaos Space Marines. Unfortunately, only the Space Marines have a single player campaign, and it’s a brief one at that. The player guides his immortal Emperor-worshipping forces through a mere eleven missions before the campaign gives up the ghost and shoos you onto multiplayer or skirmish mode.
The campaign itself is decent and has a good plot at the core which appears to stick with Warhammer universe convention quite well, but unfortunately it also sticks to RTS storytelling conventions as well. The plot is not so much bad, as badly conveyed. In fact the story has the bare bones ingredients of quality, but the fleshing out wasn’t done very well. Whether you choose to blame poor writing (the dialogue isn’t great), bad exposition (a lot of information has to be crammed into the cut-scene at every mission) or the unsuitability of the engine for close-up work (what is this lip-synching you speak of?), the end result remains the same: standard RTS fare.
The missions aren’t even particularly interesting or challenging. With one lone exception, it’s perfectly possible – and indeed encouraged – to simply build up a massive horde of units and steamroll the enemy. The AI might make half-hearted attacks during or after the build-up period, but these aren’t about to be a challenge for even a moderately prepared player. Anyone who wasn’t creating the biggest armies he could, quickly will after the Squiggoth mission.
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One thing that really works in favor of the game is its speed and frantic combat. Whether you’re playing single player or multiplayer, the action comes fast enough to not notice any drawbacks to the combat system. Plus, over all, it’s pretty damn cool to send your puny squads to kill an Eldar god’s Avatar. The super units, like the Avatar of Khaine or Bloodthirster, are also available in skirmish and multiplayer.
| Gameplay | Page:: ( 2 / 4 ) |
There is very little room for micromanagement. The special units like Force Commanders and Land Raiders have special abilities to call down manually, and most regular squads get the ability to throw grenades, if researched. However, for the most part, it’s all about throwing hordes together and seeing who wins. The special abilities do make a difference, as do the stances (even if you don’t have a melee squad, it’s best to get up close and personal with the Eldar, for example), but the game is ultimately about numbers.
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Fortunately the economy is rather simple. Players compete for strategic points, which, when controlled, give a steady stream of requisition points. The other main resource is energy, which is made from player-built generators. Other races can have special requirements as well. The Orks, for example, have a Waaagh! rating and are rewarded for having larger numbers, rather than prevented from doing so. For example, to build a Squiggoth, in addition to the energy and requisition points cost, the player must also be controlling at least 61 Orks.
Combat is relatively simple then, especially for Space Marines and Orks, but it does include some features that are unlikely to be familiar to RTS players. The obvious black sheep is the concept of morale. Now it has appeared in the Total War series, but those aren’t such traditional strategy games as Dawn of War is. Morale is constantly replenishing itself, often enough to survive withering enemy fire, but there are special weapons and abilities that make it go down much faster. Flamethrowers of various kinds are very likely to make a squad break and run, as are mental attacks by various special units. Even under regular fire, a squad may run for the hills during prolonged combat when it’s surviving solely off reinforcements, though the presence of a Sergeant, Nob or similar character can restore morale.
Squads typically spawn in at four units strength or less. They’re brought to full strength by buying reinforcements. What full strength constitutes can vary. Terminators are limited to 8 units per squad, while Slugga Boyz can get to 15. Slugga Boyz can get a Nob, but Terminators don’t get a Sergeant, which can move the Slugga Boyz to 16 per squad. Finally, the special leader units like a Warboss or Force Commander can be attached to a squad, meaning that some Ork combat units can have up to 17 members!
Squads are also upgraded with various kinds of equipment, in the same fashion that they get replacements. Click off 2 Heavy Bolters and 2 Plasma Guns to turn your Space Marines into a lean, mean, infantry shredding machine. Alternately, you can equip them with four flamethrowers, set them to melee stance and watch the enemy panic and run. Just pray that neither of these squads has to deal with armored enemy units!
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The units of each side are quite different from each other though by no means as utterly unlike as in StarCraft. A better comparison would be WarCraft III, what with the presence of hero-type units in both games, but the units in Warhammer are, again, more similar to each other, and simpler to use. In fact, the game plays in a very un-Warhammerish way: just throw your armies together and see who wins. There’s obviously more to it, like scouting, raiding, keeping your enemy off balance by attacking his listening posts, but as far as RTS games go, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is very light and oddly enough, more enjoyable for that.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 3 / 4 ) |
Pros
Action!
Warhammer is very fast-paced, full of explosions, and easy to get into.
Graphics
While it’s not the most beautiful game in the world and is hampered by an older engine that traces its ancestry to Impossible Creatures, it has faithful, if not inspired, art direction and is as bloody as the Warhammer universe you know and love. How bloody? Dreadnoughts impale their enemies and then spin them around on their mechanical arms, resulting in a bloody shower for all nearby.
Warhammer universe
The most utterly violent setting imaginable. Four different, well-developed factions, each hating the other three. Now this isn’t the most faithful translation of the series, but it’s the only one in real-time.
Sound
The sound effects are spectacular, the music… less so. The voice acting can come off as bad, but in fact it’s mostly repetitive and the dialogue is cheesy. Then again, hearing the Force Commander say “beware the mutant, the alien, the heretic” takes a very long time to get old.
Multiplayer
We doubt that Dawn of War is about to bust into the CPL, but it’s the rare kind of game that can grip total RTS newbies and suck them in. Good for LAN parties.
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Cons
Campaign
It’s short, rather uninspired and extremely simple. We’d wish there was more of it, but it seems like Relic had trouble making something even so short as this moderately compelling.
Too simple for some
Dawn of War is a pretty basic RTS, certainly friendly enough to newbies but not likely to keep someone’s attention for a year or draw in the hardcore audience.
Pathfinding
The single most annoying problem with the game is its terrible pathfinding. Units routinely get stuck or take the longest way around.
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| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 4 / 4 ) |