Space Marines, ATTAAAAAAAACK!
I have to admit that I have always found the Warhammer tabletop game interesting. Interesting, but sad. As appealing as all the story behind the universe is, I don't have the time or patience to shift five plastic figures that I paid £30 for across a tabletop. Dawn Of War removes that obstacle. For your money, you don't get a single squad of Space Marines (paint, heavy weapons and sergeant not included), you get the whole thing, right up to the big stompy robots that you saw in THAT video. Warhammer now has its mass-market appeal. You see, most conversions of this type (e.g. Airfix Dogfighter or any of the previous Warhammer games) end up being crap. They concentrate too hard on being faithful to the license over good gameplay, and end up being neither. Dawn Of War could not be further from that strange-smelling past.
I am not a particularly patient person. I am not a great fan of the Total War games (although firing flaming pigs in Rome is amusing for about 5 seconds). My RTS gameplay is based on the likes of the Command and Conquer series, or Civilization. Turtle up, then build up 20 or 30 of a better unit than your opponent has, and go kick ass. So why am I so enthusiastic about a game that makes you explore the map, and hold Strategic Points to make money? Its so fighty. No, that isn't a word, but try to find a better one to describe this game. The action is pretty much constant- you can't just sit and wait for your opponent to pour themselves onto your well-prepared positions- and there is scope for tactics as well. No, I'm not talking 'your archers walk 3.4% faster than theirs but have 2.3% less attack power', I'm talking the accessible sort of tactics that make you feel like you've achieved something. Like waiting until just the right moment to send that Squiggoth barreling into the enemy lines, or hiding anti-tank soldiers, knowing that an enemy Predator is about to appear because you sent scouts out and found it. Despite this being a futuristic game, there are no planes/spaceships to be seen. It's all about the ground-pounding carnage. More than once you will be the one cheering when your lumbering Dreadnoughts appear to save a single squad of Space Marines taking on the orc horde, or something along those lines. Even the most basic Scout unit can take down the super-expensive power infantry. Why? The squad limit. Sure, you can have that super-powerful Terminator squad, but you can only build 4 of them, and the 10 space marine squads I can get for the same squad limit will tear your little mechmen apart. The same applies to vehicles- its not just a question of building as many as you can of the biggest tank around, you have to make best use of the vehicle limit given to you, in a way that best suits your playing style and the infantry you're using.
With all that gameplay, you'd usually expect the other areas to suffer. Not on your life. The graphics are sublime- the particle effects from artillery units are breathtaking (especially when you realise that its bits of the soldiers you just hit), the flamethrowers avoid looking like orange candy-floss, and the fighting just looks vicious. Like when a Dreadnough spears an enemy soldier on its claw arm, and then spins him round with blood flying everywhere. It's not a SoF-type gratuitous gore though, its just enough graphical tricks to convince you that this is actually a war your guys are fighting. Despite the brilliance, it is not a major system hog. Admittedly, I'm using a 3.2gig Pentium 4 with a 256mb graphics card, but Dawn of War places less demand on my system than Battlefield Vietnam. I'm serious. [Author's Note: I _was_ using that system spec when I originally wrote this review, it was copy pasted from another site I submitted it to not long after the game came out]
The sound effects just add to the atmosphere. In more feeble games you might get a soundback 'yessir' or 'order acknowledged', or even the whine of a tank engine, Dawn of War gives you the whole experience. You'll hear the Sergeants yelling SPACE MARINES ATTACK every so often, and the men themselves shouting as they kill whatever non-Space Marines they happen to be fighting at the time. The battle effects are great too- artillery sounds like artillery, rather than a cat being introduced to a firework, you hear Sergeants rev up their chainsaws as enemies approach. Unfortunately the other races are not as well done as the Space Marines. The Orcs try to be funny but end up being the typical American impression of Londoners, the Chaos builder units sound too feeble to be demonic heretics, and the Eldar are just plain stupid- as if they can't decide between cyber-warriors and Tolkien.
Also disappointing was a lack of campaign for the other factions. As good a character as Captain Jacob Angelus is, I would like to be able to play as Chaos, Orc or Eldar outside of multiplayer or Skirmish mode. Come on guys, even the original Command and Conquer (circa 1995) managed this not-too-difficult feat, and the more complicated game is no excuse since Rome Total War managed it.
Overall, Dawn of War is a fantastic game that redefines what we should expect from the Real Time Strategy genre. Red Alert 3 will have to be damn good to beat this.
