Truth begets hatred.
Relic does it again with their latest expansion to Dawn of War, this time adding a new way to purge heresy.
For those who are uninitiated, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (that's a mouthful) is the third title and second expansion in the Dawn of War family of games. They are all Real-Time Strategy games developed by Relic (Company of Heroes anybody?) based on Games Workshop's table-top wargame Warhammer 40,000. And in this grim and dark glimpse into the 41st Milenium, we are introduced to the Necron, seemingly immortal robot-zombies, and the Tau, a japanese-inspired race fighting to spread their belief of The Greater Good.
The core elements of Dawn of War remain the same, but now we've got two more races to throw into the mix:
The Necrons are slow moving, but devastating and have the nasty habit of occasionally regenerating back to half health immediately after your heavy bolter mows them down. Their biggest weakness early on is that all units are produced from their Monolith, slowing down queues and keeping players from immediately being overwhelmed by countless robot-zombies. Another interesting feature of the Necrons is that they don't use Requisition. All structures and units for the Necrons are bought through power alone, with many buildings having a ramp-up cost system to balance it out (And in some cases, a ramp-up build time as well). This begs the question then, why do the Necrons even need strategic points? Well, the Necrons build-rate is increased by 20% for each strategic point you hold (To a maximum of 100%). Another thing I know some people out there are wondering is what about their super-unit. The Necron have two, so to speak. Their actual relic unit is their HQ itself. A fully awakened monolith becomes a juggernaut of destruction, but moves at a snail's pace. To make up for this, the Monolith can teleport and its Gauss weaponry has a rather large range and a huge splash/knockdown effect, making it particularly nasty at disruption based tactics.
As for the Tau, they excel in long ranged combat, making use of large battle-suited mechs to devastate enemies before they have chance to close range. Tau play more like a standard race when compared against the Necron, but rather than researching your upgrades to unlock new structures, the structures themselves play a large part in moving up the tech tree. This is easier to understand when you play them than it is to describe. The tau themselves are broken up into castes, the Fire Caste being the back-bone of your army, the Earth Caste being your builder units, the Air Caste consisting of air support (which is embodied in the Ethereal's Air Caste Bombing run ability) and the Ethereal Caste, the leaders of the Tau forces (I know people will complain if I don't mention the Water Caste, but they have no bearing in Dawn of War because their role is primarily diplomatic). Assisting the Tau are the Kroot, a more reptilian race that consist of more somewhat more aggressive and vicious units. The Tau only have one huge unit to speak of, the Greater Knarloc (their relic unit), which is a Tyranosaurus Rex-esque being of destruction.
The last major chance players will notice is the campaign system, which has been thrown out and retuned into a Risk-esque conquer the world campaign. You choose one of the races, becoming a hero-commander unit and your objective is to purge all other races from Kronus, the planet that was unfortunate enough to be in the way of every single army in Dawn of War so far. Missions range from the typical skirmish match between your chosen opponent to more objective-based matches to capture special abilities with the Headquarter/Capital missions being the "hardest" of them all- usually seemingly stacked against you, but actually not all that hard. All the while, as you complete skirmishes and battles, you can fufill achievements that let you outfit your Hero-Commander with wargear that will dramatically improve his effectiveness in combat. All in all, expect to devote a day or so laying siege to Kronus the first time, with each successive time through lasting somewhat shorter.
Multiplayer remains intact and as fun as it has always been with several new maps introduced from the Dark Crusade campaign, so there will be yet more time spent showing off your scores of Angry Marines or pretty-in-pink Necrons.
And, given this is an expansion, visuals haven't changed much between installments. All the new units have their own flair and style and are as vicious and ruthless as we have come to expect from this series. Expect to see many guardsmen cut down by the long blades of the Necron Flayed Ones or devoured whole by the Tau Greater Knarloc. Likewise, sound is all as it should be, but the most you will hear out of the Necrons in a normal match is mechanical whirring, while their comments in the campaign tend to consist of "Death comes for YOU."
If you're a fan of Dawn of War or looking for a good time to jump into the series for the first time, I'd say Dark Crusade would probably be a great place to step in, but new users be warned that your online multiplayer selection for race will be limited to the Necron and Tau until you pick up Dawn of War and Winter Assault.
For those who are uninitiated, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (that's a mouthful) is the third title and second expansion in the Dawn of War family of games. They are all Real-Time Strategy games developed by Relic (Company of Heroes anybody?) based on Games Workshop's table-top wargame Warhammer 40,000. And in this grim and dark glimpse into the 41st Milenium, we are introduced to the Necron, seemingly immortal robot-zombies, and the Tau, a japanese-inspired race fighting to spread their belief of The Greater Good.
The core elements of Dawn of War remain the same, but now we've got two more races to throw into the mix:
The Necrons are slow moving, but devastating and have the nasty habit of occasionally regenerating back to half health immediately after your heavy bolter mows them down. Their biggest weakness early on is that all units are produced from their Monolith, slowing down queues and keeping players from immediately being overwhelmed by countless robot-zombies. Another interesting feature of the Necrons is that they don't use Requisition. All structures and units for the Necrons are bought through power alone, with many buildings having a ramp-up cost system to balance it out (And in some cases, a ramp-up build time as well). This begs the question then, why do the Necrons even need strategic points? Well, the Necrons build-rate is increased by 20% for each strategic point you hold (To a maximum of 100%). Another thing I know some people out there are wondering is what about their super-unit. The Necron have two, so to speak. Their actual relic unit is their HQ itself. A fully awakened monolith becomes a juggernaut of destruction, but moves at a snail's pace. To make up for this, the Monolith can teleport and its Gauss weaponry has a rather large range and a huge splash/knockdown effect, making it particularly nasty at disruption based tactics.
As for the Tau, they excel in long ranged combat, making use of large battle-suited mechs to devastate enemies before they have chance to close range. Tau play more like a standard race when compared against the Necron, but rather than researching your upgrades to unlock new structures, the structures themselves play a large part in moving up the tech tree. This is easier to understand when you play them than it is to describe. The tau themselves are broken up into castes, the Fire Caste being the back-bone of your army, the Earth Caste being your builder units, the Air Caste consisting of air support (which is embodied in the Ethereal's Air Caste Bombing run ability) and the Ethereal Caste, the leaders of the Tau forces (I know people will complain if I don't mention the Water Caste, but they have no bearing in Dawn of War because their role is primarily diplomatic). Assisting the Tau are the Kroot, a more reptilian race that consist of more somewhat more aggressive and vicious units. The Tau only have one huge unit to speak of, the Greater Knarloc (their relic unit), which is a Tyranosaurus Rex-esque being of destruction.
The last major chance players will notice is the campaign system, which has been thrown out and retuned into a Risk-esque conquer the world campaign. You choose one of the races, becoming a hero-commander unit and your objective is to purge all other races from Kronus, the planet that was unfortunate enough to be in the way of every single army in Dawn of War so far. Missions range from the typical skirmish match between your chosen opponent to more objective-based matches to capture special abilities with the Headquarter/Capital missions being the "hardest" of them all- usually seemingly stacked against you, but actually not all that hard. All the while, as you complete skirmishes and battles, you can fufill achievements that let you outfit your Hero-Commander with wargear that will dramatically improve his effectiveness in combat. All in all, expect to devote a day or so laying siege to Kronus the first time, with each successive time through lasting somewhat shorter.
Multiplayer remains intact and as fun as it has always been with several new maps introduced from the Dark Crusade campaign, so there will be yet more time spent showing off your scores of Angry Marines or pretty-in-pink Necrons.
And, given this is an expansion, visuals haven't changed much between installments. All the new units have their own flair and style and are as vicious and ruthless as we have come to expect from this series. Expect to see many guardsmen cut down by the long blades of the Necron Flayed Ones or devoured whole by the Tau Greater Knarloc. Likewise, sound is all as it should be, but the most you will hear out of the Necrons in a normal match is mechanical whirring, while their comments in the campaign tend to consist of "Death comes for YOU."
If you're a fan of Dawn of War or looking for a good time to jump into the series for the first time, I'd say Dark Crusade would probably be a great place to step in, but new users be warned that your online multiplayer selection for race will be limited to the Necron and Tau until you pick up Dawn of War and Winter Assault.
