If you’re not in the two aforementioned classes of strategy gamers, then
you’re in for a real treat. Dawn of War is flat out fun and exciting and does a
great job of providing the frantic, pulse-pounding play that make strategy games
such a blast to play. The Dawn of War experience starts with the graphics; it’s
one of the best looking strategy games to date. Based on Relic’s work on the
Homeworld games, this should not come as a surprise to anyone. When watching a
battle in the game you actually feel like a battle really is raging before you.
Explosive blasts knock craters into the ground and send nearby units flying,
large units throw around their smaller-sized adversaries, and weapons effects
are remarkable. Even base-building is fun to watch as new structures are dropped
into place via rockets from orbit and land with a thud and their nose buried
into the ground. The level of detail on the units is amazing, and the number and
fluidity of the unit animations is astounding. In a nod to the game’s origin as
a table-top miniatures game, you can customize the look of your units as if you
were painting your own army of little lead units. This adds a lot more character
and personality to the multiplayer game since you’re not simply battling a clone
army with a different color highlight.
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| A battle rages. |
Control is simple and units are easy to manage. Rather than requiring you to
create and manage individual units, the game groups units into squads. This
makes it a lot easier to manage large forces, but also provides some other
benefits as well. You can designate upgrades to be applied to specific squads
allowing you to quickly create specialized units. You can also reinforce squads
and increase the number of component units to make a stronger fighting force.
The downside of the squad-based unit management is that you can not withdraw
individual units from battle when they are low on health.
In addition to the standard health rating for each unit, in Dawn of War units
have a morale rating as well. Some units are more stalwart than others, and some
units will have a more detrimental effect on morale than others. Fighting Orks
is one thing, facing a demon is quite another. Broken units do not take flight,
but you’d best get them out of the fight quickly as they will take more damage
while inflicting less.
The four races are very well-balanced and there is no faction that is
handicapped against another. While the four races are distinct, they are similar
enough that you can easily move from one to the other with too much of an
adjustment period. It injects more variety into the game as you can try out
different factions without feeling that you are “starting over” each time.
With the short campaign game you may have guessed that Dawn of War puts an
emphasis on multiplayer gaming. Well you are right. The game comes with a
variety of maps that support up to eight players, either playing in teams or in
a free-for-all battle. You can also put the AI in charge of one or more sides,
and at the higher levels it will challenge the better strategy gamers out there.
The only surprising thing is the lack of a map editor, but I wouldn’t be
surprised if this oversight was corrected in a future patch or game update.
Overall Dawn of War is a lot of fun to play. It places the emphasis on
aggressive strategy without devolving into a click happy rush-fest. Warhammer
fans will appreciate the attention to detail and faithfulness to the Warhammer
mythos while strategy gamers will appreciate the balanced factions, streamlined
interface, and pure RTS excitement that the game delivers.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 94%.
Finally, a Warhammer game worthy of Warhammer … and one of the best strategy
games of the year.
System Requirements: Pentium III 1.4 GHz; 256 MB RAM; 32 MB
Video RAM; 2 GB Hard disk space; 4x CD-ROM.
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