Dawn of War - Complete Edition (3DVD)
Considering the weaponry that humankind has already
invented during the past couple of thousand years, it's difficult to
even begin to imagine what kinds of implements of destruction will exist
in the 41st millennium. However, England-based Games Workshop has done
an excellent job of imagining what will come with its unique Warhammer
40,000 universe, which originated as a tabletop wargame but over the
years has spun off into a variety of computer and video games. Dawn of
War is the latest of these, and it's probably the best of these.
Developed by seasoned real-time strategy maker Relic (best known for
Homeworld and its sequel), Dawn of War is a testament to what can be so
great about this style of gaming, and it captures the grim and brutal
world of Warhammer 40,000 extremely well.
Those unfamiliar with Warhammer 40,000 will get the perfect primer in
the game's brief, spectacular, introductory cinematic that shows off a
pitched battle between two forces that are bent on ripping each other to
shreds--and are well equipped to do so. Dawn of War actually features
four of Warhammer 40,000's most popular factions: The tireless and
imperialistic space marines, highly versatile warriors who have access
to a variety of vehicles as well as terminators, the strongest infantry
in the game; the savage green-skinned orks, whose tough forces can
vastly outnumber and therefore overwhelm their enemies; the enigmatic
and technologically advanced eldar, who are the sneakiest and most
maneuverable of the races, and who have access to numerous specialist
units; and the traitorous forces of chaos--former space marines who have
been warped by demonic energies, and whose strong infantry are assisted
by terrifying demonic creatures.
Each of these
factions has a great deal of personality in the game thanks to the
imaginatively designed, vibrantly detailed, and beautifully animated
units available to it, along with equally good speech and audio effects.
Even the way in which the respective sides build their structures is
interesting. Whereas chaos summons its buildings through arcane rituals,
ork structures unceremoniously arrive from orbit in big heaps of junk
parts. Visual differences aside, each faction is distinctly (though not
drastically) different and playable in the game's skirmish and
multiplayer modes, although the single-player campaign exclusively
focuses on a space marine chapter called the Blood Ravens.
The game's relatively brief campaign of around 10 missions begins when
the Ravens are called in to assist with the defense of the planet
Tartarus, which has suddenly been overrun by the warmongering orks. In
addition to fending off the orks, the Ravens soon experience some
"misunderstandings" with the eldar, who are already on location
investigating something sinister--something that chaos is after. It's a
good setup to pit you against three of the game's four factions, and the
main character of the story, a veteran space marine commander named
Gabriel, is quickly likable because of his ruthless, loyal, and valorous
attitude.
The campaign itself isn't great, though,
since it's just a linear series of missions that typically involve
building up a base, mustering your forces, and crushing the enemy. So,
basically, it's standard stuff. Some missions have some interesting set
pieces in them. In one mission, a computer-controlled battalion of the
imperial guard--human allies of the space marines that lack the marines'
cybernetic enhancements and power armor--covers your flank from an
onslaught of orks as you conduct your operations. It's tempting to help
the guardsmen in their defense of you, or at least it's tempting to
watch as their tanks and laser weapons stave off the aggressors.
However, the campaign is brief and conventional overall, so any remotely
experienced RTS player should find it to be a cakewalk at the default
normal difficulty setting (two tougher settings are also available). The
actual story is pretty good, at least, and it unfolds between missions
through some excellently over-the-top dialogue between the game's main
characters. However, the between-mission cutscenes, which are rendered
using the game's 3D engine, simply don't look good. You'll see
characters flapping their gums and animating awkwardly, which is in
stark contrast to how terrific they look in battle during actual
gameplay.
Playing through Dawn of War's campaign at least teaches you to respect
the space marines' abilities in battle. In addition, the game features
four separate interactive tutorials--one for each of the game's
factions--which get you acclimated with the respective sides' buildings
and units. As mentioned, the four sides in Dawn of War aren't
drastically different, since they're each dependent on the same
resources and have roughly analogous military units. However, these
similarities are to the game's credit, because they serve to reduce the
learning curve involved in switching from play as one faction to
another. Consequently, the thought of learning to play as each of them,
in turn, doesn't seem intimidating. Nevertheless, as in any great RTS
game, it can take an indefinitely long time to truly master the
different options of any one of these factions. Therefore, the devil's
in the details of the various units, vehicles, weapons, abilities, and
tactics available to them.
One of Dawn of War's
accomplishments involves how successfully it translates some of the
tabletop wargame's elements into effective twists on the conventional
formula for real-time strategy games. For example, the action in any
given battle revolves heavily around the capturing and holding of
"strategic points," which have an abstract concept but literally take
the form of beacons on the map. You may capture these points with most
infantry squads, which is a process that leaves your squad immobilized
and vulnerable for a number of seconds. But then, the captured point
grants you a steady flow of requisition resource, which is necessary for
purchasing new buildings, units, and upgrades. The idea is that the
better you're faring in battle by capturing more strategic points, the
more likely your faction is willing to support you from orbit with
additional troops, structures, and supplies.
Your strategic points can be recaptured by the enemy, but you can
defend them by building listening posts on them, and then you can
upgrade these listening posts into respectable automated defenses.
Moreover, upgrades to these structures also increase the flow of
resources from that point, so they're a good investment. In addition to
strategic points, maps contain similar points that represent relics and
critical locations. These, too, add to your requisition resource rate.
Relics also unlock the most power elements from your arsenal, while
capturing and holding the map's critical locations for a sufficient
length of time may win you the match. That is, if you play with the
default settings, in which you may alternatively achieve victory in this
fashion--or by capturing and holding two-thirds of the map's strategic
points. Of course, you could always go the good old-fashioned route of
annihilating the opposing army. Regardless, Dawn of War is decidedly
unkind to overly defensive play styles, so the best defense is a good
offense here.
The game's other
resource is power, which is automatically accumulated when you build
generators. A few points on each map let you build special ultrapowered
generators for a major influx of this resource, which becomes especially
important in the late-game, since large quantities of it are needed to
marshal your strongest units. At any rate, the game's resource model is
simple, and there aren't an overwhelming number of buildings or upgrades
available to each faction, which creates some pretty clear-cut
strategic choices in battle from an economic standpoint. Do you "tech
up" your best units, or do you quickly throw together some fighting
forces with which to rush your enemies and prevent them from gaining the
upper hand? Actually, in practice you'll probably want to do both. The
game's economic model, through its simplicity, does a great job of
putting the emphasis on combat. You can't just hunker down and hoard
resources; instead, you need to get out there to capture strategic
points. This will inevitably cause you to encounter the enemy quite
early in a match. So while there's a fair amount of repetitive
base-building in a given battle, it's an easy and relatively quick and
painless process that facilitates some interesting strategic choices.
However, it doesn't much take the emphasis away from the action out in
the field.
As well it shouldn't, since much of the
game's underlying strategy unfolds during the heat of battle rather than
back at base. Despite how you gain access to some extremely powerful
vehicles and other units in the later stages of a battle, Dawn of War
strikes a fine balance of requiring you to use your relatively
inexpensive infantry throughout rather than simply replacing your less
powerful forces. It's these infantry units that you'll use to capture
strategic locations on the map, so you may want to upgrade your infantry
and other units during the course of a battle. Interestingly, Dawn of
War lets you upgrade and customize individual squads. So while you might
research an upgrade back at base that allows you to equip your squads
with additional heavy weapons, you then need to decide which squads to
equip with which weapons. Furthermore, infantry squads can be
reinforced, since they usually don't start out at full strength. So, for
example, whereas you initially get a squad of four space marines out of
your chapel-barracks, you may reinforce that squad with up to five more
marines--and the squad will move and act as a single unit.
Dawn of War lets you comfortably focus your efforts on managing a
relatively small number of versatile military forces. Your units do
quite a good job when left to their own devices, but there are several
behavioral presets that let you determine how they should act when
confronted by the enemy. The default defensive position works well in
most cases. It's not all automatic, so there's plenty for you to do.
Squad reinforcements and upgraded weapons materialize out of thin air,
making it possible to upgrade your squad from anywhere on the map, which
gives you the power to counter your enemy forces on the fly. You can
also summon squad leaders, and you can even attach powerful hero-type
characters to your squads, who'll empower their brethren and who are
extremely strong in their own rights. Some options are noticeably
lacking, for better or worse. For instance, if a front-line unit is
taking damage, you can't just walk him to the rear ranks to keep him
alive, since you can't control him independently of his squad. In fact,
there's not really an easy way of tracking individual casualties anyway,
so it's common to have to quickly cycle through your squads to then
commission more reinforcements and heavy weapons as your forces take
damage. Also, larger units sometimes have a hard time maneuvering around
smaller ones, so you might need to help them get around. Since you
don't have too many units to work with, though, this level of
micromanagement doesn't seem excessive or unwelcome.
You'll also need to keep an eye on your units' morale, which is
governed by a blue meter above the green meter that represents health.
The game's morale system is simple, but it works well. Basically, units
lose morale in addition to hit points as they take damage, and some
types of attacks (and attackers)--while not necessarily the deadliest in
the game--are particularly damaging to morale. A unit's morale is
broken when its meter empties, and while the unit won't automatically
turn and flee at this time, you'd do well to get it out of the fight.
Otherwise its strength will be severely crippled until it escapes from
battle and recovers. So, when faced with overwhelming odds (such as at
the hands of the swarming orks), it's viable to try to break enemy
morale to turn the tide of battle. As such, not only does the morale
system add a strategic element to Dawn of War's combat, but also it
helps differentiate the playable factions. For example, the space
marines are extremely brave and won't ever break under typical
battlefield conditions. But when faced with some of chaos' most hideous
demons, even these stalwart men may lose their resolve.
Dawn of War offers a similarly simple but effective implementation of
battlefield cover. Basically, your forces can fight from behind cover to
reduce the amount of damage sustained. Cover usually takes the form of
large craters, though certain maps have rivers, which actually incur a
defensive penalty upon the units caught stranded in them.
Context-sensitive icons lets you clearly see which units are in cover,
and your cursor noticeably changes when the area on the map you're
pointing at will grant the benefits of cover. Cover doesn't always work
as you'd expect, so a unit standing within the ruins of a building might
seem like it should get some sort of protection. However, one of the
only obvious rough edges in the game is how it's possible to shoot
straight through solid walls in some cases. This really isn't as bad as
it sounds, though, as most of the game's maps are battle-torn wastelands
without too many such obstacles to deceivingly stand between you and
your foe. Along similar lines, there's no need to be worried about
friendly fire, because your squads can safely shoot past (and sometimes
through) one another.
There actually aren't a ton of maps that ship with the game, and,
surprisingly, Dawn of War doesn't ship with a scenario editor either.
Nevertheless, it's possible to squeeze a lot of variety out of the
available maps, the largest of which support up to eight players. By
customizing the victory conditions and by taking on different numbers of
computer opponents of various skill levels (from "easy" to "insane"),
either in a free-for-all or in team-based matches, you can keep busy for
a long time just playing the game offline. The game's difficulty
settings are appropriately named and tuned. The easy artificial
intelligence is practically brain-dead and is just fine for RTS
neophytes, while the insane AI is inhumanly efficient but apparently
doesn't cheat. So if you want to learn the game quickly, try saving a
replay of one of your battles against the insane AI, and carefully
observe your defeat when you play it back.
Of course,
Dawn of War also supports LAN and online play, and its online
player-matching service optionally lets you easily get into a random
game (based on a few parameters of your choosing) via an automatch
feature. There's a lot of potential for fun to be had online, especially
since some of Dawn of War's superunits--including a couple of huge
demons that stand about a hundred feet tall--are so satisfying to watch
as they crush their foes. We expect many players will forfeit the match
(their own morale, broken) at the mere sight of these things. For good
measure, Dawn of War's army painter lets you create your own custom
color schemes and insignia for your factions--or you can choose from a
number of preexisting types that Warhammer 40,000 fans will instantly
recognize.
It's worth discussing Dawn of War's
excellent interface, in general. The game offers pretty much all of the
interface innovations developed to date in a real-time strategy game
(plus unique interface graphics for the four sides), making it eminently
easy to play if you're accustomed to using a combination of the mouse
and some keyboard hotkeys for games like this. The game's especially
quick to get into if you've recently played Blizzard's Warcraft III--the
apparent inspiration for Dawn of War's interface design. In fact, the
overall look and feel of Dawn of War--and its brutal, relatively
small-scale skirmishes--is actually quite reminiscent of Blizzard's
latest RTS game, as is the fast pacing and the average 20- to 30-minute
length of a battle. This is at least a little ironic, since Blizzard's
own strategy games have evidently drawn from Warhammer 40,000 and its
fantasy counterpart, Warhammer, for creative inspiration.
As suggested previously, Dawn of War features a superb presentation,
and it's also a case of when a game's audiovisual elements serve to
significantly enrich the gameplay experience. Few real-time strategy
games pack in this much detail and personality into their units. Dawn of
War's units are not only spitting images of the meticulously detailed
pewter miniatures that Warhammer 40,000 is known for, but they're
animated extremely well. The larger units are especially a joy to behold
(or a terror to behold, as the case may be), since they boast a
surprising variety of different attack animations. Space marine
dreadnoughts will grab hold of enemy infantry and squash them like
grapes before tossing their listless bodies aside like garbage; the
eldar's avatar of Khaine, which takes the form of a fiery demon, impales
its victims on its burning sword and causes the earth to blacken with
ash in the wake of its footsteps. Generally speaking, a lot of blood is
spilled, and the game's 3D camera gives you front-row seats to all the
mayhem. Meanwhile, the backspace button instantly allows you to snap
back to the game's default isometric viewpoint.
Dawn of War also features a fittingly grand orchestral score by Jeremy
Soule, who's been responsible for many other such great game music
compositions over the years. It's bombastic at times, but it mostly just
adds to the game's ambience. And the game's audio effects are a
suitable match for the graphics. The speech is particularly noteworthy,
so Warhammer 40,000 fans should be thrilled at how appropriately the
various voices capture most of the respective units' personalities. The
game also sports some great audio cues for when units' morale falters or
for when your forces first catch glimpse of their enemies.
Unfortunately, you'll notice a few weak points in voiceovers, such as
chaos' whiny cultists and heretics, who sound just a little too
sycophantic. And as in other RTS games, the speech is inherently
repetitive. But it's mostly quite entertaining, and in some cases, dare
we say, it's quite quotable.
Fans of the source
materials will especially appreciate Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.
However, this is simply a great game, regardless. It's also another step
in a good direction for the highly evolved real-time strategy genre,
because it takes what's great about this style of game--the process of
outmaneuvering and outsmarting opponents to defeat them through military
might--and puts pretty much all the emphasis on the parts of the
gameplay that inherently seem exciting and satisfying. And while we'd be
tempted to say that the skirmish and online multiplayer modes are the
main attractions in Dawn of War, that's actually not quite the case.
Instead, it's the game's four different sides, each brimming with
personality and intriguing tactical potential, that steal the show.