“In the front lines there is only one Commandment: Thou Shalt Kill”

Warhammer 40,000. We all know the setting; a gothic, xenophobic Imperium of Man, protected by the incredible psychic powers of the Emperor, who himself must consume the souls of others in order to survive. A galactic society constantly beset by the war-loving Orks, the callous plans of the Eldar, the insane forces of Chaos and more besides.

Now I'll admit that I stopped playing some time around the mid-nineties; partially because GW's targeting an ever-younger audience made it hard to find players my own age, partially because it made going to the stores an unpleasant experience and partially because of the price hikes. However I have had a soft spot for the setting, so I was pretty interested to hear that Relic (a favourite outfit of mine since I came across the Homeworld games) was planning to release an RTS set in the 40K universe.

And was it any good? Well, the short answer is Yes, it's awesome; buy it now. The longer answer is yes it's awesome, but read the damn review anyway because I spent a lot of time on this.

First Impressions

Even from the load screen it's pretty clear that this game is a labour of love. The intro movie is regularly applauded by the game's fans and deservedly so, although it is a simple thing. It describes the fortunes of battle for a squad of Space Marines battered by an Ork assault. Simply put it is truly amazing example of how to get a player jazzed up into combat mode and it's beautifully put together to boot. Needless to say, this being 40K, everyone also dies. But they die in a heroic (and bloody) way that makes it all worthwhile.

The options screen is fairly standard; theres an option to play the campaign (Space Marines only), skirmish games, online/LAN games, options and whatnot. One nice touch is the addition of random sayings in the bottom left-hand corner,much as you find in the tabletop game's rulebooks; charming things like 'walk softly, and carry a big gun'. The options are fairly decent, allowing for 16 and 32 bit colour, some visual cues (for example, silhouetting your units when they're behind something so you can still see them). You can also paint your units and install custom banners, which is pretty cool.. Another very useful option is being able to save (or download and install) archives of a game and watch it for tactical pointers.

The Main Game

The main campaign is fairly simple; Orks are here, a Warp Storm is coming and the Space Marines must fight in order to allow a planetary evacuation. There's more to it, involving the Eldar, and Chaos forces, but I shan't spoil it here. However the game itself is really meant to be taken as a multiplayer experience. The campaign, although aided by a strong story and a decent amount of actual missions, still feels quite short. Also the tech tree takes too long to unlock – you don't get units/equipment quickly enough to learn how to use them in the multiplayer and if you've played the multiplayer you end up feeling that you are fighting with one hand tied behind your back. That's not to say that the campaign is terrible, but it's not particularly wonderful either.

The Races

Dawn of War comes with four playable races: Space Marines (the all-rounders), Chaos Marines (more close-combat oriented and straight-out brutal), the Eldar (highly specialised and fragile) and the Orks (high numbers and tough). Relic has had a lot of trouble in balancing the races, attracting criticisms that they overpower one race at a time. However there is an excellent balance mod called DowPro that is worth investigating. Even with the initial balance problems though, Relic did an impressive job in ensuring that each race was highly individualised and required different skills to play and win. For example, the Orks' technology was tied to population: losing a lot of Boyz meant losing access to certain pieces of technology.

Graphics and Sound

Although gameplay is gameplay, good graphics and sound always help immersion and Dawn of War has it in spades. Even the simple things, like the way a race moves or gives vocal responses to your commands, have clearly been given a lot of though and effort. For example, thd Eldar leap like Gazelles and do stylish kung-fu moves in close combat, while Orks shamble and fight like football hooligans. Even while inactive units do something- Space marines check their bolters and point their guns at imagined sounds, while Chaos Marines cackle insanely.

Another impressive thing (although easy to miss) are the death moves – every unit has a special kill animation which can be activated, sometimes at random. The obvious ones are when the character or demon units duke it out, but even Space Marines and Eldar Banshees pull off cute little death moves. (My favourite, for the record, is when the Marine jams his knife so far in the enemy's guts that it sticks there and he has to put his boot against their shoulder to get it back out). Yes, it's a bloody game, although not in an over-the-top way – just enough to give the game a 'blood and mud' feel to it.

It's not just the units either; although somewhat limited, the ruined, gothic buildings are very pretty and the water effects are well done. The game also uses decals, so artillery fire, bloodstains and whatnot can remain after the shot has been fired. A lot of effort has also been put into the voice acting, for both the campaign and the units in general. Each unit sounds right, even if not necessarily what I expected.

Gameplay

What makes Dawn of War so impressive is the way that Relic has twisted the RTS paradigm using lessons learned from Homeworld 2. The 'scissors/paper/stone' aspect of combat returns, with certain types of units/weapons being designed to directly counter other types. The best example of this is the weapons available to Space Marine squads; heavy bolters to mow down lightly armoured troops (like Orks and some Eldar units), plasma guns to blast away heavy units (like the space/chaos marines), missile launchers to fill the anti-vehicle/building role and a flamer to break units' morale. Oh yes, units can take morale damage and will break (I.E. lose their accuracy and run away until their morale regenerates) if you are outnumbered and outgunned. Units can also collect armour bonuses/penalties in certain types of terrain, which makes paying attention to the scenery more important.

The other major innovation is the use of 'Strategic Points', which anyone who's played the Battlefield games will recognise. basically, instead of mining for resources, players gain requisition for capturing points on the map, upon which they can build listening posts (to remove the fog of war) and which allows them to build within a small radius. There are also Critical Points (that give you more points but cannot be built upon) and Relic points (required to bring out your uber units) These points and the construction of power plants are the two currencies by which you buy your units.

This leads to an amazingly aggressive gaming experience where the outcome of the first entanglement can determine who wins (regardless of how long it takes), with many expert games lasting mere minutes. It can seem pretty unpleasant to new players (I myself have been -wrongly- accused of hacking, simply because the other guy couldn't believe how fast I was creating units), but there are a lot of forum-based strategy guides and downloadable archives that allow you to review other people's games.

The multiplayer expectation also shows in the weak AI, although this has been impressively upgraded in the 1.4 patch. Previously the AI would use superior income (dependent on the difficulty) rather than actually challenging you and used the same tactics per difficulty level. Conclusion

All in all, Dawn of War is an amazing game. Despite some of the balance problems (and balancing four disparate races is hard), the game plays well (although the aggressive style will be new to many), looks better and should satisfy any 40K grognard or newcomer. The campaign is the weakest point, but then again this game shines as the multiplayer affair that it was meant to be.

And it's a damn sight cheaper than the minis as well...