New Review Posted: Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War

[Daniel Weissenberger]

I review our the only good title this week, a little charmer goes by the name of Dawn of War. Here's what I have to say:

"I suspect that there is no genre more rigidly formulaic than Real Time Strategy (RTS) games. Now, this can be said of almost any genre, but the interesting thing about RTS games is how similar the specific actions that the game is made up of are. Start a level with no troops. Build a base. Gather resources. Build a bigger base. Build an army. Crush your enemy with an overwhelming attack. Repeat for the next fifteen years. As I played Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, I began to have flashbacks to my first time playing Dune 2. Of course, the graphics are exponentially better, and there is one more race, but the experience of playing the game was almost exactly the same. I'm sure anyone who's ever played a Warcraft or Command and Conquer game will know exactly what I'm talking about. So, if all RTS games are essentially the same, the only question becomes, how's the setting?"

For the answer to that question, and two others, please click here.

[sleeveboy]

Everything that Dawn of War does it does exceptionally well. The only real problem is that everything it does has already been done a hundred times before. Each time I watched a team of Terminators tear apart a Chaos base I got the exact same feeling of accomplishment I'd experienced watching a team of Siege tanks decimate a Zerg hatchery, or a group of missile launchers destroy a Harkonnen stronghold. The fact that I keep playing the exact same game—the exact same level—over and over again is a testament to the power of the gameplay dynamics that Westwood popularized so many years ago. For all of its incredibly high production values, Dawn of War never trancends the genre, but, knowing that going in, I wasn't disappointed by what I found, and I doubt that any fan of the genre or franchise will be, either.

Did you even play this in multiplayer?

Following the rules of RTS design as slavishly as the game does

Highly inaccurate. No other RTS does such a superb job of simplifying economy management (save perhaps Warcraft III).

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Originally Posted by sleeveboy

Did you even play this in multiplayer?

Yes, why do you ask?

Originally Posted by sleeveboy

Highly inaccurate. No other RTS does such a superb job of simplifying economy management (save perhaps Warcraft III).

But all of the fundamentals are the same. The only major difference is that the resources don't have to be collected by worker units, but are instead just handed to the player. It's not a huge difference, but yes, it does make this a easier RTS than most.