Warhammer has been a popular board game for a while now and has had a few computer game spin-offs, but none of them have been much cop. Last year’s Warhammer FPS, Fire Warrior was starting to buck the trend. Now comes along Dawn of War.
Dawn of War is an RTS featuring the excellent characters from the Warhammer universe. Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Chaos Marines are the playable races. The game features a campaign mode as well as skirmishes and online play. The campaign features a good story based around the Space Marine squad the Blood Ravens, who you control, trying to find out about an Ork invasion. You’ll find twists & turns and new foes entering the mix. The gameplay is pretty much what you’d expect from an action RTS; building your base and getting troops built up. To gather resources your troops need to capture strategic points on the battlefield and protect them from the enemy. It’s a bit different from the usual resource gathering but it works well. Troops are built in squads which you can reinforce; they can be given special weapons too, like rockets for tanks or flamethrowers for troops, you can also make squad sergeants that raise moral. While your main force will be mostly squads of troops you’ll also be able to build an assortment of vehicles. My favourite being the Dreadnaught which is a huge mechanised walker equipped with 2 fists and a flamethrower (and you can equip it with a machine gun). The best thing about the Dreadnaught and other vehicles is that they feel really powerful, literally mowing through squads that haven’t got the right equipment. Other vehicles include tanks, artillery and troop transporters.
Graphically the game is really top notch (for an RTS), with highly detailed characters and battlefields. The firefights look amazing, you can see the bullets tracing across, bullet casings flying out, blood, smoke and all sorts. Explosions are also very meaty!
The game features a very atmospheric score while you’re on your march of destruction, along with excellent weapon and explosion effects. One bad point is the voice acknowledgment for some of the units, which can be one sample, e.g. one of the commanding units says the same thing over and over every time you tell him to move. It gets a tad annoying.
Overall Dawn of War is an excellent action orientated RTS with an awesome intro. If you’re looking for a good looking, accessible and relatively straightforward RTS then look no further.
 
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