Trent Polack's site for cats, games, game development, and undeniably powerful sociological insight all with a healthy dose of narcissism.
Visceral Real-Time Strategy Done Right
Published on February 9, 2006 By mittens In Real-Time
Over the course of the last week I have become quite infatuated with the popular RTS released early 2005 (or was it late 2004?), Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Dawn of War is set in the futuristic version of the pen-and-paper universe (there's also a fantasy version of the franchise, which also has a big-name RTS in development). And while this is all nice and well for people that find themselves getting all sorts of turned-on by that kind of thing, it doesn't really mean much to me other than the fact that it gives developers quite a bit of background material to work with. The gist of the thing is this: Dawn of War is a fast-paced RTS that could best be described as result of a lonely night where Starcraft had its virginity stolen away by its younger, hipper sibling, Warcraft III. What this means, in layman's terms, is that the game puts an emphasis on both large, important individual units (though there are no RPG components) while still making unit diversity and population as important as, say, Starcraft or Command and Conquer. In short: it's damn good.

The game was developed by the same company responsible for Homeworld (both the original and its sequel) as well as the less critically acclaimed Impossible Creatures. I played both Homeworld games and found them entertaining but a bit too slow-paced for my tastes; the completely free-form 3D game space was fairly overwhelming for me as well. I wanted to like both games (though I never gave Impossible Creatures a try) but they were a bit too complex to easily get into and given that I didn't find them that amazing I didn't feel the necessity to force my way into the guts of the game.

I have heard great things about the multiplayer component of Dawn of War but currently I'm quite engrossed in the original game's campaign mode, which consists of eleven missions played from the Space Marine faction's perspective. And, before you get yourself all down, when I say that there are eleven missions, I want you to understand that these missions are nothing to scoff at. The first two missions took me around an hour to complete whereas every mission since then has taken me roughly two to two and a half hours to complete on hard difficultly. These are some pretty huge missions and, despite there only being eleven of them in the vanilla game, it'll take you a nice chunk of time to complete. The story is also surprisingly compelling and interesting, which is a nice change from the highly predictable stories of every game I've played in the last couple months. I just finished up the seventh mission a few minutes ago, and here are some nice little screenshots to give you an idea of how hectic things are at this point:



Did I mention that the game is damn purdy despite the engine being capable of displaying a massive number of units and special effects on the screen at once? Each unit has an unsettling amount of detail paid to it, and the weapons/loadout on the unit will change if you choose to upgrade certain features on it. As an example, there is a tank on the Space Marine side that you can eventually upgrade to have two side laser cannons as well as upgrading the primary gun into a dual-laser turret (I feel nerdy just relaying that) and both upgrades will show up on your unit in-game. Generic tech upgrades will also have a visual influence on your units throughout the course of a match too; for instance, if you decide to upgrade the melee tech of your leaders/commanders, their melee weapons will switch from a kind of chainsaw-sword to an unnecessarily large power-glove with little electrical beams pulsing through it. It's the little details like this, rather than the polygon count, shaders, and texture resolution, that really help make a game stand out all the more in my eyes.

And let me say this now: you've never seen an RTS with such amazing, inventive (and violent) animations as will see in Dawn of War. The game fully earns its M-rating with animations which, as an example, have a very large "avatar" unit that spears infantry units on its sword while blood drips down. There is also a Space Marine mech unit that will impale infantry on its claw-like thing and then beat it to the ground. It's a very neat effect, not to mention jaw-dropping when seen for the first time, but definitely just a bit violent. I personally love it -- not sure what that says about me and I'm quite willing to keep it that way.

Overall though, Dawn of War is the most fun I've had with an RTS since Rise of Nations which was released almost two years ago (and then Warcraft III before that). I liked it so much that I actually went and bought Dawn of War's first expansion pack (as was recently announced, a second expansion pack is also under development), Winter Assault, which is something I very rarely do with games. I'm going to ignore the fact that the EB Games cashier didn't put in the first CD of the game when he was filling the empty box that was displayed on the shelves. Bringing that up just makes me sad.

Now, if only it wasn't currently 4:40am so I could get to work on starting the eighth campaign mission...
Comments (Page 2)
2 Pages1 2 
on Feb 10, 2006
I think some people have been reading Penny Arcade.

Yeah, their recent posts about guerilla marketing were quite good imho.

I don't really care about covert marketing though, if the article is fun to read.
I'll make up my mind about a game myself, with the help of reliable reviews like those at Link.
Even if Trent were a "schill" I still enjoyed his article.
( Heh, my own article could be considered guerilla marketing for both PA and GR )

About DoW : it's truly one of the most enjoyable RTS games I played in recent times.
It owns well known (but disappointing) titles like Battle for Middle Earth and even Warcraft 3 imo.
Looking forward to Rise of Legends as well.

@ Yarlen : I beat the mission you're talking about yes.
I don't think Winter Assault is "frustratingly difficult", but I never tried difficulties above normal.
Here's what I did...
Chaos occupies the south of the map, yes ? Right through their territory lies the original space marine route.
The Land Raider travels on a "street" or "highway" or whatever untill it reaches the first gate.
Paralel (sp ?) with this street is another street 1 screen to the north. Your base (the one you can commandeer) is between these two streets, as is the first gate. Between your base and the gate, there is a third gap in the wall between the two streets.
Now, instead of allowing the Space Marine Convoy to follow its original route, lead it through your base to the above street. Make sure you don't open the first gate as this gives Chaos an easy path to reach the convoy, and defending 2 bottlenecks is harder than just 1.
Don't worry about the path through your base. Apart from the initial few waves they won't attack through here, choosing the "gap" between the base and the CLOSED gate instead (provided you move the Land Raider enough to the east).
Always keep leading the convoy with your general, because it will return to its original route if left unattended (dumb AI ).
Now defend your bottleneck (the "gap") with Predators and Guardsmen initially. Add a Baneblade ( find the Mars Pattern building in the northwest of the map ) and Karskin squads to your defences later.
Enjoy the havoc your loyal troops wreak on the vile spawn of chaos but watch out for Obliterators. Their superior range can seriously weaken your line.
The enemy will still send units through gaps east of the first gate, but those won't be very numerous and the Space Marines can handle them easily. Show them the way to the north of the map. You can open the second and third gate on the way. Bon't bother with attacking the Chaos and Orc bases, nor with using the Eldar.
Finish this mission and the last mission after that, then return here, choose Eldar instead, play a ridiculously easy mission ( the Eldar only need to destroy 4 generators, that's all ) and finish the game with Eldar.

There... I hope this will help, and that you'll forgive my poor grammar.
on Feb 10, 2006
Ah, okay, thanks.   Yeah, it seems that a lot of my problem has been the inability to direct the Space Marines. They always seem to go their own way despite my orders. Plus I wasn't able to capture that base you mentioned (the game never gave me control over it - making me think I wasn't supposed to have it).
on Feb 10, 2006
I think some people have been reading Penny Arcade.


Its not like Tycho has exactly "scooped" us with this information. We see it all the time. I think it was 60 minutes (or one of those news shows) that had a feature a couple years ago about the pervasiveness of guerilla and non traditional/high impact marketing online. In their piece, they showed a kid...I mean under 15, who got paid to go online and hype up the "Cowboy Beebop" anime movie in chat rooms.

If youve ever seen "Cowboy Beebop", try to remember back to where you fisrt heard about it, and wonder whether or not youve been "marketed".

Not that this was that subtle. Taken out of context , like it was, it almost seemed like a full page add for a game over a year old. Im not sure how I feel about stardocks forum "cross pollination". I realize it would let them monitor the forums for many different sites with minimal staff, but at some point, you like to feel like youre going "home" to a community invested in a specific game. But maybe I need to seek out a fansite for that.

Anybody have any dedicated GC2 fansites they want to plug?
on Feb 10, 2006
Meh, I do some detailed game info posts once in a while on various forums as well.

Someone should be paying me dammit!
on Feb 10, 2006
Somebody needs to start paying me too. I guess I'll get second place in line, since you already claimed first.

I don't think I ever really realized just how much "cross-pollination" took place whenever the forum bit was checked. I'm not a big fan of forums in general, so I never really checked them out to find out that this was, in fact, posted in a forum. The option to place these in forums is generally checked by default (and, also, generally helps an article receive a better reception overall), but this particular article was checked for "PC Games->Strategy->Real Time" which now I suppose partially only matters for JoeUser readers, but I'm still all that clear on the whole situation.
on Feb 10, 2006
I originally warezed my copy of dawn of war. I liked it so much that I bought it.
on Feb 20, 2006
Silent Archer, thanks for the tips on that mission. I too have tried it a couple times and have the same issues with directing the convoy. I'll try your suggestions!

DoW is definately my favorite RTS - can't wait for the 2nd expansion.

Rise of Nations/T&P is my 2nd fav - looking forward to Rise of Legends, too

Warcraft III is 3rd, but I think I'm finally burned out with it. Definately got my moneys worth on WCIII - can't say how many PC skirmishes I've played.
on Feb 20, 2006
Glad to help.
Remember to keep the General in the vicinity of the transport when giving orders. Won't work otherwise.
on Feb 20, 2006
Dawn of war is Awesome. Definetly on my top 10 list of cpu games of all time.

on May 01, 2006
I like what you do, continue this way.
on May 02, 2006
Yeah this game kick ass. I have a pirated copy of it, but I'm thinking about buying new one to play the expansion.

Anyway, for now I'm playing galactic civilization 2 and it drain all of my time
on May 03, 2006
DoW was great imo. thing is the 'expantion' was a classic case of milk more money from expantion itis.

looks too me like the built a game, had 10 races, and a ton of storyline, choped about 6 of the races and half the story lines, saved them for the 'expantion' and wated to rake in the cash.

the original game was amazing i REALLY enjoyed it (and im a hard gamer to please), but the expantion sucked. the new 'race' wasnt a step forward it was a step back. it would be as if you played age of empires, the normal way, then you had an 'expantion' that limited you to wars of ONLY peasants. well perhaps not that extream but they changed things for the sake of new 'features'. such as a constiant flip flop from one race to another MID mission. you start as IG and then they make you play a whole nother race (eldar) to beat the mission. it would be like starting GC as humans and half way through having to switch to drengi, and then back to humans.

the IG wasnt nearly as 'strong' at the space marines. i say 'strong' in quotes because they dialed down the AI to make them seem stronger than they actualy were. the original spent the whole 15 missions building the story of the blood ravens (a space marine company) and how much better they were, how they were the uba soldiers, of the Imperium, the best of the best, the elite. and the imperial guard were simply cannon fodder, literaly cannon fodder. but in the expantion the cannon fodder was now the featured race?

the original was a straight line senario, one mission lead to the next (no hold over of previous units though) you played the Space Marines in each mission. the expantion was radicaly different, you chose an alignment, good or evil and the senario would change you between either IG/Eldar or Orcs/chaos MID mission, you build a nice base build some power units, start your sweep then wam your off in some obscure corner of a map with 2 units of another race and have to accomplish some dumb as dirt half assed mission so you could get back to your REAL forces and do the job.

the very first mission as IG, you build your army and start a march on this fortress, destroy hoards of chaos units, only too be stoped by a door. then all of a sudden your now playing the eldar ( a race that playins NOTHING like the IG mind you) and have to take over some power buildings to open the door? what the hell lol. you can land forces from space, you can smash huge sections of the fortress, but you cant manage to knock over another door? here is an idea , instead of switching races, FLY OVER IT!

no the 'expantion' was all stuff that should have been in the original, and what wasnt, was clearly cobbled together so they could call it a new 'feature'. all and all the 'expantion' senario's were about what you would expect from a semi talented modder and not from the developer. its like they added a race that had allready been built for the original and just not compleated, then took some modders idea of a 'really keen' story line , slaped a title and a box around it and called it an expantion.

their 'expantions' were just about on par with what we get for free from stardock. yet another reason to support these guys.

though i would recomend the original DoW to anyone. dont bother with any expantions. they are half assed at best. atleast the first one was imo.
on May 03, 2006
double post
2 Pages1 2