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Warhammer 40,000 Soulstorm
THQ
Game details:
Release Date: Mar 4, 2008
Genre: RTS
ESRB: Mature
Platforms: PC only
In the gritty future of the fantasy world Warhammer, there is only war... and there has been for quite a long time, yet the game is called the dawn of it... Warhammer 40k is a game which features future elves, superhuman space marines, badass lasses with big guns, orks, undead robots, and some other aliens killing each other for nothing else than hate (curtoasy of Gameworkshop for the tabletop game with the same name). Hate here takes many forms, like being stronger and greener than the aliens, in the case of the Orks, being on a crusade in the name of the Emperor (some kind of Jesus of the future), or containing some kind of big netherstorm. Every race has it's own reasons to come to this galaxy and definetly wants to have a foothold here no matter the cost. Let the games begin!
About the game
Being an RTS, you will command units to jump on (or shoot at) enemies by using the mouse and controlling them the same way a big commander in the sky would. Now to skip the silly part of giving a tutorial on strategy games, this game is the third standalone expansion to the game Dawn of War. To show you a bit of history, when Dawn of War came out, it had four races - the bioengineered Space Marines, the warmongering Orks, the elf-like Eldar and the evil counterparts of the Space Marines, Chaos. The game had a linear storyline and received good reviews. A bit after that, Winter Assault appeared as the first expansion. It had two linear campaigns based on the good and evil side (although I doubt there is anything to differentiate them as both slaughter and murder anyway) and added the numerous and fanatical Imperial Guard. Last year a new expansion came out: The Dark Crusade. It raised the stakes by adding two new races (the undead terminator-like Necrons and the ranged based Tau) getting the grand total to seven now. It also changed the story totally by featuring a planet map and the ability to use any race you wished. The game I'm reviewing adds two more races to the mix, making this game one of the most prolific of all time with a grand total of nine races you can play with. The two races are the Dark Eldar, cruel assassins and torturers of the worlds and the Sisters of Battle, ironclad lasses armed to the teeth with faith and arms. That, and the new galaxy map which is a welcome addition from the fact that the planet would be too small to battle on and the best thing would be just blowing it up.
Starting out
You start the game with your capital territory, another one and your army, consisting of your commander unit and a worker (massive, I know). The way you progress on this galaxy map is by conquering other territories owned by the other races. The source of this galactic conflict is the recent opening of the warpstorm next to one of the planets. You conquer territories by fighting them out on a smaller scale battle map just like a skirmish with the exception that you start with the worker, base and leader, along with his honor guard, which are elite units bought through the requisition on the world map so that you can satisfy your reason to participate in the war. After you conquer a territory, you gain it's advantages along with a bit more requisition per turn, which grants you the ability of reinforcing it against further onslaughts.
Getting more blood splatters on you
As you gain more and more territories, the game counts your kills, victories and other stuff like these to give you Wargear, equipment used to upgrade your commander. Although they are really neat and different for each race and commander respectively, they ultimately serve the same purpose with only minor differences. When you get the last pieces of wargear, you will have a commander so strong that you can one handedly destroy an army. When you conquer reach the capital of a race, you will get to play a scripted scenario against the race, as the last stand of it's kind in the galaxy. Although it is a nice change from the click click skirmish, click click skirmish setup, these scenarios feel a bit tacked on for being universal to every race you play. Of course, you get a nice speech at the end telling of your endeavours, but ultimately you will feel the game boil down to mass skirmishing and 56 different endings. The AI is good enough for a game like this, and because the galaxy map is played only against the AI, that counts as a nice plus. The difficulties range from dead easy to insane, and it will really drive you insane, as it is damn hard to win against these.
What blood you are going to splatter on you
In the skirmish map, or where you will be playing most of the time because this is the place you want to be in, you control your troops in squad based combat, wether from a ranged standpoint or melee, each race with it's own troops and usage. Seeing that, you will see that the most similar interracial troops are the space marine squad with the chaos space marine squad. Putting aside the aesthetic differences, the faithful space marines can equip four kinds of heavy weapons where the chaos ones can only two. To satisfy the demands, the chaos space marines can infiltrate (stealth) later in the game. All races feature a primary and secondary hero unit, or commander, each with it's own very different abilities and appearance. The battles usually consist of short gory skirmishes, taking advantage of the cover bonus the different elements in the environment give. Although it's not as detailed as other games at this, like Company of Heroes, it makes it's job nicely. Every race has it's own personality, and you will feel it in the gameplay tenfold, as you will feel tough and able to do many things as the Space Marines, and you certainly feel the need to run when you play the range heavy Tau. Some races feature their own superunits, which are very powerful avatars of destruction with great damage potential, and the variety is quite awesome. The Necron base is it's own superunit for example, seeing as it can activate in a monolith mobile fortress, capable of raining death upon mostly everything. Chaos has the Bloodthirster, a massive axe wielding demon, Khorne, the god of blood incarnate. It loses life continually when not fighting and has some especially gory finishing moves. The Orks have giant Squigotths, dinosaur like weapon fortresses capable of trampling enemies, and so on. And also, as part of the expansion, we get a taste of the Air units, which are nice, but not much tactically different from the rest.
Graphics - Looks gritty, and gory too!
For modern day standards the graphics are outdated. They look bland and old, which is good for a game set in such a gritty setting, but the improvements brought to other games in recent years have passed Warhammer unnoticed, yet the animations and the gore still look quite vivid, even if the game is starting to show it's age. The atmosphere is almost absent, if not for the occasional splashing of the water on some maps, but you get the sound up to it with units screaming warcries as they close in to hack and slash the enemies of the future to pieces. And of course, what good is a fanatical religious or otherwise game if not with good voices? 40k has some of the best, most of which you will always remember. And some quotes are really good too!
Multiplayer - How to draw more foreign blood
The multiplayer of the game is certainly a strong point, as the gaming online is made by relic exclusively, and the community is large. There are some lag problems here and there, but usually from the users fault, nothing being wrong from the server side. The weakpoint here is that although you can use any of the nine races to play in the single player campaign and skirmishes, you can only use the two new races in online and LAN gaming. That is quite sad, seeing as the game is quite expensive at its 40 dollars for an standalone expansion. Placing that aside, you can have the other expansions preinstalled if you wish a greater variety in your online choice. Also, this is where the majority of the replayability will come from, so don't miss out on the 40k multiplayer.
Blasting Conclusions with a heavy bolter
All in all, the game is quite a worthy expansion to the popular game, seeing as the one last year had a reputation to live up to. We get two more races in the mix (still no tyranids!), but the fact that the graphics are the same tired 3 year old ones tends to wear it down. Yet those who buy this game will be invited to the beta testing of the upcoming Dawn of War 2, so keep that in mind and play it out.
Score?
It does deserve its 8.5!