Real-time strategy [RTS] games have become a well defined genreon the PC.
The concept is simple: you use resources to build things whicheither help you generate more resources, or build up an army. Youcan direct individual units or groups around the battlefield, andthey fight automatically once in close contact with the enemy. Thestrategy is in what to build, where, in what order and whatquantity, maximizing your economy and where to send your units tobattle.
There are a wide variety of games possible within this basicconcept, but for some reason, risk averseness or otherwise, mostRTS games published in the last few years have converged more andmore around the gameplay of the popular “Warcraft”series.
The RTS genre has stagnated to such a great degree that, when Iloaded up “Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War” for the firsttime, I was pretty sure I knew what to expect, but I was quitewrong.
It’s clear that the creators of “Dawn of War”reassessed every little detail of the RTS gameplay formula, andmodified it liberally. The result is a game that feels very fresh,has plenty of new tactics to discover, and has a different balancefrom the formula. For example, you never really build individualunits, but always groups of at least four, which are controlled asif they were a single unit.
Not only does this make controlling and organizing them a loteasier, you can then add new units to this group even in the middleof a battle, without the help of a traditional”factory” building.
This allows you to keep an army at constant numbers by justkeeping an eye on them in battle, instead of the usual steadystream of reinforcements from the base as is needed in most RTSgames.
Not just that, you can choose how strong you want a particulargroup to be, as you can equip them with commander units, upgradetheir weapons [which affects their effectiveness against certainenemy units]. This allows you to more quickly respond to the needsof a battle, but at a cost, of course.
Numerous other small enhancements improve gameplay. Units appearto be significantly more resilient against attacks than in otherRTS games [i.e. it takes longer to kill them]. This means that youhave more time to react when units are being attacked and turn thetide [especially when combined with the feature of being able toequip new units and weapons during a battle].
In other RTS games, hearing far away units screaming”we’re under attack!” usually means it is toolate already. Resources are handled more elegantly in “Dawnof War” as well. Instead of resources requiring constantmining by worker units [with the associated organization required],a resource in “Dawn of War” will deliver a constantstream of resource points to you once you have”captured” it [this takes a bit of time], and requiresno management thereafter.
Of course the enemy can capture resources back from you, so youcan build a defensive tower on top of the resource, with severalupgrades making it increasingly hard for the enemy to take theresource back.
“Dawn of War” makes upgrading more appealing, as themore advanced levels of units are so significantly more powerfulthan your initial units, that having them before the enemy is ahuge advantage.
In many RTS games, overwhelming your enemy with quantity is asimple strategy that often works too well. In “Dawn ofWar”, quality more often beats quantity. And that is just thegameplay. Visually, “Dawn of War” is stunning in itsown right too, and even though fancy graphics are usually notsomething that seems important for RTS games, once you have watchedsome of “Dawn of War’s” large scale battlesunfold on your screen, you may think differently.
The battlefield landscapes are decent, but not overlyimpressive. It is the unit design, texturing and especially theiranimations that make the game really shine. Once you have seen someof the larger mechs/bots take small units up in the air andimpale/squish them, you’ll know what I mean.
The entire visual design of the game of course comes from theturn-based tabletop “Warhammer” game, which has a richset of vehicles/characters, only very few of which ended up in thiscomputer game. The PC game is unlikely to play anything like thetabletop game, due to its different underlying game mechanics, butthat doesn’t seem to have bothered its creators. It is anexcellent game in its own right.
One complaint one might have is that the single-player campaignis very short [this seems to be a trend in many recent games]. Thedifficulty level is very well balanced, probably on the easy sidecompared to other recent RTS games, which should make it moreaccessible to non-veterans.
The storyline around the single-player campaign is nicely done,and presented with considerable polish, but as with most RTS gamesis just an excuse to have you play the usual invade, eradicate,protect and retrieve scenarios. “Dawn of War” hasexcellent skirmish [vs. AI] and multiplayer modes to keep you busyfor much longer, though.
“Dawn of War” gets my vote as probably the best RTSgame that has come out in recent years. Certainly any RTS fanshould pick this up, and people that have not yet been introducedto the genre could do worse than start here.
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