Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, developed by Relic Entertainment and published by THQ in 2009 is the spiritual successor to Relic’s initial adaptation of Games Workshop’s dystopian sci-fi tabletop game, Warhammer 40,000. Dawn of War II has enough relation to previous titles in the series, namely in the its single player narrative, to warrant its claims as a sequel, but fans of the series will quickly recognize the numerous differences that make this follow-on radically different from its forebears.
Dawn of War II takes much of the inspiration for its gameplay mechanics from Relic’s other successful series: Company of Heroes. Combat consists of controlling a single, iconic commander unit and small squads (three to four soldiers) of specialized units. Cover is scattered around the map and divided into light and heavy cover which are identified by yellow and green movement markers respectively. Larger units and some special abilities demolish cover, exposing any troops that were sheltering behind it.
Each unit available to the player fulfills a particular role and is rarely, if ever, made obsolete by advances in production tiers. The standard format for each faction’s army consists of light scouts, adaptable main infantry, fire support and anti-armor infantry, super-heavy infantry, and light and heavy vehicles. The average combat force generally consists of six to eight infantry and one to two vehicles, in the campaign missions the force is limited to four units and the commander.
This style of gameplay actually hearkens more to the tabletop game’s most common format than it does to the original Dawn of War. The Warhammer 40k universe is well suited to this style and it allows the campaign missions to come off as flavorful, immersive, and dynamic. The characters take on more importance to the mission and to the player when each individual unit counts for something when the lead starts flying.
Yet this small squad format departs heavily from Dawn of War II’s predecessors. Large scale combat between armies was far more frequent in previous games and hero units, while still strong, served more as unique tactical assets rather than linchpins around which to form a strike team. In emphasizing small unit tactics Dawn of War II removed the galactic scale and sense of endless war from Warhammer 40k. Missions are engaging, but the player rarely gets a sense of how great an impact the victories are having on the conflict as a whole. Enemy forces, while always numerically superior and still dangerous, seem passive and underwhelming.
Dawn of War II’s campaign follows loosely after the events of the previous Dawn of War series and continues to follow the series’ protagonist faction, the Blood Ravens space marines. Several characters from previous campaigns appear as AI controlled allies or in cutscenes. The player controls a Force Commander that serves as his/her avatar and can be named by the player. Several squads of space marines, each representing a different combat type, serve as the force under the player’s command and are each led by a character that provides flavor and narrative throughout the campaign.
The campaign is played out over three planets. More missions with varying objectives, including side missions that provide benefits but do not advance the main story, become available as the campaign progresses. Strategic play is measured in days, with players allowed one deployment per day, although they can gain additional deployments by achieving a high score in missions or completing certain objectives. Most missions consist of the Force Commander, and whatever squads the player chose before launching the mission, landing planet-side on a tactical map representing desert, jungle, or urban terrain. The player’s forces progress across the map taking tactically important locations before progressing towards a final objective like a powerful enemy that needs to be eliminated or a strategic location in need of defense.
Dawn of War II’s single player experience is nothing if not character driven. The slinking and slug fests of the missions would seem meaningless and wearisome where it not for the thematic import that the characters’ perspectives and personalities applied to it. Cutscenes and in-game commentary bring the dark universe of Warhammer 40k to life, give meaning to the objectives, and explain the motivations and behaviors of the various antagonists.
These squads are also heavily customizable, gaining experience for levels with each mission allowing players to increase their squads combat and support abilities and even defining if the squad is optimized for melee or ranged combat. Armor and weapons, in the form of Wargear, is randomly dropped by enemies or acquired as a reward for completing missions. Wargear can be equipped to a squad during the strategic phase of the campaign and each piece of Wargear lists which squads it is suited for.
Skirmish mode lacks this character-driven narrative and noticeably suffers for it. Skirmish battles are wearisome tug-of-war matches over resource production nodes until the player has built up a strong enough army to actually destroy the enemy’s command center. In fact the command center, while poorly defended, has so much health and armor that a match’s finale usually consists of one to two minutes of units shooting at a building. All races and units are available in Skirmish mode thus maintaining some interest for players willing to put up with the repetition for a chance to try out new units and abilities. However these flashy toys are wasted on a predictable and repetitive AI.
Multiplayer serves as a balance between the two, with the presence and challenge of human opponents compensating for the simple objectives and generic maps. Dawn of War II is well supported for online play and its integration with Steam’s network makes matchmaking and setup a simple process. Players are likely to get the most enjoyment out of head to head matches, as opposed to team games against the AI, but this certainly decreases appeal among casual gamers.
Dawn of War II’s close-in, tactical focus demands high performance from graphic and audio processors. Modern machines are sufficient to run the game smoothly, but any models introduced before Dawn of War II’s release will struggle at higher performance settings.
The shift in mechanical style the Dawn of War II introduces ultimately produces a dichotomy in the game’s appeal to fanbases. Players that enjoyed Company of Heroes will likely enjoy Dawn of War II’s single player experience if they choose to enjoy Warhammer 40k’s narrative. Fans of previous Dawn of War titles can still get a thoroughly satisfying experience out of the bloody, lore-heavy storyline but will find skirmish and multiplayer to be lackluster, repetitive, and restrictive.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Gold Edition
Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 franchise (often abbreviated Warhammer 40k), like its predecessor and source of inspiration Warhammer Fantasy is rich in the lore and military diversity that Real-time Strategy games thrive on. It should come as no surpirse that Relic Entertainment’s RTS adaption of this universe, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, is not only a superb rendition of this dark science fiction future but also a splendid RTS game overall. Dawn of War, and the first of its expansions Winter Assault (bundled together in the Gold Edition) brings the dystopian universe of Warhammer 40k to life with intense and bloody combat, superb visuals, and deeply immersive factions.
Dawn of War follows the basic RTS conventions of gameplay. Players start with a single command center (or equivalent) which produces workers and a basic military unit. These military units are used to capture strategic points, static markers around the map that passively generate one of the game’s two basic resources. Resource generation can be improved by constructing Listening Posts on these points once they are captured. Workers construct the various buildings that train and upgrade units and heroes as well as the generators that produce the second resource: plasma. Tier upgrades at the command center unlock more advanced buildings which in turn allow the construction of stronger units and vehicles.
Aside from workers, heroes, and vehicles, all units come out as squads with most squads starting at four units. Squads can be reinforced for an additional cost in resources up to a maximum that varies depending on the unit and the race (the hefty Space Marines have an average squad size of 8 while the numerous Orks can field squads as large as 14). Squads may additionally be upgraded with special weapons that can enhance the squad’s overall performance or make it more effective against one unit type versus another; as well as leader units that improve morale and combat effectiveness. Morale itself is a key factor in combat; units under fire take a steady morale loss. When morale drops to critical levels the squad ‘breaks’, an effect marked by red icons around the squad units, and loses most of its combat effectiveness. Most vehicles and some special units do not have the morale feature.
The Gold Edition features five playable factions: the Space Marines, Eldar, Forces of Chaos, and Orks of the base Dawn of War and the Imperial Guard from Winter Assault. These factions follow similar build styles and combat capability, although specifics like raising the population cap and which units can detect invisible squads do vary. The true differences lie in the offensive and defensive tactics represented in their units. Chaos and the Orks tend to be heavily melee focused with overwhelming numbers while the Elder and Space Marines are expensive, skilled combatants, with a strong emphasis on ranged combat. The Imperial Guard and Space Marines additionally are notable for being “Jacks of all trades” where their basic units are highly adaptable; the Orks, Chaos, and the Eldar often have to field many different unit types for a balanced force.
The single player campaign in Dawn of War follows one of these factions, the Space Marines, through a series of linear missions where the player faces the Orks, Eldar, and Chaos in an expanding plot about Chaos influence on the planet Tartarus. The missions are very well detailed and quite challenging allowing the player to experience the full extent of the Space Marine arsenal and the dynamics of their combat tactics against the other races. Yet while the story and experience are immersive and enjoyable the Space Marines are the only faction with a campaign, the other factions can only be used in skirmish and multiplayer.
This downside is solved somewhat in Winter Assault where every race, except the Space Marines in a very ironic design twist, gets a piece of another story based campaign of five missions divided between the order (Eldar and Imperial Guard) and disorder (Chaos and the Orks) teams where each factions attempts to gain control of an Imperial Titan super mech. Both campaigns begin with missions introducing the factions followed by a shared level where the player chooses which of the factions in their team they want to continue with (represented by a ‘falling out’ of the factions in game). The final mission takes place at the Titan regardless of which faction the player chooses; although the methods of victory differ.
The Winter Assault campaign is very flavorful and its highly interconnected missions give the player a strong sense of interactive narrative. Unfortunately the campaign’s very short duration and partial restriction on what factions are playable severely limits the opportunity the player has to engage and enjoy each faction. The highly enjoyable final mission, modified for each race, alleviates this shortchange to some degree but overall players will find Winter Assault’s replay-ability to be heavily dependent on their willingness to test the skirmish AI’s varying difficulty levels.
Upon its release in 2004 Dawn of War’s graphics and presentation were top of the line. Individual units are highly detailed and many feature very entertaining (and sometimes quite bloody) killing animations (in which the units are mercifully invulnerable to damage). Graphic detail also brings the faction flavor to life with numerous details like facial icons shifting and warping on Chaos buildings and goblin-like Gretchin crawling around the debris of Ork structures. All this detail does tax the video card to some degree and mid-line machines from the period (usually XP operating systems) may struggle with long skirmish and multiplayer games. Modern machines should have no trouble with large scale skirmish games. Dawn of War’s multiplayer is equally well done, with simple setup and connection interfaces that suffer few if any malfunctions on any connection capable of handling RTS play.
Dawn of War, Gold Edition features five levels of Skirmish AI difficulty which provide a decent challenge for players of all experience levels and, except for the hardest AI setting, do not appear to cheat. Multiplayer is even more entertaining with teamplay against the AI and player vs player matches providing ample opportunities to experiment with different faction strategies. Loading time for most multiplayer matches is more dependent on individual PC performance than shared internet connectivity and overall is quite fast allowing for multiple matches to be played over the course of a single session. The factions themselves naturally have some early game build patterns that can sideline the first five minutes into routine, but the unit trees are diverse enough to facilitate widely fluctuating combat scenarios throughout a session.
The Dawn of War Gold Edition is a very well designed strategy game with a rich plot, thematic and well balanced factions, and easily managed skirmish and multiplayer capabilities. While the single player is very linear and lacking in scope its missions and plot line are rich in flavor and abound with opportunities for intense combat. Resource and base management have been sidelined in favor of more detailed unit and army management leading to expansive and satisfying battles against the AI and other players. The graphics and UI options may seem somewhat dated by modern standards; but with the RTS market so sparsely populated gamers will be hard pressed to find a more satisfying RTS experience than Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.