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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War -- Soulstorm

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Author Topic: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War -- Soulstorm  (Read 299 times)
Pelly (clan leader)
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« on: January 17, 2008, 04:03:21 pm »

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War has some serious legs. The original game was released back in 2004 much to the delight of our inner bloodlust. It was a game that finally proved that the 40,000 license could be given the proper attention to create the brutal future and fast-paced gameplay needed. Now, in 2008, about 3 ˝ years after the original released, we get the fourth in the series. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Soulstorm is still using the same engine so strategy fans with older PCs won't have a problem. The one major change in development is that Iron Lore, most famous for Titan Quest, has taken over development of this latest addition. THQ sent over a demo, one that will be released soon to the public (rumor is January 15th), which we played to get a feel for the Dark Eldar faction. The demo only allows access to this faction against the Space Marines over two maps: a skirmish and one of the campaign stronghold missions.

The Dark Eldar are really like an angry version of the regular Eldar that like to torture and enslave other races. In fact, their builder unit is called the Tortured Slave and looks like a terrified and unhappy human. Since the Dark Eldar society is largely based around slave labor, their population cap is increased by warping in slave pits. These also can be upgraded to provide an endless supply of dead bodies (which can have their souls harvested) or acquire an ability to seriously damage the morale of enemies in the area.




The other structures are more similar in terms of use. Infantry are produced in one, vehicles in another, and upgrades can be found in a couple other buildings. They use the normal resource pattern of generators and cap points so there's nothing quite as different as we saw with the Necron in Dark Crusade.

Their units have as much versatility as any of the other races. There's a pretty decent balance of melee to ranged units here as well and there are a few units with the ability to jump around the map, which only plays up the Dark Eldar design of being fast powerfully armed units that are fairly fragile. One of the most interesting units for the Dark Eldar are the demonic melee units called the Warp Beast Pack. They've got some great melee numbers, but when they lose morale, they actually start attacking each other instead of the enemy. This can be a problem if you don't have the leader of the pack which can crack the whip to get them back in shape.

One of the hero units, the Archon, has the ability to lock an enemy unit in place and leech life from them and can also add powerful melee fighters called Incubus to his retinue. He can be upgraded in one of the buildings to have a larger retinue as well. The other hero, Haemonculus who attaches to regular troops granting them bonuses as well as bringing potent attacks and disabling abilities.


As I found out playing a skirmish map, a large army of Dark Eldar infantry coming up against a fully prepared large army of Space Marines is going to need some serious help. Luckily, the Dark Eldar are equipped with powers that can be enabled by using up souls, which can be collected from freshly dead bodies on the battlefield by the tortured slaves. These abilities can temporarily imbue one unit with the ability to detect cloaked units, damage enemy morale, do direct damage and disable abilities, recharge friendly abilities, and reduce enemy armor. There's also the ability called Soulstorm that acts as the superweapon direct damage ability that can be directed around the battlefield to cause significant damage to enemy units.

As mentioned, the demo will come with one skirmish map against the Space Marines and one campaign stronghold map, also against the Space Marines. The stronghold map works much the same as those in Dark Crusade and offers up a more objective oriented style of play. This particular map challenges players to find and destroy several orbital drop beacons the Space Marines are using to deploy troops. Secondary objectives include destroying two smaller bases pumping out Rhino transports filled with infantry and another making new Space Marine Tempest. Eventually, players will have to assault the main Space Marine base and wipe it out which will assumedly end the Space Marine presence in Soulstorm's campaign.

Unfortunately the demo doesn't show off much of how the campaign mechanics have changed at all. We do know that they're moving to interplanetary action so instead of the fight only being on one world, you'll have several to fight over. We do know that there will be persistent heroes just as there were in Dark Crusade, which gives us hope that the campaign will be just as interesting. We'd love to have had a chance to see what sorts of changes have been made to the territory system, but we can wait a little while longer to check that out.

Those looking for more Dawn of War fun should look to see this one released in March 2008 and can look out for the demo very soon
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sp0k3y
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« Reply #1 on: January 17, 2008, 04:57:35 pm »

hi pelly  Grin
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Dylan
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« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2008, 09:58:01 pm »

What Exactly is WarHammer???
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Dylan, Leader of the Xbox Section and here to help anyone who needs it Wink
Andy
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« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2008, 05:09:11 pm »

It's two things, a game you play with figures and vehicles you build, paint and use in battles at places like Games Workshop in Dundee and it's a game where the figures and vehicles that you can build in real life, are put into the game, it's kinda like Command and Conquer but probably better.
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