Vito

Report #27

I am a little late, here is the next of my bi-weekly updates. I had some time off, so I got a lot of gaming done. I invested it in some unfinished games and while they are not all finished yet, I think my next update will contain two big reviews. There is a small one for all the fans of RTS at least though.


Reviews

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade

25.1 hours, no achievements
★★★☆☆

More

Release Date: 2006

Note: I only tried SP, no MP!

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade is a RTS game set in the world of W40k. It is a standalone expansion to W40k: Dawn of War which adds the Necrons and Tau as playable factions.

Ancient evil is awakening on the planet Kronus: The Necrons arise from their tombs to wage war on all living beings. After a short time, every major power in the galaxy has sent its forces to secure the planet for themselves. You choose one of the factions and play on a campaign map representing Kronus, where you can attack and defend provinces. The battles change to RTS segments (like in the Total War series). This is where the true action happens.

When you build troops (=squads) they do not start off at full strength, but your squads need to be reinforced with additional members and equipment. This makes for a different turn than just the usual recruitment process in RTS. You need to conquer strategic points for ressources and in the end (as with most RTSs) destroy your opponent's headquarter. The tech tree is not overly complex.

The campaign is a lot of fun in the beginning, but becomes stale after a while. This is my main issue with the game: It had very limited replayability for me. The battles are very alike, there is not too much variation in them. Even the end of my campaign run with the Necrons (which took 18 hours) was a bit boring already. I played around a bit afterwards, but was not inclined to start another campaign.

All in all, I think it's a nice game, albeit I do not see a lot of replay potential in SP.

Achievements: None.

Verdict: Slightly recommended.



Currently playing

  • Dungeon Siege
    Dungeon Siege

    too many hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Titan Quest

    30 hours playtime

    no achievements

To soften the blow from finishing Dungeon Siege I started Titan Quest, which is (roughly) the same genre. I ended up playing mostly Titan Quest, so Dungeon Siege is still not finished :D


My review of Dark Crusade got longer than I anticipated. There is one thing to add. It’s not really about the game itself, rather about the universe it is set in: Warhammer 40,000. Each time I come into contact with W40k, I am at awe when glancing at the universe. The amount of lore, the megalomanic constructions… but once I dig a bit deeper, I am always disappointed: It’s just too … genocidal? … for me. The circle repeats about once a year or so. Up to this day, I am not able to make up my mind about W40k… What do you think of it?

Happy backlog-clearing to everyone,
Vito

Trent

I loved Dungeon Siege and Titan Quest back in the day, especially TQ.

Vito

I never played them “back in the day”, but I’m still enjoying them very much, although DS more than TQ. Definitely worth catching up :)

Trav

Thanks for the write up on W40K, I’ve got a couple of those on my future docket and I just don’t know what to make of them. The setting seems really cool and there’s so much background lore available with it… but I just haven’t developed a love for RTS games (yet - I hear that Northgard and Banner Saga are good ones to get you into the genre, so maybe I need to play one of those first.)

Vito

I haven’t played Northgard or Banner Saga, but from what I gather they are a bit different than Dark Crusade. The latter is a very classical RTS in comparison, more along the lines of say Age of Empires or Starcraft – games I enjoy very much. For someone not too much into RTS, Banner Saga might be the better choice though (but as I said, I haven’t played it myself).

Fnord

I don’t get why Dark Crusade is praised as the best DoW game (for SP). It’s not bad, but as you said, the campaign gets a bit stale. I think the original DoW & Winter Assault has a far better main campaign.

As for the setting itself. There’s actually a lot more to it than genocide everywhere. Sure, 40k is an intentionally over the top setting, where things are awful, to the point of self parody, and this includes the blatant disregard for human life, which is a recurring theme through the setting. But there’s so much more to it than just that if you dig a bit deeper. But the war & genocide bit, that’s what Games Workshop chose to present, as it’s the easiest bit to market.

Vito

Oh, it is? I didn’t know that. I agree with you though, the original campaign was better. Winter Assault is still to be played.

Ah, so there is a third layer behind the slaughter? Good to know! Maybe I’ll find the time to read a bit more about it. I’ll give the other W40k titles a go one way or another in the future :)

Fnord

40k is a setting with more layers than an ogre :P
Most of the games deal with war, or a portion of it, so you don’t get a lot of the day to day stuff. The only game I can think of which is focusing more on the non-war like things is Eisenhorn: XENOS, which sadly is a rather bad game (but based on a really good book series).
One problem that 40k often runs into is its own scale. When you’ve got millions of inhabited worlds, it’s hard for smaller-scale conflicts to seem important, so a lot of writers take the lazy shorthand of going “oh, and a billion humans just died” when they want to raise the stakes

JumpOffACliffy

Nice to see you’ve been updating! I haven’t been on here in a while, otherwise I would’ve commented on your posts sooner :P
Dawn of War seemed like an interesting game to me, but I really hate RTS so I stayed away from it. Glad you mostly enjoyed it though! It seems to be a running theme that Warhammer 40k games are really grindy… I wonder why that is.
I’ll be posting an update soon of what’s been happening lately, so stayed tuned for that ;)

Vito

Good to hear from you :) Well, if you don’t like RTS, then I would stay away from it, yeah. There are plenty of other great games waiting to be played. I haven’t played to many other W40k games, they are all grindy? Hm, good to know, I’ll keep that in mind :)

Hope you have been well and looking forward to your update!

JumpOffACliffy

I can’t say that they are all grindy, as I really only know about some of them, and have played even fewer. But from my (limited) personal experience, as well as reviews I’ve read, and the types of games that they are, most of them seem to involve a bit of a grind. It’s not a bad thing, but it does mean the player is more likely to get bored before they finish it!

I have been doing well outside of BLAEO :) Hope you are doing good too.