It was once said that old war games don’t die, they just fade away. Or maybe that was generals. Anyway, it’s certainly not the case for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, which in its last iteration is going out with a bang. It’s damn-near four years old at this point but is still getting new life in the form of Soulstorm¸ a sort of a hybrid expansion/greatest-hits collection that adds a couple new factions into the scrum and a whole pile of content. It’s the ultimate starter pack for those looking to try out the franchise – assuming there’s anyone interested who hasn’t already bought in by now.
Holy Bodices
If there was anything missing in the earlier Dawn of War releases it was perhaps a feminine touch, and that’s exactly what Soulstorm delivers with a new faction called the Sisters of Battle. They’re a band of religious zealots dressed in sacramental looking (yet revealing) armor and robes adorned with just as many medallions as armaments. They roll into battle on tanks with integrated pipe organs (seriously) and speak of holy things whenever clicked upon.
The Sisters look rather different than the other factions, particularly the Dark Eldar who makes up the other new faction here. They’re a sort of corrupted version of the earlier Eldar faction, relying on the bodies and souls of prisoners and slaves to scare away opponents or provide boosts for their forces. To say the two forces are diametrically opposed would be quite an understatement, but to say that they’re refreshing and new would be taking things too far the other way.
The Eldar are, of course, rather familiar given that they’re based on an existing faction. Surprisingly, though, it’s the Sisters who are even more familiar. The units here generally correlate to forces on the Space Marines side. They’re interesting to watch and new enough to warrant a few exploratory skirmishes, perhaps, but not revolutionary. So, too, are the new units for the existing factions, basically one flying unit per race. Airborne units are new to the game but, except from the fact that they’re not on the ground, they likewise don’t add much.
Campaigning a Turn at a Time
What is wholly new and rather engaging is an offline, turn-based campaign that does away with the cut-scene laden sequences of missions typically found in an RTS. Instead you choose one of the factions and go about trying to conquer a solar system one region and one turn at a time. You’ll start in one region on one planet and, turn by turn, attack your neighbors to expand your influence. Each new piece of property brings more resources to spend within the battles, which happen in real-time whenever a conflict is brewing.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen standard RTS titles get a little more life and a new angle added to them by layering on a little turn-based action, and anyone who enjoys the slower paced strategy games will likely enjoy this addition. It delivers quite a bit more replayability than the standard campaign.
What the game lacks in freshness and variety it partially makes up for in quantity. There are a whopping nine factions to choose from, dozens and dozens of maps, and a surprisingly avid online user community. It’s a solid package, but a dated one. When compared against many other four-year-old games, it doesn’t look half bad. Compared with the current crop of PC titles, it’s a bit dire. Sure, the character design is still interesting and overall it’s a nice package, but even with every graphical option you can find raised to the max Soulstorm still doesn’t quite do it.
Textures are blotchy, models are simple, and the terrain is awfully bland. On the flip-side, due to advances in hardware since 2004, the game runs like a champ, but despite that the camera still cannot be pulled out to an acceptable height. Back in the early days, when it took a decent rig to run this game, a rather constricted perspective was forgiven to maintain playable rates. Today, though, with a moderate machine able to deliver well over 60-frames-per-second, a little broader perspective would be appreciated.
