Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade

8.6
Great

Gameplay	8.5	"This is a game that's just oozing value."
Graphics	7.5
Sound	8.5
Value	9.0

By Tristan Clark

ADVERTISEMENT

Relic Entertainment sure is doing a lot of things right at the moment. Dawn of War turned out to be an extremely enjoyable romp through the universe of Warhammer 40,000, capturing the feel of it much better than any other attempt. After a solid expansion (Winter Assault), the company released the exceptional Company of Heroes, which built on certain elements of Dawn of War’s gameplay and adapted it to a WWII setting. And now, they have released Dark Crusade, the second expansion to Dawn of War – and it’s just as good as previous entries in the series.

For those not in the know, Dawn of War featured four playable races – the Space Marines, Eldar, Orks, and Chaos Space Marines – that were joined by the Imperial Guards in Winter Assault. The gameplay places a lot of emphasis on pitched battles and capturing strategic points, keeping base-building to a minimum and encouraging an expansive style of play. Dark Crusade adds to new races to the mix – the Empire of Tau, a high-tech alliance of races; and the Necrons, who look like robotic undead. The seven races have all come together on the planet Kronus, and naturally war ensues.

The first major addition to be found in Dark Crusade is the turn-based meta-game that is played out over a series of territories on Kronus. Imagine a simplified version of the Total War games, and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. Territories give you specific bonuses or units, and battles are initiated when you try to conquer new territory – or when the enemy tries to overrun you. This sort of mode seems to be in vogue amongst RTS games, so Dark Crusade is hardly alone in offering a feature like this – but it works extremely well here, and manages to add to the game rather than act as an obstacle to the fun.

Once you’ve chosen which race you’d like to play as for the dominion of Kronus, you’ll need to out-maneuver and out-muscle all the other factions through a series of battles, some of which can get extremely challenging, even if you’re only playing on the normal difficulty setting. The enemy can be pretty merciless, throwing wave after wave of troops your way – and if the mission calls for you to defeat their home stronghold, be prepared for a very intense battle.

As hard as the fights can get, the sheer force of the game’s personality will keep you coming back for more. Each race has an entertaining story arc in their pursuit for domination, and you’ll definitely want to play through the campaign several times to check out each storyline. Couple this with some extremely tight and balanced gameplay (no mean feat for a game with seven varied sides), and you’re left with a game that’s just oozing value. What’s more, Dark Crusade is a standalone product – you don’t have to own the original Dawn of War in order to play this, which means you have no excuse not to jump in and experience the entertaining universe of Warhammer 40,000. With Dark Crusade, Relic have created a high-quality expansion pack that is certainly worth your time if you have even a passing interesting in real time strategy games.

NZGamer.com - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade Facebook