As I mentioned a little while ago in this post I had purchased Warhammer 40000 Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (what a title).
For those who don’t know Dawn of War (DoW), here’s a few links:
Anyway, by now you all know that Dawn of War is a real time strategy game (RTS) for the PC. Both the original and it’s first expansion, Winter Assault, were released on CD-ROM, but the second expansion, Dark Crusade, is released only on DVD-ROM. I think this is a good thing, takes up less space in my CD-ROM/DVD-ROM holder and since most people have a DVD-ROM player in their computer rather than an old fashioned CD-ROM player, it shouldn’t be a problem for other people either.
In fact, I don’t see the exact reason why there are still games released as multi-CD packs. Why don’t they just release them as single DVD boxes?
But back to the point, Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (DoWDC) is the second expansion pack to Dawn of War from 2004, but unlike Winter Assault, this one isn’t just more of the same. There is this completely new campaign mode that allows you to fight your way through quite a handfull of battles with all 7 of the races that are currently in the game. These races are ofcourse the four races from the original game which were the Space Marines, the Chaos Space Marines, the Orks and the Eldar. The Imperial Guard which were introduced to the game in the first expansion are also still with us and there are two new races, the Tau and the Necrons.
The Tau are your tipical highly developed aliens with advanced weaponry and a higly loyal army. They have large mobile battlesuits that serve as heavy firesupport and assault units and they have these stealth soldiers that can attack without being detected. Their units aren’t all that strong, but they make up for that with speed. Their constructionspeed is pretty high when compared to the other races and their units also move around pretty quickly with a few exceptions.
As for the Necrons, they are your modern version of the undead which are seen in many fantasy games these days. You have them in Warcraft, many Warhammer games (not 40000, just Warhammer), but also games like Dead Rising on the XBox 360 feature the undead. But the Necrons are different. They are very technologically advanced and nearly everything that ever pointed to something living has been replaced with metal. Unlike any of the other races, the Necrons don’t speak. The story speaks of one fallen human that has been turned into a Necron Pariah that sometimes speaks for the otherwise silent army, but this happens only very rarely. They do make noises when you click them though, so they aren’t completely soundless. Almost everything the Necrons do is slow. They build slowly, their units move slowly and capturing a strategic point takes a bit more time than it does for the other races, but in the end, the Necrons are extremely powerfull. Even their basic soldiers are amoungst the strongest heavy infantry in the game and the best of those soldiers is that you don’t need any resources to build them. You’ll need power to reinforce the squads, but you don’t need anything to build a new squad. Which brings me to another thing that seperates the Necrons from the rest of the pack; they don’t use the requisition resource. Every race needs both the requisition resource and power to construct units and buildings, the Orks even have a third resource called Ork Resource to build units and a WAAAGH! rating to unlock certain units. The Necrons have only power. For all of the other races, strategic points are needed to aquire more requisition, not for the Necrons, the only use of strategic points is an increase of construction speed. Which can come in very handy by the way. The construction speed can be boosted by a full 100% when enough strategic points are yours. 2 of the Necron’s units are free to build: the Necron Warrior, which is your basic soldier and the Builder Scarab, which is the builder unit and also the only Necron unit that can capture strategic points. You will need power to reinforce your Necron Warrior squads though, but the Builder Scarab squads can be reinforced without any resources.
And also a very cool thing about the Necrons is that their main base structure, the Monolith, is also your heaviest combat unit. If I’m not mistaken, this is the most powerfull unit in the entire game, but you can use only one Monolith for this purpose at a time. It’ll start off as somekind of sunken pyramid with 4 big pillars standing around it. When upgraded the pyramid will rise from the ground and new building options are unlocked. The second upgrade with rise the entire Monolith above the surface and the pillars are removed and then the fourth upgrade will make you Monolith the most mighty combat unit you’ve ever seen. 4 large gauss blasters are attached to each side of the pyramid and a huge green crystal appears at the top which serves as the main cannon. It’s extremely slow moving, but it can teleport over a limited distance. Once it arrives at the enemy’s location, it won’t take long for it to destroy everything.
As you might have noticed, the Necrons are my favourite race in the game so far. The Tau are cool, but not quite my thing. I like the way the Necrons work, completely offensive, they don’t have any really usefull base defense systems, it’s all just marching forward and crushing everything in your path, but don’t get me wrong, even playing with them is quite a challenge. Allthough they are extremely powerfull, it is largely compromised by their lack of speed, so they can be easely outrun by any of the other races, so it’s still quite important to think ahead before launching a large attack and leaving your base unprotected.
But I haven’t even spoken of the best feature of the Necrons. Sometimes when a Necron soldier falls (beit a Necron Warrior or an Immortal) there is always a slight chance that this fallen soldier reassembles itself and continues the fighting, so you don’t need to constantly reinforce your troops. When the Monolith is in close range, the chance that this happens is increased slightly.
In the end I think that this is a great expansion and the best thing about it is that you don’t even need the original Dawn of War or Winter Assault to install and play this one. You only need valid serial numbers of these two if you want to use the other 5 races online. If you don’t have the original or Winter Assault you can still play online, but only with either the Tau or the Necrons. But even if you don’t have the original Dawn of War, I still think that this game/expansion is well worth the trouble. It looks great, the controls are good, the battles are intense and it’s more than just massing an army and rushing your enemy. It may be that way on easy mode, but at a higher difficulty level it requires more thought than just that.
