GSI: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Soulstorm

Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is one of the best real-time strategy games out there. With the game’s third expansion, Soulstorm, just around the corner, VideoGamer.com unleashes the GSI team on the game for one final preview before its release. Time to dust off those tech trees…

Stand alone expansion – but there’s a catch

While there’s little doubt that gamers who already own Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War will find Soulstorm of most interest, you don’t have to have the main game installed on your hard drive in order to play the upcoming expansion. That’s because, like the second expansion Dark Crusade, Soulstorm is a stand alone product – unlike some expansions for other games it’ll work without the need for you to have the title proper. If Soulstorm will be your first taste of the superb Warhammer 40K RTS, then you’ll have access to the two new races it brings, the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar, as well as all the races from the previous games: Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Eldar, Orks, Necrons, Tau, and the Imperial Guard. But, as we said, there’s a catch. If you haven’t got the original Dawn of War game the old races will only be playable in the extensive single-player campaign and in single-player skirmishes. During multiplayer, where Dawn of War really shines, you’ll only have access to the two new races – the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar. But don’t fret – Soulstorm is out next Friday, so there’s still time to pick up the first game and hone those leet RTS skillz in time for release.

Planetary conquest – cautious approval

Now that we’ve pumped hours into the final version of Soulstorm we can safely say that there’s nothing that fundamentally changes what’s brilliant about Dawn of War. However, developer Iron Lore (Relic Entertainment shipped out development duties to the now defunct studio) has implemented a turn-based meta-game that’s sure to divide fanatics straight down the middle. Built into Soulstorm’s campaign, the meta-game focuses on requisition, taking control of some 31 territories across four planets and three moons, and fortifying strongholds as you bid to conquer the deep-lying Kaurava system. Soulstorm’s story revolves around a warp storm which has attracted the attention of the game’s nine races, who all want the Kaurava system, and the secret behind the warp storm, to themselves.

When you start the campaign your race already has a stronghold on one of the system’s territories. During each turn you can move your forces to a nearby territory and attack (triggering a traditional, on the surface Dawn of War battle which you control). Win the battle and you’ll take over the territory and gain requisition points, to be spent on buying buildings and units that guarantee a force of some description will be immediately available should an enemy force attack you and draw you into ground combat. Each faction has a racial ability – the Dark Eldar for example can travel across the Kaurava system via Ancient Gates, while others races can only move to nearby territories. Conquer an enemy race by capturing the territory which houses their stronghold and you’ll obliterate them completely and assimilate their racial powers.

The point to make about this campaign meta-game is that, while initially amusing, it quickly gets in the way of Dawn of War’s traditional RTS combat. Indeed we found it became quite an annoyance pretty quickly. We suspect some gamers will love it and some hate it, since it’s effectively ended the cut scene-style single-player campaign story we’re used to from the series. We’ll reserve ultimate judgement for the review of course, but we reckon that despite it being an easy to understand and pretty cool bonus feature, it may end up being a hurdle through which fans will be forced to jump if they want to get down with the nitty gritty.

Death from above – Air units and medals

Soulstorm introduces air units into Dawn of War for the first time, and they are sweet indeed. We’ve had a play with most of the air units across the nine races, from the super mobile Sisters of Battle Lightning Fighter to the Dark Eldar’s devastating Dais of Destruction, and have found them extremely useful, on the battlefield, especially when you need a quick and mobile unit to defend against an enemy strike team. They work in a similar fashion to ground units (can’t make them fly higher or lower – bah!) except they can travel over all terrain. Every race, including the old ones, has had an air unit injection. Air units are a welcome addition, and while they don’t fundamentally change the way the game works, or indeed how most fans will play, they do add some spice to the already boiling Dawn of War pot.

But air units are not the only new gameplay feature – achievements of a sort have been implemented as rewards for particularly skilled multiplayer play. You’ve got medals for winning lots of games in a row, for example, or having a particularly high kill-death ratio. Sadly these aren’t integrated into your Windows LIVE profile, like Xbox LIVE achievements, but they are a nice bonus. Don’t expect to be blown away though.

Miles better than the medals is the basic levelling up Soulstorm has brought to the single-player campaign. When you win a battle you’re able to upgrade your commanding unit with better wargear. You’re only allowed to choose one piece from a pre-determined list, and the more powerful gear required you to have already unlocked lesser items, but it’s a nice way of adding a degree of customisation to your units, something rare in the RTS genre, but a cornerstone of the Warhammer 40,000 table-top game. We found the prospect of unlocking super powerful wargear became our primary motivation for completing the main campaign. We reckon fans will love it.

New race – The Sisters of Battle

Soulstorm introduces two new races, one of which is the Sisters of Battle, a bunch of female-only religious fanatics hell-bent on exterminating the filth currently populating the Kaurava system all in the name of the God-Emperor. The Sisters feel very similar to the Space Marines, and have familiar troop types, buildings and tech trees. While they’re slightly less durable than their male counterparts, they’re more mobile and good all-rounders, excelling in close-quarters combat and ranged.

Unique to the Sisters is their Faith system. You need to add Holy Icons to Listening Posts in order to build up your Faith. In the game Faith acts as a sort of supplementary tier, granting Act of Faith special abilities and access to the Sisters’ most powerful units, but in the Dawn of War lore it is the “metaphysical measure of their devotion to the Emperor”.

The Sisters’ commander unit is the Canoness, a fast, relatively powerful melee-based marine which you’ll find can last a decent amount of time against the other races’ equivalent units. Her Act of Faith, the Purifying Light attack, which calls forth a flash of divine light from the heavens, blinds enemy units, inspires fellow units and pretty much reduces enemy weapon accuracy to nothing. The catch is that Purifying Light, and the Sisters of Battle’s other special abilities cost Faith to use, so you need to keep those Listening Posts as holy as you can for as long as you can.

The Sisters are a pretty cool addition to the Dawn of War race list. Because they’re the most religiously devoted race their buildings look a lot like churches and cathedrals, and their units have halos and bright light all over the place. Their art style is one we like here at VideoGamer.com, and they should prove useful in multiplayer when the game is finally released. But, we reckon they’ve got nothing on Soulstorm’s other new race, the Dark Eldar…

New race – The Dark Eldar

Kind of like the Eldar gone horribly, horribly wrong, the Dark Eldar are a viscous and cruel race that specialise in status-changing poisons and excel in stealth and quick-fire strikes. They are perhaps more evil than even the Chaos Marines, and, as a result, super cool to use. The Dark Eldar like purples, lots of purples, and flying units that look like Jabba the Hutt’s craft from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back redecorated by a psychotic demon.

The Dark Eldar commander unit is a creepy dude called Archon Tahril, who’s super fast and super cruel. His special abilities focus on status changes, including freezing enemies in barbed wire and leeching life. He acts as a squad in a similar vein to the Imperial Guard commander units – the more Incubus guards he adds the more abilities he unlocks. Despite his questionable morals, we love him to bits.

The Dark Eldar’s hook is the harvesting of souls from corpses strewn about the battlefield. Soul Essence is a spectral resource used to power their sickest and most powerful abilities, some of which affect the entire battlefield. For example, you’ve got the Screams of the Damned ability, which reduces the morale of all enemies, to the all encompassing Soulstorm attack itself. These special abilities are accessed from a bar above the main toolbar at the bottom of the screen, and consume souls from the Dark Eldar’s Soul Essence attack, meaning you’ll have to make sure you harvest as many souls as possible from the corpses of your defeated foes.

Having explored their entire tech tree and devoted hours to the race in the campaign and multiplayer skirmishes, we’ve found the Dark Eldar to be a somewhat flimsy race that can’t take much punishment. But that doesn’t mean they’re not effective. Indeed skilled players will find loads of depth to their play, and their special abilities are among the best in the game. And just wait till you get to play with the Dais of Destruction – it’s a killer.

A Fitting Finale – Parting impressions

We’ll go into loads more detail in our review next week, but what we will say now is that our hands-on time is that Dawn of War fans should be very excited about Soulstorm. Very excited indeed. The Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are excellent additions, bringing cool-looking units and spectacular special abilities. This is an expansion, so don’t expect much in the way of revolution. Indeed the graphics are starting to show their age. And we have reservations about the strategy campaign meta-game, too. But fear not – Soulstorm is shaping up to be a solid and fitting end to the Dawn of War series. If you’re an RTS fan this game demands to be on your radar.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm is out for PC on Friday 7 March 2008.