Warhammer 40, 000: Dawn of War Demo Impressions

Another demo I recently tried was for Warhammer 40, 000: Dawn of War, a real time strategy game that Telly used to go on about. With my previous system, I could never get it to run very well, so I never really bothered with it, but now that I've played it, it isn't that bad. At present, I won't be running out an buying it, however if I get bored and want something else to play, I may pick it up.

Warhammer 40, 000: Dawn of War is heavily influenced by Blizzard Entertainment's successful RTSes, and aside from the interface and control scheme, the game universe itself feels very much like a cross between Starcraft and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. To put it bluntly, it's Orks in Space.

Aside from the tutorial, the Demo features one Single Player mission, which is the 4th Mission of the retail product. From what Telly tells me, the Single Player Campaign is only played from the perspective of one of the four factions, the Space Marines, which is rather dissapointing, but the Demo was fun as it felt like I was controlling the Terrans from Starcraft.

The map art looks nice, featuring ruined buildings, streets and such, and the art on all the units and structures are top-notch. You have great camera control, and unlike many older RTS titles, you can create squads that are controlled like a single unit; which allows for much larger scale battles.

Controlling and upgrading armies are as simple as it ever was, and it's great to see some hero units mixed in as well. You can ehance groups with Sergeants and your troops even have moral, as well as the option to equip some troops in squads with heavy weapons, flame throwers, etc. You also get an assortment of vehicles, such as mechs and tanks.

In the Demo's Mission, you had to kill and Ork Warchief and wipe out his forces, taking over areas and "checkpoints" as you went. It was a very standard style of RTS play with no real surprises, and the simple tactic of massing a force and slowly pushing forward while stoping to hold ground and tech a bit worked well.

My only major con with the game was with the AI attack-moving. I lost count of the number of times I clicked a large group of infantry to attack move to an area, and about a quarter of them just hung back and stood there stupidly. Of course, I lost another squad or two because of this, which caused some scrambling on my part to survive.

Overall though, my impressions of Warhammer 40, 000: Dawn of War will have me looking at the retail product later on. While the Demo didn't offer me anything really new to the RTS genre, it came with a good feeling of naustalgia, a feeling I've enjoyed with many new titles recently. If I recall correctly, you can now purchase it in a bundle with its addon for only $29.99 at Best Buy, which isn't bad at all.