Finally got a chance to play the long awaited final expansion to the Dawn of War RTS franchise based on Games Workshop’s highly successful Warhammer 40,000 franchise.

Sadly, the gameplay is heavily recycled and despite the interesting set-up that explains why all the races have gathered in the Kaurava planetary system,  there’s only the thinnest of plot threads connecting everything together.

Quite frankly, the story seems to just fade into irrelevance amidst the string of battles.  If I was in Relic’s/Iron Lore’s shoes, I think it  would have been better to shore up the “more of the same” game play with a decent story to lay down the foundation for Dawn of War 2’s plot.

If they couldn’t do anything new with the game play, they could have at least done something more with the story.

The battles had been growing in scope.  Dark Crusade introduced a continent-wide campaign and the now Soulstorm has scaled it up to an entire solar system.  Unfortunately, this expanded scope is by and large, cosmetic.

The amount of territories you have to capture is still the same as in Dark Crusade (31), except movement occurs on a solar system map instead of a planetary one.  The expanded scope really has no significant effect on game play when it comes down to it.

The highlight of Soulstorm is really the two new factions:

The Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle).  They are the warrior nuns of the Imperium and bring a fanatical religious zeal to the battlefield.  Their duty is to root out corruption and Heresy (basically the Spanish Inquisition in space) even if it involves cleansing other forces of the Imperium; Space Marine and Imperial Guard included.

Though not genetically altered and in the same class of super-soldier as their Space Marine brethren,  the fanaticism of the Sisters of Battle makes them no less deadly.  Their belief in the God-Emperor allows them to utilize special battlefield abilities called “Acts of Faith”.

Dark Eldar - Basically, the Chaos-tainted and very sadistic version of the Eldar.  They harvest a unique resource in the form of the souls of the war-fallen and their tactics rely mainly on speed and unit debuffing poisons and stuns as well as calling upon the favour of Chaos.

A lengthy bug list with some pretty significant bugs (E.g. trainers/cheats worked in multiplayer!) and the delay in bringing out the latest patch for the game didn’t help the lackluster ratings that Soulstorm earned from some critics.

Despite the problems with Soulstorm, the fascinating and highly detailed units, excellent presentation, all backed by deep Warhammer lore are still able to hold the player’s interest.

If you enjoyed Dawn of War, or more concisely Dark Crusade, it’s possible you may still get some enjoyment out of Soulstorm because of the two new factions— but judgin from the gripes I’ve read, even that’s not enough for some players.

Ultimately, it’s just more of the same and it isn’t exactly the kind of blockbuster finale expansion one would expect that would cap off the series until Dawn of War 2 comes out in Spring 2009.

Just make sure to get the latest patch!  The “fixes” list is quite lengthy!

Tags: adepta sororitas, dark eldar, sisters of battle, soulstorm, space marine, warhammer

I’m impressed by both the birds’ vocalizations, and the fact that the voice recog software inside Tom Clancy’s EndWar game can understand them.

Fall 2008 has seen some great game releases and there’s just so many of them I want to play.

My hit list in no particular order:

Dead Space: Was on my hit list, now I’m playing it!  (Thanks kivrin!) Creepy sci-fi survival horror which is a nice change-over from the flood of zombie survival horror games.

Tom Clancy’s EndWar: When I heard about it, I thought it was just another RTS that I was going to pass up, even though I’ve liked the Tom Clancy line of games. I.e Rainbow Six et al.  But apparently this game has a lot going for it including a decent voice command feature with accurate voice recognition.

Fallout 3: Large post-apocalyptic world, plenty of characters to interact with, visceral combat and a natural choice for those feeling nostalgic about the Fallout series.  I’m more interested in getting the PC version for this as I’m hoping that it’ll have mods, much like Oblivion did.

Gears of War 2: I loved Gears of War and I’d like to see where the story is heading. They actually hired a professional writer for this one too!I loved Gears of War but didn’t play it much online. However, I’m thinking that this might be the time to jump into GoW multiplayer with the new online game types and maps.

Left 4 Dead: My comments about Dead Space being a nice change from the usual zombie-based survival horror might leave the impression that I’m bored with that genre.  Far from it!

I saw the cinematic trailer for this game online and I was blown way!A fast-paced ‘multiplayer + zombie survival horror’ mix and the fact that it’s by Valve is surely a winning combination. If this was an Xbox 360 exclusive, chances are that I would have passed on it because Xbox Live has too many jerks that ruin the online gaming experience. Thank God this’ll be on the PC.

Everything in Moderation

While I’d love to jump in wholeheartedly into these games, that really is just way too much gaming goodness.  There are far more important things I should be taking care of and working towards and time is of the essence.

So I’ll probably hold off on Fallout 3 since that requires more substantial time investment.  I still might be able to do Gears of War 2’s multiplayer and Left 4 Dead on occasion since it’s possible to play quick pick-upgames instead of being tied up for hours on end.

It’s certainly a great time to be a gamer!

I participated in an awesome raid with a group of Order players that I happened to stumble upon last night while trying to complete some Tier 3 quests.

Except for Thursdays, I usually play solo so most of the time which means I have to make do with PUGs (player user groups).  PUGs usually aren’t as organized as this and the quality of player tends to vary greatly.  Thus, it can sometimes be a little frustrating, with defeat being far more likely.

However, this bunch was well organized, well lead and it was a very enjoyable to participate even though I didn’t get any loot.

We took all the battlefield objectives and keeps in BlackFire Pass, The Badlands, High Pass and Talabecland.  It was a non-stop assault.

There was virtually no resistance.  There was this one humorous incident where the Order assault arrived at a tavern that’s one of the battlefield objectives.  We rushed to the door and just as I got there, the door opened and there was this one lone Destruction player.

He must have received the shock of his life when he opened that tavern door and saw a full warband right in front of him.  He closed the door on us but we rushed in and he lasted about half a second.

Stoneclaw Castle in High Pass proved to be more of a problem.  Some Destruction players managed to cobble together a defence in time to meet Order’s assault and we were met with cannon and hot oil.  But we had the advantage in numbers and in variety of character classes.  I.e. We had plenty of healers and ranged DPS (damage per second) classes like Bright Wizards and Shadow Warriors on hand to take out the castle’s weaponry on the battlements.

If you’re a Witch Hunter, good gear is absolutely vital. and unfortunately I didn’t get any good gear out of this.  But I did earn quite a bit of experience, Reknown points and I got the killing blows on at least 4 Destruction players which took a bit of doing considering how many other Order players were attacking the same targets.

All in all, it was a fun evening!

[Show as slideshow]

I participated in an awesome raid with a group of Order players that I happened to stumble upon last night while trying to complete some Tier 3 quests.

Except for Thursdays, I usually play solo so most of the time which means I have to make do with PUGs (player user groups).  PUGs usually aren’t as organized as this and the quality of player tends to vary greatly.  Thus, it can sometimes be a little frustrating, with defeat being far more likely.

However, this bunch was well organized, well lead and it was a very enjoyable to participate even though I didn’t get any loot.

We took all the battlefield objectives and keeps in BlackFire Pass, The Badlands, High Pass and Talabecland.  It was a non-stop assault.

There was virtually no resistance.  There was this one humorous incident where the Order assault arrived at a tavern that’s one of the battlefield objectives.  We rushed to the door and just as I got there, the door opened and there was this one lone Destruction player.

He must have received the shock of his life when he opened that tavern door and saw a full warband right in front of him.  He closed the door on us but we rushed in and he lasted about half a second.

Stoneclaw Castle in High Pass proved to be more of a problem.  Some Destruction players managed to cobble together a defence in time to meet Order’s assault and we were met with cannon and hot oil.  But we had the advantage in numbers and in variety of character classes.  I.e. We had plenty of healers and ranged DPS (damage per second) classes like Bright Wizards and Shadow Warriors on hand to take out the castle’s weaponry on the battlements.

If you’re a Witch Hunter, good gear is absolutely vital. and unfortunately I didn’t get any good gear out of this.  But I did earn quite a bit of experience, Reknown points and I got the killing blows on at least 4 Destruction players which took a bit of doing considering how many other Order players were attacking the same targets.

All in all, it was a fun evening!

[Show as slideshow]