Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Winter Assault

"The original Dawn of War had something great set in stone, but Relic decided to change things up a bit with the expansion."

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Winter Assault is the expansion pack to 2004's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Dawn of War games have been out for around a decade but non have really put the series on the map in the video gaming world until Dawn of War. With its impressive introduction cinematic, great graphics and strategic elements it was a winning formula that could achieve no less than success. However, when Relic and THQ decided it was time for an expansion pack they decided to change things up a little. You will either be the type of person that likes these changes or dislikes these changes and I highly doubt there would be anyone in the middle.

Story:
Disappointingly Winter Assault does not continue the story that was established in Dawn of War, and it has left me completely dumbfounded as to why they have completely abandoned the previous plot. Not even the Imperial Guard leader made it back as the leader to the new race added in Winter Assault, the Imperial Guard, which made several appearances in Dawn of War but were never playable as their own race. There is now a new Imperial Guard leader who goes by the name of General Sturnn.

The story in the original Dawn of War followed the adventures of Gabriel and his Space Marine chapter known as the Blood Ravens. This was the only story behind the first game despite the fact that it had four unique races to play as. They all played a significant role in the story; however the campaign was only playable as the Space Marines. Relic and THQ obviously did not want this to happen again so they decided to make two separate campaigns instead of just one where you switch between two different races in each of the campaigns. There is the campaign of order and the campaign of chaos. The order campaign has you playing as the Imperial Guard and the Eldar, and the chaos campaign has you playing as the Space Orks and the Chaos Space Marines. But wait, hold on a second... don't the Space Marines play a predominant role in the Warhammer 40,000 universe? According to Relic and THQ in Winter Assault they do not. The Space Marines only make a very brief appearance in Order campaign and the chapter that appears is the Ultramarines but isn't even playable which is disappointing, because in Dawn of War the Imperial Guard while not being a race of their own were still controllable. Here the Space Marines do as they please, and die as they please.

Gameplay:
Despite the fact that this game has two separate campaigns they essentially end up playing and being the exact same. Besides some story elements and a few missions they are disturbingly similar. Although they do have some major differences they still play far to similarly to warrant being called separate campaigns, since some of the missions are the exact same just played from different view points. Relic also seemed to have thought that just because they added one new ground texture to the game they had to base every map in the single player around this texture and even name the game after it. (HINT: If you haven't figured it out yet, they added a snow type level pallet). These are the only types of levels you will play... yes SNOW LEVELS. Sounds cool right? Not after the 5th mission of playing through he same level. (Not actually the same but looks the same).

There are far less missions than in the original but they are far longer, which is most definitely a bad thing. Some of the missions are so incredibly long that you would need to spend more than an hour to beat a single mission. This can be especially frustrating since you might spend 40 minutes playing as the Imperial Guard in the order campaign and then switch to the Eldar for 10 minutes (forcibly switched) and then switched back to the Imperial Guard for another 15 minutes). This can be brutal and sometimes you may need to save your game and take a break especially if you're having trouble because I have found that long and challenging RTS games tend to make your head feel like its going to explode.

The new race while definitely not the most interesting choice out of the many races in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, plays pretty well but unlike the Space Marines relies more on numbers than strong units. Dawn of War is perhaps the first RTS game I've ever played where the Humans are one of the strongest races. The Winter Assault expansion changed that however, since the Imperial Guard are extremely weak but are powerful in extremely large quantities and when they are enhanced by their strongest units that they do not get until much, much later in the game.

One frustrating new aspect of Winter Assault is that Dawn of War focused heavily on rushing your opponent and rushing out to control as many Strategic points as possible. There were also many fast upgrades you could receive that benefited players who took the initiative to expand their forces and conquer the map. Winter Assault has changed this quite a bit and has made the game more rewarding to players who like to do nothing but farm resources. They have also eliminated the quick effective rushes. Since many upgrades (most noticeable for Chaos and Space Marines) have been restricted until much later in the game and require massive upgrading in your technologies before they are usable. For example once you built an armory in Dawn of War heavy bolters and flame throwers were good to go (for the Space Marines). Now once your armory is finished you can only use flamethrowers and further upgrading must be done to achieve heavy bolters, however by the time that you acquire them plasma gun and rocket launcher upgrades would most likely end up being much more effective upgrades for your units than heavy bolters.

There are also a lot of mini new upgrades added. For example (again with the Space Marines) in order for your Scouts to be able to use Sniper Rifles you must research Sniper Rifle training. It doesn't sound like a bad idea but it seems like all of these upgrades were added in to compensate for slower players which is extremely irritating for people who learned how to effectively play the original game. Another ridiculous restriction is for the Imperial Guard you must rely on what could possibly be the weakest units in the game until you have fully upgraded your HQ into its third stage which takes quite some time. By the time you reach this stage your opponent has most likely already been pummelling you with vehicles and enhanced ground units.

One other major change that I feel must be addressed for Space Marine fans is that remember in the original how each race had one special mega unit except the Space Marines? This was mostly because the Space Marines were the overall most balanced race in the game. However the Space Marines had access to some extremely powerful vehicle units (Points to the Land Raider) The Land Raider for those of you that don't know was a HUGE heavily armored transport tank that had extremely large plasma beam cannons that could tear your enemy to shreds. It was also the only transport unit that could carry Terminator Squads since they are so large. Now because of some of the changes in Winter Assault Relic decided to make it so you can only make one Land Raider, upgraded its HP to 10,000 and made it essentially become a mega unit. This was in my view a very stupid move that also took away a lot of the fun of playing as the Space Marines who had to rely more on strategy than upgrading as fast as possible to its mega unit.

There are some good changes to the gameplay, one of the best being (due to the games small overall squad cap) worker units no longer take up squad space but are instead limited to a certain number. This is much better for the Space Marines and pretty much every race in the game and lets you focus more on building attack squads.

It's also worth mentioning that there are several new units in the game, but none of them are particularly interesting or worthy of mention besides the new Fire Dragons for the Eldar which are infantry units who excel in taking out vehicles.

Graphics:
Graphically Winter Assault looks pretty much the same as Dawn of War. Some new character animations have been added, and there is of course the new winter scheme added into the game. However this "winter" scheme is just shoved in your face for the entire game. Yes, I realize this game is called Winter Assault but come ON! I am SICK OF LOOKING AT THIS LEVEL SCHEME FOR THE ENTIRE GAME.

Sound:
Several new tracks have been added, and all the previous music remains. Again there is a new addition of some formidable voice acting, but again there is also an addition of non so great voice acting as well. The most irritating aspect in the sound department of this game is for the Chaos Space Marines. In Dawn of War the two commander units you use die in the campaign. In Winter Assault these units are still here except in the campaign they have different names and voices. It's disappointing to see that Scott McNeill does not reprise his role as the Chaos Lord. The new voices for these characters sound like cheap imitating knock offs and are perhaps even done by the same voice actors as before except they are slight variations, although I am not entirely sure, but if Scott McNeil is still doing the voice of the Chaos Lord, whoever did his new voice didn't do that great of a job. All of his lines are also the exact same except they are just a different voice and they even look the exact same to which is another incredibly stupid choice they made.

Value:
Winter Assault is only an expansion pack and many people disregard expansion packs and would rather wait for a full sequel. While I generally disagree with avoiding expansion packs you wouldn't really be missing much if you didn't bother with this expansion. Sure the Imperial Guard have some cool abilities but they alone are not impressive enough to justify a purchase of this game unless you are a huge Warhammer 40,000 fan. And even if you are already a huge fan of the original game there is a good chance that you may be incredibly disappointed with the changes and balance issues in this game. Some of the races online are incredibly imbalanced at certain stages in the game, but it is far to complex to go into detail in this review I would just end up rambling on and on for longer than I already have.

Score:
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 8
Sound: 8
Value: 7
Tilt: 7

Overall: 7.3
Simply put, if you want a new race, but also want to deal with some odd gameplay changes and in some sense (excuse to term) "newbie friendly" gameplay than give Winter Assault a go. If you never found the Imperial Guard very interesting to begin with (if you're a Table Top game fan) and you are already pleased with the way Dawn of War plays out, don't even bother with this expansion. It's not a bad expansion at all it's just a perfect example of a game that messes around with a proven formula when it shouldn't and it causes a lot of frustration and problems for people who enjoyed what the original game established. Like they always say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06