Rating: 8.7
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade Warm up the weapons boys and girls, it's time to conquer a planet.
The parent product brought some great innovations and fast action to the real-time strategy market back in 2004 and was followed up last year with an expansion called Winter Assault, which added the Imperials as well as a new campaign. As Relic gears up for the next round of RTS titles, lead by the excellent Company of Heroes, they're giving Dawn of War another chance in the present before (hopefully) pushing it forward into the future. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War -- Dark Crusade is a stand-alone expansion that adds two races, a new campaign mode, more skirmish and multiplayer maps, and a lot more fun.
Two new factions and new units for existing factions add even more variety to an already stacked package. The campaign mode is absolutely interesting and fits wonderfully within the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It's a great beginning to something that we're sure will be bigger and better in the future and provides a ton of gameplay hours and exciting moments. More successful strategic AI could have made the campaign a bit more challenging but most of the features like persistent heroes, armies, and honor guard are rewarding and fun. There may be better real-time strategy games out there, but none better in the sci-fi realm right now. If you haven't played Dawn of War before, now's a great chance to do so by picking up Dark Crusade. Fans of the series will likewise find a lot to love in this terrific expansion.
GamespotSource: http://www.gamespot.com
Hot on the heels of its outstanding new real-time strategy game Company of Heroes, experienced developer Relic is back with the second expansion to its excellent 2004 game Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and it's a great update. Dark Crusade introduces two interesting and powerful new factions to Dawn of War, raising the total number of different playable armies to a whopping seven. It also features a new strategic campaign structure that lets you direct any of these seven sides in a massive war for planetary supremacy, with shades of the classic board game Risk. Some new units for the returning factions and plenty of new skirmish maps are also included, and you don't even need to own Dawn of War or its first expansion pack to enjoy most of this (you only need the previous games to unlock the older factions specifically for use in multiplayer matches; you have access to every race when playing solo). What with all that it has to offer, Dark Crusade comes across as much more than your typical real-time strategy expansion pack. It's one of the best RTS games around strictly on its own merits.
For the uninitiated, Dark Crusade's gameplay does a great job of putting the focus on vicious front-line combat by forcing you to quickly send out squads of powerful soldiers to claim strategic points spread across each map. Relatively little time is spent building up a base, so you'll wind up focusing your energy and attention on managing the game's exciting, gory battles. You'll command mighty infantry squads as well as deadly vehicles, and though most units do a good job of acting autonomously when engaged, you'll need to carefully use special abilities and keep an eye on your soldiers' morale as they fight. The design concepts introduced in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War later found their way into Company of Heroes in improved form, but don't expect all those changes in Dark Crusade. For the most part, though, the gameplay still holds up extremely well, as do the game's detailed, imaginative visuals.
Dark Crusade takes place on the planet Kronus, a mysterious world that's drawn out all these different unfriendly factions to set up camp all at the same time. This stroke of fortune promises many brutal battles to come. None of the factions intend to share the planet, not even the imperial guard and the space marines, who've arrived with their own separate missions. As relatively implausible as it may seem for seven different alien races to all be fighting over the same one backwater planet, Dark Crusade does a surprisingly good job of putting its new strategic campaign in context.
The Good
Features two great new playable factions that fit in well with the five others
exciting new strategic campaign offers plenty of lasting value and variety
excellent presentation quality makes for some most brutal battles
the original game isn't required to play and enjoy this expansion
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