For the Imperium!

juz finished playing warhammer 40000: dawn of war last nite. d single-player campaign was rather short, consisting of only 10 (or was it 11?) missions...but i spent bout 1 day on each mission....haih need to polish up my strategy gaming skills...

for those who dunno, dawn of war is a strategy game set in the warhammer 40000 universe created by Games Workshop. originally a boardgame, d warhammer franchise grew n while it never reached d same level of fame or popularity as star wars, star trek etc, it built up its own fan base over d years. i 1st knew bout warhammer 40k back in...primary sch when i got a game called Space Hulk. basically warhammer 40k is about a universe torn by war between various factions, the most notable being the Imperium of Mankind, the 'savage' (in d game they were portrayed as being rather comical) Orks, the enigmatic n 'arrogant' Eldars (imho d true 'good guys' of the game), the bio-terror Tyranid Swarm, n the forces of Chaos aka the Great Enemy. there r numerous other races n factions too but to avoid boring everyone to death i'll leave those interested to find out for themselves :P

the background story's pretty interesting too. in brief, mankind spread to the stars after the invention of the 'warp drive' which allows spaceships to travel in an alternate dimension n traverse great distances (think millions of light years) within a relatively short time. so they colonised d galaxy, met various alien species, n engaged in all out war. at about d same time latent psychic traits began to appear among some of the human population. those ppl, psykers, came to wield great power but since their abilities were drawn from the warp itself, they became gateways for 'fell creatures of the warp', known as daemons, to enter the world. so humanity was almost destroyed as they were fighting wars on two fronts...among the stars wif the aliens, n among themselves as daemons possessed whole populations n waged war on man. to cut a long story short, one guy, a 'psyker of remarkable power', emerged n united humanity as well as banishing the daemons back to the warp. this guy? the Emperor, unsurprisingly. so he established an Imperium stretching across a million worlds n put himself at the top. heheh.

still with me? ok, back to the game itself. as u can find out from any decent game review site, dawn of war lets u play 4 factions in multiplayer: Space Marines (humans), Eldar, Orks n Chaos. however the single-player campaign is only for the Space Marines, which imho left me feeling vaguely unsatisfied cuz we dun get to see the other factions' side of the story. the story starts as Captain Gabriel Angelo, a Space Marine Captain (those guys r rather high-ranking...since space marines were supposedly the elite 'superhuman' troops of the imperium) landed on the planet Tartarus to help the inhabitants fend off a massive Ork invasion. eventually they meet (n fight) the Eldar, n finally the forces of Chaos who turned out to be the real baddies.

ok enuf of this, i'm not being paid to review the game. all i hv to say is, the game rox! d graphics were awesome...everything - units, terrain, vehicles etc, r in full 3D, n u can zoom in to watch the fighting up close, which is paling impressive when vehicles or 'super-units' r killing infantry cuz they hv a bunch of special animations reserved for this purpose. for example when the Eldars' Avatar of Khaine, a 30-foot tall incarnation of their war-god, kills an infantry unit, he impales the unlucky fellow on his huge sword n lets him slide down its length, then flings d corpse away. cool eh?

d game also pays a lot of attention to balance. each weapon is only effective against certain unit types, for example machinegun-type guns against light infantry, plasma weaponry against heavy infantry, n rockets/missiles against vehicles. there's also a unique strategic element: morale. when units r outnumbered in melee (yup, u can let ur infantry engage in melee instead of shooting) or attacked by certain weapons, their morale will drop n the squad will become 'broken', at which point they take more damage while doing very little in return. interesting, relly.

ok, i'm sure by now i hv some of u guys out there salivating d. so if u wan d game, ask from me n i'll burn it for u :P no i'm not a good guy, i juz wan ppl to play multiplayer wif...

finally...got that off my back. now for 2 months of study until d next holidays....



notes:
1. This was actually posted since 5/7 (Tue) but for some reason it showed up on the Pirate's Coven instead of here...
2. We can now add images directly to Blogger instead of having to host it somewhere else? Good riddance to Flickr!