Warhammer 40k Dawn of War: Soulstorm

Little Bits

The majority of the rest of the game remains unchanged and, in regards to new multiplayer modes and what-not, there aren’t any to speak of.

There is however a hell of a lot of skirmish maps for you to lose yourself in. There are no new game modes for skirmishing in which is a bit of a disappointment – but when I say that there are a lot of maps I mean that there really are a lot of maps. Maybe more than 40.

The other, existing races in the Dawn of War game have had a few tweaks and adjustments done to them as well. The main addition is that all but one of the races get new aerial units. The Necron are the only race not to get a new unit, who instead have had an existing unit modified.

The addition of the new aerial units though is a bit self-defeating. Since the original versions of the game had no airborne units it was obvious that sooner or later an expansion pack would add them in.

However, since Soulstorm has only added one aerial unit for each race and since those units are manufactured in the exact same way as existing vehicles, it makes the aerial side of the game feel even more lacking. Where are the extra tech-trees and research routes?

The final addition that Iron Lore Entertainment has made to the game is the new medal system which can be used in multiplayer. It’s basically a system by which players can track things they’ve already done. Once you hit a certain milestone, such as destroying enemies within certain timelimits, you get a medal.

And no, the medals aren’t really useful for anything in particular.

Conclusion

And really, that’s all there is to Soulstorm. A few new aerial units, two extra races who are both clamouring for your attention and a new campaign which will take you ages to complete even if you are a seasoned Dawn of War expert.

There’s a fair bit to like about Soulstorm. It’s stand-alone for starters, which means you don’t have hunt down an old copy of Dawn of War if you want to play it.

It also does a good job of wrapping up all the previous expansions and content from the original for those who just want to jump straight in and play, while at the same time being an excellent platform from which to backtrack into the rest of the series.

However, there are down sides. The graphics in particular are a sore spot and it seems like Iron Lore must not have been listening to fans of the original game who have long been crying out for a better view of the battlefield. The low-res textures and occasionally jerky unit animations too would have been easily fixable problems.

It’s a crying shame really that Iron Lore’s last game should prove to be such a…well, not a disappointment, but certainly a surpriseless game. The studio had an enormous amount of talent within it and could have been capable of much, but Soulstorm doesn’t really build on the quality of Dawn of War as much as it builds on the quantity.

In the end, Soulstorm is your typical, unimaginative expansion pack. It offers up more of what the hardcore fans might really like, but doesn’t stray at all from the formula and, in the end, that might put off a lot of people who have since found much better and graphically superior RTS games to invest their time in.