Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Soulstorm

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Soulstorm
Developer(s) Iron Lore Entertainment
Relic Entertainment (patches)
Publisher(s) THQ (former)
Sega (current)
Designer(s) Ian Frazier
Composer(s) Inon Zur
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release
  • NA: March 4, 2008
  • AU: March 6, 2008
  • EU: March 7, 2008
Genre(s) Real-time strategy
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Soulstorm is the third expansion to the real-time strategy video game Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, developed by Iron Lore Entertainment. Like its predecessors, Soulstorm is based on Games Workshop's tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000, and introduces a multitude of new features to the Dawn of War series, including two new playable factions in the form of the Imperial Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar. It is a stand-alone game and does not need the original Dawn of War disc to run, but players must have the prior games installed and valid cd-keys in order to play as anything but the two new factions online.

Gameplay

Gameplay features real-time strategy interaction. Game operation is similar to previous Warhammer titles, except for the new aerial units that do not follow these rules, and new campaign gameplay features.

Each race is given a new aerial unit which does not obey the normal rule of engagement in the Dawn of War series. These units are mostly specialists in engaging and destroying enemy vehicles and/or infantry.

Campaign

The Kaurava conflict began after a sudden appearance of a Warp Storm near Kaurava IV. The nine factions were drawn to investigate the system with their own fleets and conflicting intentions. However, the Warp Storm wreaked havoc on their navigation interfaces, stranding them on the four planets and three moons of the system. The nine factions are then forced to battle between planets to ultimately conquer the planetary system and discover the reason for the warp storm.

The reason for the Warp Storm, as explained after the conquest of Chaos Forces, began with an ignorant Imperial Guardsman with latent psyker genes who was whispered to by the Chaos Gods, telling him to prepare a ritual. His actions unknowingly summoned the Alpha Legion to the Kaurava System, thus starting the conflict.

As with its predecessor Dark Crusade, Soulstorm features a "meta-campaign" featuring 31 territories spread over four planets and three moons.

One difference however, is that unlike Dark Crusade, there are no persistent bases. Once the player conquers a province, the base structures the player has built up will not be present in future conflicts. This can be remedied by reinforcing provinces with buildings and units in between battles, or by establishing a forward base using the Sisters of Battle army ability. Each Stronghold has a unique ability, each race starts with that ability.

Another difference is that the strength of an attacking enemy army is no longer based on strength of province they're attacking from, but their army size.

The fate of the Kaurava System depends on the actions taken by the various factions fighting over it, but the only known details on the canonical ending initially came only from dialogue in the sequel, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Scout Sergeant Cyrus states that the Kaurava campaign was a failure, and that the majority of the Blood Ravens led by Captain Indrick Boreale were wiped out, costing the chapter half of its manpower in a single campaign. As a result, the severely undermanned Blood Ravens cannot afford to lose their recruiting worlds in sub-sector Aurelia and must defend them at all costs.[1] It is revealed in Dawn of War III that the Orks led by Gorgutz were the canonical victors and the ones responsible for Indrick Boreale's defeat, but Gorgutz became bored with the conquest and would later go to Cyprus Ultima to serve under Gitstompa after hearing of the planet Acheron while battling the Eldar on the Kaurava System. Though this contradicts the ork victory ending in the game as the ork faction victory epilogue stated that right after winning Gorgutz led his own "campaign of galactic conquest" that was "staged" from Kaurava with the forces he organized in Kaurava and equipped with the weapons made in "fields of orkish factories" his orks built for this "purpose" after conquering the system.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer remains the same as in previous titles, with players given the ability to either play via LAN or on the GameSpy network. A new 'medal' system has been added that provides rewards for certain player milestones (5-to-1 kill ratio, etc.), but there is no means of viewing the complete collection of medals a player has earned. It is assumed this problem will be addressed when an official patch is released along with other various bug fixes and corrections to the game, such as the current issue restricting certain masses of players from joining online multiplayer games.

Development

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Soulstorm was developed by Iron Lore Entertainment as the third expansion to the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. On January 13, 2008, Relic released a 1.12 GB demo of Soulstorm on several gaming websites. The demo allows players to play a tutorial, as well as one skirmish and one scenario map as the Dark Eldar. The demo's loading screens also show the new additional flying units added in the expansion. The demo scenario simulates an assault on the Space Marine stronghold if one were playing the Dark Eldar in the campaign game.

On March 4, 2008, Soulstorm was released first on the North American market, some days later everywhere else. After the end of patch support, the game's community continued the support with own made unofficial patches.[2]

Reception

Soulstorm received generally mixed to positive reviews from critics. As of November 2012, the game had an average score of 74% based on 35 reviews on the review aggregator GameRankings.[3] On Metacritic, the game had an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 37 reviews — indicating mixed or average reviews.[4] IGN gave the game a score of 7 out of 10, citing solid gameplay but lack of anything innovative.

References

  1. ↑ Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
  2. ↑ Maktaka (2013-04-06). "Soulstorm Bugfix Mod". Retrieved 2014-09-10. As we wait for an official patch from Relic to address the bugs, a large list of fixable (and some unfixable) bugs have been compiled at Forums.relicnews.com. I've fixed every bug on the list that I could [...] I'm not including any balance changes in this mod, it's exclusively for bug fixes.
  3. ↑ "Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm Reviews". GameRankings. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
  4. ↑ "Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm (pc: 2008): Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
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