Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade Comments by Alec Meer

first!!!!!!!!!!!!
first one was a great game by the way, never played the expansion though.

How big does the comments section on a site have to be, before you get these people turning up and boasting about getting first comment?

I really need to get this... I loved DaW and DaW:WA... It's a must buy for me!

I want more games set in the wild wild west.

Its not -too- hard in campaign mode I don't think - I'm absolutely useless and managed to blunder through large sections of it on normal. I think the problems arise later on in the game when enemies get entrenched (each zone you attack has a defense rating, the higher this is the more buildings/units/bases the enemy starts with). Totally agree with the review about the slightly flawed story system though, you can understand why they ditched the narrative driven campaign, but when one of the big draws of the game is how brilliant the Universe is, anything that detracts from being immersed in it is always going to be a step backwards.

The world does indeed need a 40k MMO as well. The only possible reason I can think for not doing one is to wait until technology can really do it justice.

WA was a dissappointment for me, the new races weren't all that great imo, but after playing the demo, the Tau seem really fricken cool, so I'm gonna get it.

Picked this up yesterday after enjoying the original Dawn Of War and finding Winter Assault 'only OK'.

It's really good actually - the map domination structure feels a bit of an afterthought, but the Tau and Necrons are really fun and add some new challenges to the skirmishes and online.

BTW - the thing I really hated about Winter Assault was the voices of the Imperial Guard....after such amazing voice acting in the first game, the voices in WA were just........MEH - and extremely annoying too (I actually ended up turning voices off in the options menu).

Necrons have no voices (just weird electric sounds) and Tau sound cool - cross between robots and 'English' humans.

Online it seems that Necrons basically pound everything into dust......some balancing is obviously required.

Overall a really good expansion to a great game that makes up for the dissapointing Winter Assault.

where did you get it?

i didnt think it was out in eur until 3rd nov

In Sweden it came out on the 27th Oct......not sure about the rest of Euroland.

Woow dude tooo hard?
I play on normal and so far didn't lose a single battle.
Thought it was too easy so far actually.
And I am not that good a player, get my butt kicked online everytime I show it.

This expansion pack is waaaaaaaaaaay better than winter assault.
It's stand alone, cheap and has great replay value.
It's fun too.

7/10 is a shitty score for this game. It deserves 9, at least an 8.

Like all the previous Relic games, the AI is still a bit dodgy. On easy mode it's too easy, the enemy only makes crappy units and does little research, but put it on standard and lo and belold, the enemy commander's in your base before two minutes is up. Hard mode is actually slightly easier than standard as the enemy tries to amass an army before attacking, letting you get some defences together, rather than unceasingly hurling troops at you like on standard difficulty.

Too hard on easy? Having finished the SP campaign as Tau on easy, as I'd rather have an easy victory than get frustrated by an AI that's blatantly cheating, I never lost a battle. I suck at RTS, by and large, always get killed first in MP, but even I find easy mode easy.

I don't get people being disappointed by WA. As expansion packs go, it added tons of maps, new units for each army and an entire new race. Not many expansion packs do that much. Plus, this game, two years old now, remember, looks better than any other RTS I've seen in ages; part of that's the WH40000 art design but the animations and effects give this way more personality than, say Rise of Legends. Given how all the armies are different, the two new ones in this make it a completely essential purchase for all vanilla and WA DoW owners.

I'm definitely getting Dawn of War: Anthology. 3 in 1 and quite a bargain!

and yes, the AI needs some tweaking - overwatch does not work very well and there is rampant pathing problems.

BTW Does anyone know if DC will install separately in the Anthology edition as well?

Looks like a good expansion, I'm really looking forward to it.
Is the single-player really that hard? The demo was fine.

It was supposed to be out in the UK on Friday, but it seems to have been delayed until the 3rd now for some reason.

I wouldn't say the single player is hard - more like frustrating and / or unfair on normal mode, and piss-easy on easy.

In normal, I put 6 hellfire dreadnaughts plus 2 bosses against 40-50 imperial guards.......as fast as I could kill them the AI brought new, completely re-inforced units every 30 seconds - just 5 mins into the game, whilst my requisition (with 6 captured points plus listening posts) increased sooooooooooo slowly I couldn't even push out some standard units.

Still, I bought it for the online which rocks.

Dude you write like a mong. You couldn't punch a little girl without getting beaten up you nerd!!!!!!

We could have lived without the first paragraph to this review. You hardly endear a reader to the relevance of your opinion on a game when you start by wishing the franchise was elsewhere.

boooooooooooooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

Fully agree on the 40k mmo.

woot, enjoying it majorly. this game brought me back to RTS. a field of gaming i left when TFT made Warcraft 3 a huge pile of luck and WORK.

K Finished the game with the necrons on normal.
Was fun, not really a challenge though.
Thought maybe the necrons were overpowered so started the game with the marines to see the reviewers point.

Half the map conquered so far, no opposition worth mentioning.
How on earth can you blame this game for being too hard???