Review by: William Abner

You have to hand it to the folks at Relic – they “get” the Warhammer 40K universe. The company showed its love of 40K with the original Dawn of War and its line of essential expansions. In this “sequel by name only”, the fantastic dialogue, gritty backdrops, and authentic 40K theme shines through from the opening cinematics. Relic honors the popular franchise with its attention to detail. The game itself is nothing, at all, like Dawn of War and it has its share of frustrations, but it’s also a step in the right direction for a genre that has started to stagnate.

The game isn’t your run of the mill RTS. In fact it’s a lot like the old Bungie game Myth. There’s no base building, there’s limited defensive structures—everything about the design screams “Attack!” It’s all about racing out to capture requisition points, power nodes, and victory point locations. Sitting back and building up an army and turtling inside your defensive base simply cannot work; the game’s design won’t allow it.

Multiplayer plays at a blisteringly fast pace. There are various strategies with each of the four races (Space Marine, Eldar, Ork and Tyranid) in addition to the hero type you choose to lead your army—playing as the melee loving Space Marine Force Commander isn’t quite the same as playing as the Tech Marine, but everything zips along and the multiplayer battles are built for fights that are in short, controlled bursts of time. It’s quick, it’s deadly, and it’s over pretty darn fast unless you choose to play an “eliminate” game rather than one based on controlling victory point locations, but that sort of destroys the point of the design. Multiplayer Co-op is another fantastic design addition as you can play with a buddy in the campaign. This works flawlessly as you each command two Marine squads during each mission. You need to be able to chat with our compatriot as running into a fight when your partner is about to launch a grenade isn’t an ideal strategy (and seemed to happen to me …a lot). The biggest problem with multiplayer is the shocking lack of maps – only seven at launch. There’s really no excuse for such a paltry number for such a high profile title. This needs to be fixed—fast.

The solo campaign is both brilliant and lacking. The number one problem is the AI – in that there isn’t any. You play the Space Marines (again…come on guys can we get a bad guy campaign?) and zip around back and forth between three different planets putting out fires and discovering what the Eldar are up to – eventually you’ll battle Orks, Eldar, and the Tyranid Hive in an attempt to save the system. As a side note, it’s so cool to see the Tyranid finally hit the field. Seeing the Carnifex put a smile on my face…right before it chewed my Tactical Marines into bits.