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YES! WINTER ASSAULT. Yeah! Oh yeah! Okay, with that out of the way, let's settle down to give an honest appraisal of this eagerly awaited expansion to (in some opinions) the best game of 2004. Winter Assault hails itself as being the first real time strategy expansion to implement an entirely new playable race, as well as additional units for the other races and a new tile set. This it does and masterfully, as we will show in what follows, but for a start (to get it out of the way) the bad points of DOW:WA must be outlined.
A basic infantry devision ready for whatever the Emperor needs
One of the principal complaints about the original was the shortness and limited nature of the single-player campaign, namely, it was only eight or so levels (and could be breezed through in half a dozen hours even on Insane difficulty) and that only one race, the space marines, was playable. In Winter Assault an attempt has been made to address this, with two new campaigns being playable, namely order and disorder. In each campaign the player plays two races at different intervals (Imperial Guard and Eldar in the order campaign and Chaos/Orks in the disorder campaign), as well as being able to pick between four different endings (in total, not per campaign).
The different races are presented well, heavily laded with all the mythos and personality that befits them from the 40k universe, and here at least Relic is typically excellent (although in the reviewer's opinion some of the chaos voices sound a bit forced). However the campaigns are each only five levels long, and take even less time to complete than the original DOW campaign even if the player goes back and completes all the endings. This also means that while all races save the space marines are playable, the player doesn't really get the opportunity to explore the new and /or revised tech trees, particularly annoying in regards to the entirely new Imperial Guard. Also, as with the original, the enemies in the campaign are scaled back in difficulty, which gives a player a massively disproportionate view of individual unit strengths. Basically playing the insane level campaign is like playing a normal skirmish or an idiot online.
Into the breach, dear friends!
Also Dawn of War is one of the few games where a player needs to relearn each race every time a patch is released, which can be frustrating. A build order/tactic that once was devastatingly effective may be nerfed in the next patch, and likewise once useless troops may come to dominate the battlefield. In Winter Assault this is even more so, as all the original race trees have been rehashed and shaken up. Combine this with an additional fully fledged race and nothing remains the same! Drama aside, veterans of Dawn of War should expect to spend some time reacquainting themselves with their favourite races.
With the increased specialisation and no recharge times, Dark Reapers are much stronger
But it's totally worth it, because the Imperial Guard are awesome, and are now officially this reviewer's preferred race. Relic has completely captured the rugged, victory-at-all-costs, "I prefer to use guardsmen instead of grease for my tanks" feel of their 40k namesakes, and playing them is not only enjoyable but immensely satisfying (like seeing a Baneblade toy with a Landraider, or guardsmen toss around Howling Banshees with grenades).
As previously mentioned, the single-player campaign doesn't really do them justice. We never once saw a Leman Russ battle tank in action, and never needed it (or ogryns, or kasrkin), but online or in any battle where a game advances to the third tier these units don't just carry the battle, they are the battle. Up until this point, though, the player can amuse himself with flesh-cooking Hellhound tanks, the incredibly long-ranged artillery basilisks, fanatical priests, iron commissars, sleek sentinels and of course the never ending grease of the imperial war machine, the basic guardsmen.
The Imperial Guard are on a whole cheaper than the other races and much faster in their build times, and are only hampered by their later intense reliance on energy. What they lack in drop/jump troops and stealth units (save one, the lethal Vindicar assassin) they make up for in cheap, versatile vehicles and infantry, and of course if you ever have the benefit of getting the Baneblade (a gigantic tank twice the size of the Landraider with the health of an avatar and 15 heavy weapons) then the game is over save the drinking unless your opponents have nothing less than a full army to stop you.
Charge my troops! Char... oooh, how bout we wait back a bit on second thoughts
The other races all get new units as well, although their impact on the game is generally trivial (in the sense that a player's whole strategy with that race isn't changed). The Space Marines get the Chaplain, a religious zealot of a commander that is effective in close combat and at inspiring the troops to even greater feats of strength and endurance. The Eldar get the Fire Dragon aspect, which helps somewhat to alleviate their mid game anti-vehicle crisis. The Chaos get Khorne Bezerkers, the unkillable and psychotically insane worshippers of the blood god Khorne, while the Orks get Mega Armoured Nobs which basically serve as a squad of angry dreadnoughts. These units aside, the advantages (and disadvantages) for the other races that have been added lie in the reordering in their tech trees. As an example, Chaos now get predators at tier 2 and can build raptors without the need of an armoury, while the Eldar have the hit points and strength of the avatar reduced, but with a proportionate decrease in its cost.
Blood for the blood reviewer! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD REVIEWER!
The new Winter tile set is very picturesque and combines well with the new soundtrack to create a Soviet Russia/for the motherland feel, and to complement this Relic has included almost as many new maps as were shipped with the original game to help diversify the player's on- and off-line skirmishes. Already when glancing at the online game room a number of the new maps are steadily rising to join Kasyr Lutien as most played. Ultimately, though, apart from the maps themselves the new tile set doesn't change the gameplay at all, something some might have wished for.
In regards to multiplayer, the game which DoW and WA most remind us of is Starcraft and Bnet. The online experience is just as fun and varied, and lacks (hopefully) all the hacks and cheating that were (and are) massively prevalent on Battle.Net. Yours truly has a multitude of times been called a 'newb', has suffered an embarrassing number of defeats as well as some truly momentous victories. Even, as a friend has said, when the opponents are embarrassingly easy the game is still fun, secure as a player is with the knowledge that someone, in likely America or Canada, is ripping his hair out in frustration.
And so enters the the expansions surprise guests, and they're always idiots at parties
All in all Winter Assault is a worthy expansion to a great game, and well worth getting if not absolutely necessary. It doesn't really address the issues that plagued DoW but can be considered basically DoW+, and no good RTS gamer can be without it. Let's hope Relic brings even more in the future.
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