Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm

by THQ

Product Features

• Customize your hero’s weapons, items and abilities as they grow in power
• Personalize your army’s insignias, colors, banners and names
• Earn and unlock achievements and medals as you prove your superiority online in 29 NEW multi-player maps
• Includes all previous Dawn of War maps for a stunning 114 maps in total
• Groundbreaking Hybrid Expansion design allows Soulstorm to be played alone, or combine it with Dawn of War, Winter Assault, and Dark Crusade to create the largest RTS ever

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000Z7G77S
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches ; 4.8 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: March 5, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,218 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #18 in Video Games > PC Games > Strategy > Real-Time

Product Description

Amazon.com

Take command of two new factions, the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar, and fight with a new resource derived from the souls of the faithful and the fallen in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm.

Strategic warfare in the 41st Millennium takes to the skies as each army gains new air units to rain death from above. Every map, battle, and strategy in Dawn of War has just been reinvented! Wage war across an entire solar system. Liberate, enslave, or destroy entire worlds as you unleash your army's fury on an interplanetary scale. Experience unique storylines, control your supply lines, and lead any one of nine separate armies to victory in the largest Dawn of War campaign ever envisioned. Customize your hero’s weapons, items, and abilities as he grows in power, and personalize your army’s insignias, colors, banners, and names. Earn and unlock achievements and medals as you prove your superiority online in 29 new multi-player maps. Includes all previous Dawn of War maps for a stunning 114 maps total! Groundbreaking Hybrid Expansion design allows Soulstorm to be played alone, or combine it with Dawn of War, Winter Assault, and Dark Crusade to create the largest RTS ever!

Product Description

Dawn of War Soul Storm PC

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dissapointed, March 8, 2008

By 

Kain Rowd - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm (DVD-ROM)

I'm a huge fan of DoW, and in no small part against having two new races to play until Relic gives us the sequel. Unlike lots, I didn't scream and cry that the Tyranids aren't in Soulstorm, and I'm perfectly happy with DE and Sisters.

The gameplay itself is still superb, the type of RTS you'd expect from Relic by now. Aside from a bit more slowdown in the actual gameplay than in previous DoW titles, it's everything that DC was, plus the two new races.

What's disappointing is that this was clearly a rushed job. There are huge issues with the game engine itself, resulting in massively absurd load times and unexplainable slowdown. I consider myself more patient than most, willing to wait 20ish seconds for something that should really only take two to three. Unfortunately, twenty seconds would be a blessing as far as Soulstorm is concerned.

On a system that loads a Dark Crusade map in just over five seconds, and runs the largest DC maps on maxed settings with no apparent slowdown or freezing, the wait is over a minute for your average Soulstorm map to load. Medium sized maps produce the random jerky motion when more than eight or ten squads are fielded at the same time. Fourty-five seconds is the wait which I counted while twiddling my thumbs after clicking on the "Campaign" button from the main menu before the DC-style Campaign interface began to load.

The most irritating thing about this all is that there are so many re-used aspects of the game. From interfaces, to sounds, and textures (expect to see and hear high imperial guard influence in SoB), you can tell that the engine is beginning to meet it's limits. That's fine too, but the game itself shouldn't suffer the way it does right now. The campaign interface is just a slightly retextured version of DC's, which loaded in the blink of an eye, so why does the Soulstorm one take nearly a minute? I wasn't expecting anything ground-breakingly new this late into the DoW series, but it just doesn't justify the load times.

It's really too bad that the game is in it's current condition. It's nothing a patch or two won't fix, but for now I may just put the game down until a patch is released to speed up this clunky engine.

41 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Feels like a rush job, March 8, 2008

By 

Michael A. Dean (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm (DVD-ROM)

While Soulstorm keeps the key gameplay elements that have kept me playing the DoW series for 4 years after it came out, this game mostly just offers more of the same, without too much that is new. The two new races are pretty cool, but with 9 races now, it almost feels like there is too much in the game, and not enough to distinguish the different races. The Sisters of Battle play to me like a compromise between the Imp. Guard and the Space Marines. I have also encountered a number of graphical glitches and crashes that I never saw in the previous installments of the game, which suggest to me that this game was rushed out a bit. The insane load times mentioned by another reviewer are a bit of a drag. Not a bad game, by any means, but for $40, we deserved more.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid expansion, March 6, 2008

By 

D. Ertle "KnightHawk" (NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm (DVD-ROM)

While the game play is exactly like that of the previos DOW's that is in no way a bad thing. Instead of trying to fix what wasn't broken to begin with the developers focused on the implementation of new units, features and races.

With the addition of the air units the player now has a unit that can quickly respond to any point on the map to harrass the enemy or defend territory.

The campaign works very much like that of Dark Crusade but instead of fighting on one planet there are four. To get to another planet you have to control a section of the planet with a "warp gate." Another change is that each race has a unique bonus power, the Space Marines can use drop pods to bring in their troops, the Necrons can have some of their fallen Honor guard restore themselvs after the battle is over without buying them again, the Imperial guard has reduced production costs, and the Tau have a cannon that can be used to "soften" up the enemy forces when invading their territory.

Both of the new races have their own strengths and weaknesses. The sisters aren't as tough to kill as the Space Marines but they can be devistating to infantry and buildings with the amount of flame throwers and melta weapons they can field at once. The Dark Eldar lack the ability to make base defences but are quick at producing units and move very quickly across the map.

In all I have enjoyed this addition to the DOW series and do recommend it.