Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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61 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Winter Assault is a high quality, terrific expansion for Dawn of War!, September 26, 2005
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Introduction:
If you love computer games with ferocious combat, terrific graphics, exciting animation and some real tactical challenges, then you will love Warhammer 40,000: Winter Assault, the expansion to last year's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (DoW). Fans of the original DoW will NOT be disappointed as Winter Assault brings improved graphics and an expanded universe to your computer, along with some enhancements to the game options as well. If you are a tabletop miniatures gamer, then having nicely painted Warhammer miniatures, a game table, and a friend to share it all with is still more fun, but Winter Assault (WA) is way too cool for of a computer game and you will really enjoy the way that THQ and Relic have made the Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 (40K) universe spring to life. And that is largely the joy of DoW and WA, the developers really have made 40K spring to life! It's so good, it's like an interactive 40K movie and you get to direct much of the action. To borrow a quote from Games Workshop (GW), you will feel as if you've been dropped right into the "grim darkness of the future" where "there is only war."
Problems:
After installing Winter Assault, I had a terrible time at first getting it to run because of a "spooge error" (no, I am not joking, though the programmer who created the error message must have been a little twisted). To make matters worse, DoW no longer ran after installing WA and I'd never had a problem with it before. Some hunting on the Internet revealed that many other DoW players have had this problem in the past and that it is related to display drivers. Although a quick check in Device Manager on my PC revealed that I had the latest driver for my video card (I had downloaded that recently in order to run Lego Star Wars), a visit to the NVIDIA website revealed the presence of a new driver for all computers running Windows XP with GeForce video cards. Obtaining this driver fixed the problem, but be forewarned, the graphics in WA have been enhanced above the level of the original DoW, so you may encounter some issues with it even if DoW ran without any problems on your machine prior to installing WA. In a nutshell, be sure that all your drivers are up to date, especially if you have any trouble running WA.
The New Army, Imperial Guard:
The new "race" for the game, the Imperial Guard, is as intricate and fascinating as the other races in the game. The units are modeled with exacting detail on the miniatures produced by GW, and the voice acting and animation are as high in quality as in DoW.
The Imperial Guard units themselves are each loaded with character drawn straight from the 40K universe. The infiltrating Vindicare Assassin is a very cool customer; he's the soft-spoken, laconic hero of a killing machine from every action movie made since Clint Eastwood made the type popular. The animation when the Hellhound flamethrower tank spews huge gouts of flame at the enemy is frightening and devastating! The attention to detail on each unit, based on the original GW miniatures, is amazing as always. For example, the Basilisk self-propelled artillery unit has an animated crew on the loading platform at the rear. Ogryns (large mutated ogre-like humans that excel at close combat), fast Sentinels (think AT-ST from Star Wars), Kasrkin (elite storm troopers), Psykers (wizards), Commissars (as in the old Soviet army) and more are all here in their dark, fanatical, dogmatic 40K-style glory.
A unique feature of the IG army is that their units can hide inside their buildings for protection, which can be an important tactic for these (mostly) ordinary humans as they face the terrifying monsters, aliens and mutants of the other races. Even better, they can "tunnel" between (i.e., move quickly between while NOT exposed) their buildings.
Game Play:
As with the original DoW, I've been playing my early WA Skirmishes against the CPU on Easy difficulty and backing off the enemy so that I have lots of time to examine all the units, sound effects and wonderful animations. The developers have again created a rich playing experience with a huge variety of units, animations, voiceovers and sound effects. It will take quite a lot of zooming the camera on each unit and structure and paying attention to all the different voices and sounds before you'll feel you've seen and heard them all. WA has lots of replay value and should stay fresh and exciting for quite a while. New battle maps and campaigns refresh the DoW experience even more (see below).
New Game Options and Features:
Winter Assault has two new game setup options, persistent bodies and persistent scarring, which allow the casualties and terrain scarring that take place during game play to persist onscreen rather than automatically fade away within moments of the time they occur.
More importantly, there are many new maps on which to fight your battles and two new single-player campaigns: an Order campaign and a Disorder campaign. Single players and those who enjoy multiplayer games should both be pleased with the amount of new material.
Each existing DoW race also has a new unit added to the troops available to their roster. Chaos Space Marines get Khorne Berserkers (close combat maniacs in powered armor), Space Marines get Chaplains (a powerful commander unit with the power to inspire his troops), Eldar get Fire Dragons (a warrior "aspect" that carries powerful short range fusion guns) and the Orks get Mega-armored Nobz (extremely powerful and heavily armored elite troops).
Conclusion:
If you love RTS (real time strategy) games, Warhammer 40,000, or Dawn of War, you will really enjoy Winter Assault. It does not disappoint!
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent expansion for a great game (4.5 stars), October 4, 2005
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Winter Assault is one of those expansions that adds a lot of new content to a game. Since I have already posted a review of Dawn of War at this site, I won't go into too much detail here about this game. However, overall, this is a wonderful addition to one of my favorite games ever.
The biggest change is the addition of a new race, the Imperial Guard. The Guard stresses entrenched defense as a tactic, backed up by strong vehicles and artillery. While not quite as flashy or alien as some of the other races, the Guard is a nice addition to the game. Also, the other four races each get a new unit, as well as modified tech trees which are well thought out.
The single-player campaigns in Winter Assault are very well done. They allow you to play each of the races (except the Space Marines), and each mission has multiple parts and objectives. There is also a surprise appearance of another alien race in the last mission, which adds a nice twist to the story. Additionally, there are about 20 new multiplayer maps that come with Winter Assault. The AI has been improved so that it's more aggressive, techs faster, and uses a diverse array of units. There are some minor pathfinding issues for some units, but the game is just a blast to play.
This game still looks great, and Winter Assault adds some new environments and weather effects. It's still a shame that the developer did not release modding tools with this version of the game, although I suspect that they will update the tools that can be downloaded from their website (www.dawnofwargame.com). The sound effects are also quite good, and most of the new voices are done well, along with the new music.
If you have any interest whatsoever in strategy games, then I highly recommend both the original game and this expansion. This is one of the best real-time strategy games I've played and is easily in the same league as Rise of Nations, Warcraft 3, and the Age of Empires series.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unleash the hammer of the Eldar?, September 23, 2005
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Ok so I was waiting with baited breath like a good Games Workshop nerd for this exspansion. Everything, and I do mean everything, I read about Winter Assault says it's chock full if Imperial guard goodness. Even the box is covered in Imperial Guard goodness. However...Once you get good and into this game you're suddenly realize you're spending just as much time playing the eldar as you are Imperial Guard. The whole game you're switching between Imp. guard, and smeldar. The end of the game is kind of un-imperial in nature, but I won't ruin it for those that haven't played it yet.
Game play is much like DOW, however there is little to no base building in this one, you get started out with a ton of req. points, and power. So taking strat. points and building generators is kinda pointless. I don't really like that part of it very much, it kinda takes some of the fun out of the game, as most of the battles, you pretty much have your army from the get go.
It's not a bad game overall, but I was expecting alot more from it.
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