Dawn of War: Soulstorm was released on March 4. DoW continues to be a fun, casual RTS. Its absolutely insane DPS charts (here’s one for just one unit– scroll down a bit), some one-dimensional races (i.e. here’s your build order), and the sheer impossibility of balancing 7-9 races kept it from being a truly competitive RTS. That may not be a bad thing: how many people loved Starcraft, but never felt the need to play random strangers online after their first 60-second Zerg rush loss?
Still, a game has to offer at least a sense of fairness and logic. Dawn of War has had difficulty concretely communicating which unit trumps another, in part because of the crazy amount of flexibility it gives you in equipping and using your troops. Who would know, for example, that Imperial Guardsmen do an incredibly good job of blowing up buildings– but only with their bayonets, and not their guns? (That’s since been fixed.) Who would know that your anti-vehicle unit doesn’t work against vehicles classified as “vehicle_armor_heavy”, which often look the same size as “vehicle_armor_medium”?
For a casual RTS, though, that’s quibbling. You can still get some fantastic team brawls going on late into the evening, enjoying Dawn of War’s awesome finishing moves, like a mech spearing a helpless infantryman and shaking him around. (During this animation, by the way, the mech is invulnerable to enemy fire.)
This is all a very long way of coming around to what isn’t quibbling: since its release on March 4, Dawn of War: Soulstorm’s two new races have been essentially unplayable online, and competitive ladder play has been destroyed. Due to a fairly simple infinite resource bug, one of the races is unbeatable– except by the same race, exploiting the same bug. Unranked matches generally won’t allow the new races in.
You might think it’s not very profitable to support the third expansion for a PC game. You’re probably right. Then again, does anyone think Blizzard would let a game go this broken for this long? And does anyone think that might have something to do with the relative excitement for Starcraft 2 vs. the recently-announced Dawn of War 2?
Alright, you cretins. I see that nobody played Passage, what with its requirement that you download it, 15 minute playtime, and brainpower-expending themes. I think I’ve found something a little more up your alley. Check out You Have to Burn the Rope. You should be able to finish it in about the time it took you to read this. (The in-browser version didn’t work for me, so I had to try the download. That worked fine.) Also: don’t forget to listen to the end theme song!