Welcome to the Inconvenienced Blog. This is a Comedy and Gaming Culture Site all rolled into one. Alongside humorous articles, we'll also be be giving our thoughts on games, and the gaming industry as a whole.

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25 October 2007

Game review: Dawn of War

Drunky, my boss and former flame, asked, nay, begged me to join this blog in order to write some funny articles, reviews of the latest games, and insightful comments. I plan to do so reviewing every fucking thing on my Steam account. Today, we begin with...


In order to review this game, w
e (and by "we" I mean "I") will separate the review into categories, and give each of them a score between 0 and 10 points. At the end there will be an overall score for the game. So, let's get to work!

1.-Setting
This RTS (real time strategy) game is based on the interesting and dystopian universe created by Games Workshop in order to sell cheap plastic figures at ridiculously high prices to unsuspecting or mentaly ill customers. This universe is filled with factions who just love fighting each other, from the Empire of Man (think what the world would be like if Jesus had been the son of Stalin and Hitler...and these are the good guys) and the Orks (green beings who try to fit the word "git" into every single sentence), to the Eldar (space elves) and the Necrons (space zombies).

Since I support anything that involves zombies and ripping-off stupid kids, I give the setting a 10/10.

2.-Graphics
Dawn of War (sometimes refered to as "DoW") has been praised by almost all of the big reviewers (such as Gamespot) for it's "amazing" and "true to life" graphics.

"Holy shit! Fucking awesome!" -IGN

Personally, I don't see what's so great about it.

Of course, I may be biased. As some of you know, I happen to live in South America. I wont tell you the specific country, seeing how you'll end up confusing it with Cuba or Mexico anyway. The thing is, we have limited access to computer and computer parts here (or, as we call it, "El Diablo's machine"), so I'm only able to run the game on the lowest settings. Anyways, the details on the game are fantastic. While the facial expressions are not so great (still better than the ones from Brothers in Arms), you usually don't mind, mostly because of all the fucking gore on the game. There's gibs everywhere, explosions and bullets filling the screen. The effects of the lasers is great as well, and you can feel your screen shaking with each explosion (and believe me, there are lots of those, from grenade launchers to Orbital Strikes).

Matias and his three wives.

And more good news: Every expansion adds a little improvement to the graphics (Winter Assault added more gore, and Dark Crusade included that "see the whole scope of the battlefield" camera thingy you can also find on Company of Heroes). With the new expansion, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: This Time it's Personal (winner of the "Longest Title Award" at Gamernode, 2007) we can only expect Relic to replace the little 3D soldiers with actual footage from World War II. I give the graphics a 8/10

3.-Sound

"We are Chaos! Chaos is strong! Hurr Hurr!" Fucking annoying cultists. 3/10

4.-Single Player Campaign / Races
On the original Dawn of War, you play as the Space Marines, the über-soldiers of the Empire, fighting the alien forces that invade an Imperial planet. After doing some research, I gathered information about the campaign being based on the Bible. I guess that's interesting. Anyway, let's see the races from the original game:

The Space Marines:
The strongest units of the Empire of Man, they battle their enemies with guns and swords, wearing a powersuit, and always willing to die in the name of the Emperor. They strength lies on their strength and ability to kill pretty much any other unit on the game using only their infantry (You would have to me really stupid to lose using these guys). During the campaign you play as these brave men, trying to defend an Imperial world from alien invasions. On the Biblical sense of the campaign, it is pretty clear they represent Jesus' power, falling from the sky to "save" us, willing to die for our "mistakes", and always eager to "kick xeno ass".
FUN FACT: They are much cooler than their Starcraft counterparts, and don't die as easily.

The Orks:
Similar to the ones from every role-playing game ever, except this time they have machine guns and tanks. Their strength lies on their numbers and propaganda. You build "Waaagh" banners, which allow you to build more units, until you have an army of roughly three thousand soldiers. These soldiers happen to be the weakest life-form of the universe, and it takes only one Space Marine squad to kill all of them (which makes you wonder how they managed to invade the Imperial planet in the first place, I figure that simply yelling at 'em would cause a massive heart attack and end up sending them to Ork heaven). On the biblical sense, I believe they represent the Roman Empire, invading the hero's home (Israel), and being stupid. They dissapear halfway through the campaign (you kill their leader, and I suppose they all comit suicide afterwards).
FUN FACT: All of the Orks seem to be retarded. This may be because an ork is actually some kind of very advanced fungus.

The Forces of Chaos:
Fallen Space Marines. If you thought that the blood-loving, suicidal, xenophobic zealots that call themselves "Marines" were bad, imagine how they would be if they followed a demon instead of an Alexander the Great rip-off. That's right, they're bad ass. In fact, they're so bad ass...

...that they even have fucking horns. Isn't that subtle? Horns means evil. Tremble, you weaklings!
Now, on the Bible side of the story, it is easy to see that they represent the Jews. They are "fallen" marines, not following the orders of their God (or, may I say, misintepretating them?), so the Space Marines are sent to put them on the right path, even if that means dying for their sins. If the implied symbolism wasn't enough, one of their units is called "the deadly Torah", their leader's special ability is stealing the enemy's resources, and they even crucify one of their units when it says that they should "repent."

To the left: Sreist, a Chaos "heretic". To the right: Jesus.

You face them as the "ultimate enemies" on the game, and are only defeated after the Imperial Inquisitor (played by Samuel L. Jackson) orders an "Imperial Holocaust" on the planet.
FUN FACT: They control the most annoying units of the game.

The Imperial Guard:
These men are the backbone of the Empire's army. Their strength lies on nothing at all. Even though they aren't a playable race on the original game, they appear over and over and over again on the main Campaign, and you even get to control them on a couple of missions. They're not very useful, anyway. They happen to be almost as weak as the Orks, and they have the lowest moral on the game, meaning they may not die when you yell at them, but they'll start crying, throw their weapons, and then get into fetal position. After that, any other unit of the game simply walks towards them and stabs 'em in their heart slowly, very, very slowly. It's not as pathetic as it is disturbing. Being the cowards they are, it is obvious they represent the Bible's Frenchmen. (Note: I know the French didn't actually appear on the Bible, but since they were on the DaVinci Code, drunky tells me it is a fair deal).

Sacre Bleu!
The Eldar:
Half aliens, half ninjas, half elves. Their strength lies on their lack of strength, since they use stealth and lots of annoying invisible units to kill their enemies. I believe they represent the Bible's Eldar.

A lack of time prevents me from reviewing the campaigns from the expansions, Winter Assault (based on the battle of Stalingrad) and The Dark Crusade (based on the conquering of America by the spaniards), as well as the new races. They all suck anyway. 7/10

5.-Multiplayer
In order to test the game's multiplayer, I challenged our beloved drunkymonkey to a game of 1 on 1 (just like we used to... in bed). After he said something about "kicking my ass" and "Tally Ho Gents!", we started choosing our army. You see, the game allows you to paint your units, so internet players can customize their armies (as you could expect, half of them have names like "the dark fallen" and are completely black, with the other half being football teams).
We turned ours into mirror images of ourselves...

Top: Drunky's "Third Street Saints"
Bottom: Matias' "Royal Queens"

...and started to fight. Needless to say, he kicked my ass. I blame my troop's low morale. 0/10

6.-Bugs
Amazingly enough, I found no bugs on this g-

Sieg Heil!



...


8/10

7.-Overall Score and final comment

I think Relic may have misinterpreted the Bible. I think they did it on purpose, too.

OVERALL SCORE: 4/10
-By Matias

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Join us next week, when I'll review Valve's latest shitfest: The Orange Box!


14 comments:

queasy said...

Grammer weller.

Katana said...

Comical reviews are better when you don't bother with a numerical score.

Matias Lara said...

Fuck you, Katana.
<3

A Digital Nobody said...

You are awesome.

Unknown said...

more penis jokes, por favor

Anonymous said...

That was... strange.

Anonymous said...

You're a fuckin' fag dude, kill yourself.

Anonymous said...

You're writing is terrible, you should feel bad about yourself.

Matias Lara said...

I love you as well :)

Anonymous said...

Pretty good review, but, like DOW, needs more cowbell.

Anonymous said...

Arn't Mexico and Cuba the same thing anyways?

Anonymous said...

i loved it, you should review lotr online and try and run it on vista.........
go go go mega uber patch.

Anonymous said...

that tau pic is great....

Anonymous said...

YOu fucking idiot, never review games, ever