Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault
released on Sep 23, 2005
An expansion for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
This expansion adds all-new units and strategies to the exciting gameplay offered by Dawn of War. The Imperial Guard brings new weaponry, including heavy armor, new troop units as well as defensive and ranged tactics overwhelming numbers. Coupled with new abilities, this fighting force is as lethal as they come.
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neat expansion for an awesome game. imperium campaign started off strong but kinda lost me. Ork campaign? way better. who wants to play as basic human soldiers when there are space mummies and space marines?
So i've only played and completed the Chaos and Orc campaign and I love Gorgutz and kaiju level units so 5/5. I love the snow
Compared to the main game, the graphics look a bit better. But the difficulty of the campaign is very unbalanced. In the third part of the human campaign we have to lead the Eldar against the orcs. We have no resources and are asked to fight an almost infinite number of enemies. The people who designed these levels probably didn't really intend for the players to play, but for them to get bored and quit. The campaign maps are also unnecessarily large. Probably more than 50% of the maps are unused during missions, or when you remove the fog of war, there's nothing interesting or accessible about those areas. It's just a way to extend the gameplay. In situations where we had to constantly switch between Humans and Eldar or Orcs and Chaos, it was extremely boring. The fact that the DLC packs have to be installed separately from the main game is also ridiculous. The developers of Winter Assault could have used a similar game, Warcraft 3, as an example when creating the campaign, because as far as I can see they have no idea what they are doing.
Kinda jank due to age.
Campaign is decently engangin as a novice to the lore and mythos
If you like dawn of war its more of the same not much else
Gameplay loop changes slightly from the usual
Campaign is decently engangin as a novice to the lore and mythos
If you like dawn of war its more of the same not much else
Gameplay loop changes slightly from the usual
This review contains spoilers
First of the many great expansions for Dawn of War.
Warhammer 40, 000 Dawn of War: Winter Assault is the first masterpiece expansion of the series.
In this game you can play a “good” and “bad” campaign in which you either play as the newly introduced Imperial Guard, or the vile forces of Chaos and the Ork horde.
In the good campaign, the Imperial Guards are searching for a “Titan war machine” that is taken by the heretics of Chaos somewhere on a cold, freezing planet.
Meanwhile, the Eldar are also present and try to avoid the awakening of one of the most dangerous foes of the universe, the Necrons. They are, of course, hindered and mistrusted by the patriotic Imperial Guard and the Space Marines, like usual.
In the bad campaign, you defend the Titan war machine from the Imperial Guard with the Chaos Space Marines, and with the Orks, fulfill your own agenda (which mostly consists out of shoot and smash stuff).
You play as the Imperial Guard this time, the main fighting force of the Imperium of Man. The Imperial guard is known for its low endurance, cowardliness and is overall hard to control and master.
This innovative approach of playing is really challenging and fun. You use your commissars to keep your soldiers in line, need to upgrade your tech drastically and need to bring in you elite units like the Kasrkin and the Ogryns, as fast as possible.
I really like the harsh culture, discipline, and emotion of the Imperial Guard, they are really well implemented. Soldiers whimper and cry when they are killed, the cut scenes and lore show commissars executing their own soldiers for being cowards and the zero-tolerance policy is just amazingly done. It really gives the feeling of a real, present-day army, in which not everyone is the fearless Space Marine that does not fear death. It also shows the struggle with keeping the morale high and the cause to fight for.
The Imperial Guard can become really, really powerful when the right upgrades, leader attachments and combinations are made. A single squad of Guardsmen without any leader feels like cannon fodder, and in most cases, they are. The first time attacking an Orc Nob Squad with a single squad of Guardsmen got me thinking: “These poor souls don’t stand a chance”. But combine them with some cold-blooded commissars and back them up by some Sentinels and Kasrkin and they will become invincible. You really play in numbers, rather then strength.
The multiplayer is also greatly improved in Winter Assault and is way more balanced than the first Dawn of War game. There are also new units for the Eldar, the Orks and the Chaos Empire. One for each faction.
The sound and graphics did not change much from the first game, although the Imperial Guard units come with their own models and new animations. I liked the laser attacks from the Karskins and Sentinels, and the hail fire from the Ogryns. The icy and snowy planet environment is also really well done and gives you the feeling of fighting in Russia during WWII.
The fresh style of playing, the careful strategic use of your units and resources made this game absolutely amazing.
Warhammer 40, 000: Winter Assault is an amazing expansion of the main game and a real classic to this day.
Definitely worth your time.
Warhammer 40, 000 Dawn of War: Winter Assault is the first masterpiece expansion of the series.
In this game you can play a “good” and “bad” campaign in which you either play as the newly introduced Imperial Guard, or the vile forces of Chaos and the Ork horde.
In the good campaign, the Imperial Guards are searching for a “Titan war machine” that is taken by the heretics of Chaos somewhere on a cold, freezing planet.
Meanwhile, the Eldar are also present and try to avoid the awakening of one of the most dangerous foes of the universe, the Necrons. They are, of course, hindered and mistrusted by the patriotic Imperial Guard and the Space Marines, like usual.
In the bad campaign, you defend the Titan war machine from the Imperial Guard with the Chaos Space Marines, and with the Orks, fulfill your own agenda (which mostly consists out of shoot and smash stuff).
You play as the Imperial Guard this time, the main fighting force of the Imperium of Man. The Imperial guard is known for its low endurance, cowardliness and is overall hard to control and master.
This innovative approach of playing is really challenging and fun. You use your commissars to keep your soldiers in line, need to upgrade your tech drastically and need to bring in you elite units like the Kasrkin and the Ogryns, as fast as possible.
I really like the harsh culture, discipline, and emotion of the Imperial Guard, they are really well implemented. Soldiers whimper and cry when they are killed, the cut scenes and lore show commissars executing their own soldiers for being cowards and the zero-tolerance policy is just amazingly done. It really gives the feeling of a real, present-day army, in which not everyone is the fearless Space Marine that does not fear death. It also shows the struggle with keeping the morale high and the cause to fight for.
The Imperial Guard can become really, really powerful when the right upgrades, leader attachments and combinations are made. A single squad of Guardsmen without any leader feels like cannon fodder, and in most cases, they are. The first time attacking an Orc Nob Squad with a single squad of Guardsmen got me thinking: “These poor souls don’t stand a chance”. But combine them with some cold-blooded commissars and back them up by some Sentinels and Kasrkin and they will become invincible. You really play in numbers, rather then strength.
The multiplayer is also greatly improved in Winter Assault and is way more balanced than the first Dawn of War game. There are also new units for the Eldar, the Orks and the Chaos Empire. One for each faction.
The sound and graphics did not change much from the first game, although the Imperial Guard units come with their own models and new animations. I liked the laser attacks from the Karskins and Sentinels, and the hail fire from the Ogryns. The icy and snowy planet environment is also really well done and gives you the feeling of fighting in Russia during WWII.
The fresh style of playing, the careful strategic use of your units and resources made this game absolutely amazing.
Warhammer 40, 000: Winter Assault is an amazing expansion of the main game and a real classic to this day.
Definitely worth your time.
The Imperial Guard is a super fun faction to play, and the opportunity to play as factions that are actually interesting (read: not the space marines) in the campaign is a big improvement over the base game, but the design in some of these missions is absolutely atrocious. I don't know who was smoking what when the decision was made to design Order Mission 4 around defending an AI-controlled vehicle that insists on driving itself into infinitely respawning enemy anti-vehicle units. I don't know whose idea it was to have your only recourse be a button on your commander you mash thirty times a second to say "PLEASE STOP DRIVING INTO LANDMINES, THANK YOU" until you can spam enough units to push through an infinite number of chaos horrors and heavy turrets, but it was probably the same guy who also thought it was a good idea to disable base building in the same mission.
Played for a few hours and immediately moved on to Dark Crusade. Didn't look back.
Played for a few hours and immediately moved on to Dark Crusade. Didn't look back.