Saving Dawn of War: Soulstorm From Extinction (retro-review)

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This retroactive review and commentary is based on the positives that came from Relic’s Spring 2008 expansion to the DOW I series. The important note here is that this commentary is in regards to DOW I and not DOW II, which is currently receiving a lot of criticism in the RTS gaming arena for being less than intelligent successor to DOW I and more of a Company of Heroes remake. See this article. The intent here is clear, I am giving DOW I a “20/25″ as an abbreviated review because the larger RTS community has saved its woeful balance and multiplayer issues with beautiful designed mods by Korbah as well a pre-determined race matchups prior to battling.  See this download after you have experienced vanilla Dawn of War.

Now then, the RTS gaming community can be both unforgiving and tedious requiring extreme perfection in its games as well as their own personal micromanagement gaming tactics.  Check this site out, to see some of this lambasting.  Examples of this anger have been shouted at Relic’s direction for outsourcing Soulstorm to Ironlore entertainment. See this well written post by Jaimas a Dawn of War veteran.  Note his classic observation where Relic failed to update the greeting in the Gamespy lobby for months see here: classic rant.  Moreover, the patches on Relic’s poor multiplayer component “GameSpy” were few and far between due to STEAM compatibility issues or perhaps, unwise marketing and purchase decisions.

This being said, some brave contributors have created mods, which have saved Soulstorm from spiraling into a black hole. Many could dare to argue, that because of these gaming mods – with a clear attempt to balance a broken game, that Soulstorm will face a renewal of effort and popularity in wake of the non-traditional DOW II, which owes much of its popularity to graphics and gaming sites composed of RTS reviewers with limited gaming experience. 

Additionally, VODS produced by the aussie Vaul have serious potential to kickstart RTS amidst a sea of gamers dumbed down by first-person shooters, console fever and easy to master computer games.  The RTS gamer should take careful note at Vaul’s reviews, to see an unbiased, no-publisher influenced view of the RTS gaming world (something clearly missing amidst today’s top-gaming sites). Finding such objectivity is weak from the likes of IGN and gamespot, as these like many of the mainstream gaming review sites rarely get into the details RTS players crave so hungrily. For example, Van Ord from gamespot lauds the multiplayer component of DOW II stating, “if not for the loot-happy leveling of the campaign, then certainly for the constantly enjoyable online component that will keep you glued to the screen for hours at a time.” This point shows ignorance of Relic’s past, by failing to point out the ”inconsistent online component” or poor patching history.  In defense of Van Ord, he considers the good and bad of DOW I’s successor a helluva lot better than IGN’s Charles Oneyett who comes off as a red-bull drinking Relic mascot (newbie RTS babe) lecturing to old-school RTS gamers: “Yet as players we can’t continue to accept the same kinds of games, complain about stagnation, and then turn our backs when somebody does something different. In the campaign portion of the game Relic blended elements of action-RPGs and real-time strategy games and succeeded in producing a new and entertaining kind of experience.” For who Oneyett? For pre-pubescent imbeciles who like flash over substance? Don’t tell me I need to change before you can beat me playa. And don’t give us any emancipation proclamations until you can forge something other than a simpleton review. “       “No, U!”

In contrast, you could often look at the sometimes “nerdy” Vods of the Koreans, dressing up in Star Wars like costumes, highlighting their strangly arms with two-inch biceps. Such videos show contrived excitement, but neverthless show where some of the best RTS gamers in the world.  The reader must feel my in-born animosity from losing to the best — please don’t hold this against me (juvenile emotions are common among the RTS crowd, (”No-U,  Reric make bug. kkek, gg no re”) 

So what did Soulstorm do right to push its popularity into 2009?, or maybe the better question is, how did the RTS community adapt its playing style to create an engaging RTS, despite extreme balance problems, a weak multiplayer automatching interface and game bugs? I’ll leave the reader with five important elements as to why Soulstorm is worth buying and shows Relic’s earlier genius that was abandoned, perhaps not due to their decisions.  The below elements may make Soulstorm see a resurgence before the release of Starcraft II (Blizzard’s coveted and highly anticipated gem).

One, Soulstorm allows for an immersive 1v1 and 2v2 environment created more from player chosen races, substantially chaos, space marines, Imperial Guard, Orks, and Eldar in tournament play. These races were chosen most often because of their relative power and balance compared to the other races – so what you have is a community driven equality. This is in light of the Necrons, Dark Eldar, Sisters of Battle, and the favorite but vastly overpowered Tau also being playable races. Due to severe race imbalance, the community, in essence drove balance with several mirror matches and games centered on the above five. The beautifully crafted map Blood River, allowed for several engaging and adrenalin-packed games, which jumped up the tiers of technology. To experience this, I challenge you to make some 1v1 Blood River games on Soulstorm via the Gamespy network. Notice I did not say 3v3, as gamespy and player connection speeds made these games bulky, laggy and time consuming (5-8 minutes to setup a game sometimes!!!!-an eternity in the RTS world).

Two, variety itself with races, and a selection of maps. Creative build orders allowed for generator first builds and tactical team play. This allowed design decisions to be made by the gamer, depending on the race matchup.

Three, an RTS with use of teleporting and jumping units, seen across the races. The granddaddy of RTS, Blizzard has emulated Dawn of War’s several tactical jumpers and teleporters with new units in its sequel Starcraft II (see late 2009 terran race). Relic, seriously brought this element into the mainstream RTS gaming scene, and it will be here for quite awhile. This was a new dimension that increased tactics, and the fun level by far. Soulstorm allowed for this element within each of the race makeups.

Four, a workable and easy to use replay system. The replays on Soulstorm, increase the fun factor by quite a bit as one can discern new strategies and really involve themselves in learning from his or her mistakes. Granted this was not a novel concept, but watching different race pair-ups, exploiting particular strategies and seeing top skilled pros go at it, gave one a stepping stone to improve.

Five, a complex tree of upgrades, tech-trees that allowed a precision gamer who notices such details to experiment with different combinations and omissions – similar to a chemist. In effect, the complicated upgrades led to fulfillment of the RTS “speed need” (An article within itself), forcing the gamer to perfect timing skills. This in itself was addicting, challenging and fun.  Like Starcraft I, Soulstorm required basebuilding, and careful choice of upgrades (a factor that often goes underreported as being especially fun when you make the strategic decision to upgrade capabilities and see its subsequent effect on your hapless victims!).  There are many attacks by proficient-lacking noobs, who rebel at the thought of increasing the micro-management as such abilities are an acquired skill lacking by many, and a distinguishing characteristic from player to player.

In sum, I hope to see the 1v1 challenges continue and the “Into the Breach” maps avoided upon your entry into the busted multiplayer interface known as “Gamespy” (broken but workable due to community care). Get your replays here and stay tuned for the resurgence of Soulstorm. Hope you enjoed these thoughts from an old-school RTS gamer, dating back to Dune and Dark Reign, and I look forward to our 1v1, Remember, don’t dodge!