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Battlefield 2: Special Forces Expansion Pack (PC)
by Thebaker50
This game is an expansion pack to battlefield 2. In my humble opinion, its the only expansion pack worth getting, the other 2 (which I might write review on later, see how it goes). The reason I say this is because the servers for the other expansions never had anyone on them. Everyone was either playing this game, or the basic ... battlefield 2 game (which i have a seperate review on, so in this review i will focus more on the expansion).
For the expansion to work, you must have BF2 installed, and have a BF2 account. What getting this expansion does is allow 2 things. Firstly it allows you to access special forces servers, where there are various game modes, and secondly it allows you to use the weapons in the special forces in the normal BF2 games. To be honest, although this sounds like you might be getting an unfair advantage, this is not really the case, as the guns are not as powerful, but more mobile as a general rule (if that makes sense).
So what are these servers like?
The main difference between this game and the standard BF2 isn't in the gameplay, but there is a whole dozen on these special items. Each class gains an ability of some sort. For example, the assault and engineer class gain a grapple hook and rope. This has got to be one of the coolest things in any game. You just chuck it at a roof, and if the rope is long enough, you can then climb up. It works really well, and its a bit of this game that makes it really unique. Also as the maps are more cities, it adds a cool roof crossfire element. Also because working as a team, you can sort of move over building, so hook to a higher building, and so on, until you get to a very high building, and zipwire across etc.
Another item that you can get is the crossbow zipline with the sniper. This allows you and teammates and enemies to zip from high to low. Again this is really fun.
The support class gets tear gas. But in this game all characters gain gas masks, which makes him kinda useless as a new thing. medics are the only class not to get a special ability, which i personally agree with, as in BF2 they are a bit of an overpowered class.
Furthermore there are new vehciles added, like some ampbious tanks. Furthermore there are night missions, where you need to use infra red to fight your battles. Its a really good addition to a really good game.
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Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm Add-On (PC)
by Thebaker50
This is the final expansion pack in a series made by THQ called Dawn of war. They then made a new series with Dawn of war 2, but apparently this is not as good (have never played it). I have previous reviews on the previous installments, and this review will focus solo on the expansion.
What this expansion brings to the game ... are 2 new races, and a new aerial unit for all the races. The two new races are the sisters of battle, and the dark eldar:
The sisters of battle are very similar to the space marines. But they have better "spells" called acts of faith. The sisters grab their resource for these acts of faith by placing relgion symbols on their listen posts, to gain a "reservoir" or faith points, and by building faithful units (such as the commander, leaders in squads and so on) to generate the faith points. These acts of faiths cost faith points, and includes things such as making all your squad heal rather than take damage, and so on. This makes the sisters very strong in fights, but need some time to recharge their faith points.
The units are very similar to the space marines, but their vehicles are not as strong. Furthermore their units are not as expensive, and they do not have a base army unit other than the sisters of battle (the only combat unit to be built at the base is a squad leader style unit, not a squad like the scouts of the space marines, or so on). The space marines have an ultimate vehicle like others, but here the vehicle is nowhere near as strong, but can be "reborn". In total, the sisters of battle are very strong infantry, with cool acts of faith, but begin to become undone later on due to their weak vehicles compared with most other races.
The other race, the dark eldar, are supposed to be eldar "gone wrong". They have another special resource, souls. the worker units, and one or two of the combat units can harvest souls from dead warriors (or from slave torture pits) and use them to bring about devastating spells on the enemy (the best being "soulstorm"). However I must say it takes a heck of a lot of souls to get that sorta skills out. By this time, the game has been won/lost.
The Dark Eldar are pretty similar in gameplay to the eldar, being relatively fragile units with heavy firepower and good mobility, but the dark eldar are even more mobile, even more damaging... and even more fragile. Furthermore they cannot make any defensive buildings (which is why i dont like playing them very much). one thing that is cool about them though is that to build a building, all a worker has to do is "plant" a seed, and then walk away, so you can easily plant around 5-6 seeds with one worker, and then get him harvesting souls whilst the buildings "grow". But overall, I am not the biggest fan of the dark eldar, even though they are quite strong.
The final addition is aerial units. The imperial guard get a bomber, as do the orks. The space marines get a sort of space fighter style thing, the Tau get a missile gunship, etc etc. These have different engagement patterns to land units, only certain units can shoot at them (infantry shots are very weak against them), and they cannot be damaged by melee, and can fly over mountains etc. These add sort of fast attack units to every race. The necrons however get the short straw here by only getting attack scarabs, which are a bit naff. But then again, see my previous review to see that the necrons are more about full on assaults (flying units not much good here), and not about ambushes.
Overall, this is a great final addition to the series. The sisters of battle at first feel like some sort of scam, as they are very similar to the space marines, but as you play them a little, you realise that they are a bit different. It adds new races, but updates older ones so they do not feel so outnumbered/overpowered.
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Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade Add-On (PC)
by Thebaker50
For an rough overview of this game, I have a previous review on the first Dawn of War. I see no need to repeat myself here, and thus I will focus solely on what this addon adds to the game.
The addon adds 3 mains things. The first is a new race called the necrons. This race (the one seen on the front cover), is made of up slow ... moving infantry, and only 2 or 3 vehciles (plus an ultimate vehicle, more on that later). Although the infantry move embarassingly slowly, they have a very high health, and have a chance to "revive" after death (part of the whole necron theme), making them very good at being involved in a full frontal assault (once they get that close), but it also means they are very easy to ambush, as they won't be able to run away.
Another big difference about this race is the resouce system. Most races need power and requistion. Power by generators, requistion by capturing flags. Necrons however need no requistion, all their units are built on power. As this is made by generators, resource management with the necrons is very easy, just build a heavy defended base with lots of generators!
However, necrons need to capture flags to increase production speeds. Without any flags, units take ages to make, buildings ages to build, and flags take ages to capture.
The ultimate vehicle is the monolith, which is acutally the home HQ. WHen a relic is captured, the monolith can "leave" its platform, and float, as a full armed gunship style thing. It can even teleport short distances. BUt this unit is even more slow than the embarssingly slow infantry. Furthermore with no ambush style units, this race is awesome at full frontal attacks, but not much else.
Another thing added to this game is another race... the Tau. This race has an infranty with a very high morale. And unlike every other race, the primary commander has no melee damage, instead he has a gattling gun, a laser cannon and missile packs, as well as a jetpack (kinda cool right?).
The Tau are kind of similar to the eldar in my opinion, but with 1 or 2 differences. First of all, they do not have the ambush capabilities of the eldar (eldar have grav tanks that can jump in).
Secondly, they have far superior fire power (the Tau vehicle, the missile tank, can unleash a devestating barrage of missiles into an area).
Furthermore, the Tau army cna be built in 2 way. Basically the Tau is a race, which forms an "allegience" with 2 other races, either the Montka, giving you the crysis battle suit and the hamerhead gunship (so with more of a focus on playing to your races advantages, long range damage) or Kauyon, giving you Krootox and Kroot packs, which are highly efficent melee fighters, making up for a lack of any real melee fighters in your army.
The final addition to this game is the campaign mode, which has been changed from a story like arcade game, to a more "risk" style stragey game, where you select a region to reinforce/attack/defend, and try to conquer the world whilst fighting against rival factions.
Overall, this is a pretty darn sweet addition to an already good game, but sometimes it feels although the necrons are overpowered once they get some steam, as due to their virtually infiniate resouce (if enough generators are built), and the huge monolith (which i forgot to mention can produce more units on the fly) and the incredibly tanky nature of their soliders, it just means full on battles with them never seem to end well. Little tip for you, if ever going against these guys, just make sure you attack them early, as to begin with their build times will be long, and you will easily be able to retreat away from their slow units.
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