Dawn Of War Soulstorm Review, is it worth its cost? (Warhammer: 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm Add-On (PC))

Member Name: mrsmeakin

Product:	Warhammer: 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm Add-On (PC)
Date:	16/03/09 (85 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Story, Gameplay, Background Detail, Armies generally feel well balanced, Army painter is good fun

Disadvantages: the 2 new races feel weak and slightly broken, air vehicles feel weak.

I have been a large fan of the Dawn Of War series since it first came about years ago, and one thing that always got me was the amount of detail that had gone into the story line, aswell as the command and conquer style gameplay that made it great, admittedly there were some downfalls, but it was early days, and winter assault and Dark Crusade added upon that greatly, and now Soulstorm has arrived to grace our computers, but is it all that its cracked up to be?
As stated in the Advantages/Disadvantages part of this review i believe that the Advantages for this game are that; the armies generally feel balanced and varied, Story mode is detailed and allows you an amount of free rein to decide where you attack, army painter section is good for multiplayer matches online, and the gameplay mechanic feels quick and responsive to when you play, the background given to all the races is very detailed, well what do you expect from a game that is speaking not only to gamers, but also to fans of the tabletop game, and as such, all the races feel very balanced because they have been written from around at least 4 years worth of background histort.
And now for the Disadvantages, the 'New' races, aka sisters of battle and dark eldar feel weak and slightly broken, hence why i said generally before, flying vehicles feel unneeded if you have played previous Dawn of War installments and feel weak as they can be easily killed by gun turrets, if it is the 41st millenium and there is only war, then why cant they afford some decent armour?!
I had a great deal of fun with this game and i am positive that anyone who enjoys strategy games will at least gain some enjoyment out of this game, if not for the story line then for the gameplay mechanics and the general feel of enourmity from fighting a 3 on 3 fight on blood shed alley when all squad and vehicle caps have been used up and a massive battle ensues in the middle of the map, also the story campaign is set in a similar ilk to Dark Crusade, in that it is very good and is highly replayable, the start to the campaigin is the army select screen, where you can choose from a number of races, Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Chaos Space Marines (think Space Marines with more spikes and the ability to summon the massive pink demons from id softwares original 2 Doom games), Imperial Guard (like our modern day army, with laser guns, the Ogres from the hobbit, and large, and i do mean large tanks), The Tau and last but not least, The Necrons.
After picking your poison, or army in this case, you are dumped in a pre determined location and told to conquer everything, simple really, but what is good about the story is the amount of detail that seems to come through while you are playing, for example, i played as Imperial Guard (Surprise Surprise, from the missus) and the amount of back detail that has been put into the fictional army and also the colonel that you are playing as is surprisingly quite large for an expansion, also, the sheer magnitude of the story mode, in that you have to conquer 3 planets and a moon and also wipe out all other races, will leave you wanting more, well it did for me at any rate, though that maybe my urge to see all bow down to the Imperial Guard....

All in all, i enjoyed Dawn of War Soulstorm greatly, not just as a Warhammer 40,000 fan, but also as an objective gamer who has played enough RTS games in his time to understand a good and a bad one, and i can safely say that Dawn of War Soulstorm is a good game, if not great, and definitely worth its cost.
I hope that this review has been helpful and reviews, both good and baaad are welcome :D thank you
Oh an by the way, if you do buy the game and play as Imperial Guard, one small bit of knowledge, the guns they are using are not that good, hence why you can make each squad around 15 men large, i play as them for the sheer fact that i love the back ground and i collect them for the table top game.

Summary: A good game, like C&C in the space, in the future, and in my opinion, worth its cost