Gone was the grimy, gritty, Warhammer 40K aesthetic, and serious tone of its blood-drenched universe. But when I first witnessed snippets of DOW 3’s actually gameplay, my heart sank. At first I was all giddy after watching the DOW 3 announcement trailer. Relic Entertainment has since taken the reins of the Dawn of War franchise over from THQ, and announced Dawn of War 3 back in May of 2016.

Although the graphics were better, it lacked the epic-ness of its predecessor because of its smaller scale and focus on close quarters combat.įans of the franchise responded in kind by hemming and hawing (myself included this time around) about DOW2’s lack of proper base building, and its smaller scale. Apparently giving into the throngs of prepubescent gamers who clamored and whined about slower paced, base building RTS’s, as being too boring, THQ caved in and further sped up the gameplay speed of the sequel, and also turned it into some sort of MOBA hybrid monstrosity. The sheer number of factions, plus the fact that they all played completely differently from one another, provided us gleeful gamers an almost limitless variety of matchup possibilities. Together with its three expansions (remember the days of full-fledged expansions? Gasp!), Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War gave players a total of nine factions-the Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Necrons (yikes!), Sisters of Battle, Tau Empire, and of course, the multitudinous Orks. Not only did they introduce an ingenious squad system, which not only indicated each squad’s health and morale at a glance, but it also gave gamers a sense that they were fighting large scale conflicts with a vast array of troop and vehicle types.

When Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War originally debuted, way back in 2004, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

But for some reason, I really get my knickers all up in a twist when it comes to ruining gaming franchises. If someone is sitting on a piece of workout equipment at the gym for ages, mouth agape while twiddling their uber-important little lives away via texts, I just laugh it off and wait patiently. Although I frequently get cut off in traffic, I almost always shrug it off and keep on rolling. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Ultimate Apocalypse The Hunt Begins Mod

Ultimate apocalypse tyranids missing