Quick Note(s) – Unfortunately the game can have some issues running on Windows 11, so be sure to run the “vcredist_x86” installer located in the Steamapps/common/Dawn of War Soulstorm/VCRedist folder. If you aren’t running the Steam version, you’ll need to download and install the Microsoft C++ visual redistributable 2005. As for those of you who are looking for mods, I’d highly recommend the Unification Mod which adds a disgustingly large amount of units, factions and maps to the game. Other mods are also available on moddb.com (just follow the previous link and click on “Dawn of War” underneath the name of the mod).

Back in those simpler, halcyon days of 2004 the developers at Relic took the (Warhammer) world by storm by releasing the original Dawn of War game. Now this wasn’t the first Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) game by any means, and in fact it was the 8th game to be released that took advantage of the setting. What it did do however, was enable players to play as multiple factions within an immersive setting (sorry Rites of War fans, but that game was slowwww and not particularly immersive) that was fully 3D. The combination of three popular factions – and the Eldar too – resulted in a hugely popular RTS game, especially as both the gameplay and audio design were excellent. Unlike the other goliaths of the space, such as Starcraft, C&C Generals and Age of Empires 2, the game was fast paced and highly rewarded an aggressive play-style, as resource nodes were spread across the map and holding them was the key to victory. In many other RTS games, resources were spread around but generally you’d need to build up your forces and faff around with villagers to build up the structures required to properly begin harvesting the tiberium/cash/gold/whatever. In Dawn of War however, you just needed to capture them with infantry and while it was encouraged, you rarely had to fortify them with a listening point structure (which would need to be destroyed before the enemy could capture it). This subtle little twist meant that it was your army not your villagers that were responsible for growing your economy. Compounding this design decision was the fact that you needed to control as much of the map as possible to receive these resources, as tech upgrades played a minimal role in the economy side whilst your builders could barely do anything (although the secondary power resource was entirely generated by the buildings they constructed). Of course this led to the game giving more aggressive players a significant advantage, which meant that the games were often quick and fast paced with the loss of your army often ensuring you’d lose your resource points which then meant that you were at a resource disadvantage which would then result in you getting ground down under waves of enemy forces. There was a mechanic to compensate for this (slightly) wherein resource points and power generating structures would decay over time, enabling turtles to cling on and eventually negate much of the disadvantage they were facing, but this mechanic in most cases took too long to have a significant effect on the battle.

Without going into excessive detail, I’ll briefly explain the mechanics of Dawn of War for those who haven’t played any of the games in the series. Like most RTS games you start with a mere HQ and a builder unit, who can then produce all of the production buildings in your faction alongside power generators and listening points. You’ve got multiple unit classifications (such as heavy infantry, demons, vehicles and so on) but generally there are 3 main types of unit on the battlefield. Infantry (who are the only ones who can capture requisition points), heroes/characters that are powerful but can get bogged down in combat, and then vehicles which are powerful and often heavily armoured but are require lots of power and aren’t available in the early stages of the game. These units are then either focused on melee or ranged attacks. Most weapons are good against certain types of units, with anti-tank weapons often (but not always) being hopeless against infantry and vice-versa. Furthermore each unit can have multiple abilities, and most units can purchase upgrades that are applicable to that one unit. There are also a range of technologies which can be unlocked that provide a bonus to all units of a certain type, both those you currently have and those you might build in the future. All infantry units can be reinforced to add squad members, which costs resources and requires a modest wait as they’re produced. Units in combat suffer a big penalty to reinforcement times but they can still be reinforced. As for the resources, you’ve only got two to worry about. Requisition (the main resource) and power (the secondary resource), which are obtained through captured points on the map & listening posts and power generating structures respectively. Finally there are two types of points on the map(s) worth noting – Relics which let you build your superheavy unit (max 1 at a time) and critical locations which you can’t build anything on or next to. As such the game revolves around building infantry squads to capture points to gain requisition, so you can afford to build power generators which will let you build your more powerful units and begin unlocking research items.

With that hasty summary out of the way let’s return to the review. Back in 2004 Relic decided that they should continue to build up momentum after the launch of the original Dawn of War by engaging in a classic strategy which has largely (but not entirely) been neglected in recent years. They did this by releasing two expansion packs, Winter Assault (WA) in 2005 and Dark Crusade (DC) in 2006. The former added the Imperial Guard race to the game and added some new maps, a handful of new units for the existing races and two short but challenging campaigns. The latter was considerably more ambitious and included two races in the form of the Necrons and the Tau Empire, while also adding new maps, units and more importantly totally overhauling the campaign structure. Both the base game and WA had fairly standard RTS campaigns, taking the form of around a dozen maps (in WA’s case spread between the two campaigns) that weren’t particularly connected with each other and were basically skirmish maps with some extra challenges and timed NPC spawns/attack waves. Oh and of course they had little cutscenes, which elaborated on the plot and served to motivate you. DC on the other hand replaces the standard campaign structure with a new hybrid campaign that features a turn-based map comprised of multiple regions, each of which needs to be taken in skirmish battles. Each faction can move their single army (represented by their command) across one region per turn, and if this region isn’t owned by them then a skirmish battle will break out. Each region has a strength ranking associated with it from 1 to 15, which determines the AI difficulty and number of AIs to be faced on that map. The difficulty of these maps ranges from one easy AI through to three Hard AIs, with the maps themselves being the same that you encounter in the Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. Every faction is present at the start of the campaign within their stronghold region, a bespoke custom map that is particularly challenging and if these strongholds are conquered then that faction is defeated. As these armies fight across the map they’ll gain new regions which enable them to recruit “Honor Guard” units that are stronger versions of regular units and which spawn with the commander in every battle (unless they’re wiped out in which case they need to be bought again). Some of these regions even offer a faction wide bonus instead of a new honor guard unit, such as enabling you to attack any region except strongholds in one turn or to enable you to spend resources on building structures before an attack begins. Finally there are also feats that commanders can achieve such as winning 3 battles or killing a certain amount of enemies, which give them war-gear points that can then be spent on… war-gear which grants them more health, attack and some other benefits or even abilities. Victory is achieved by eliminating every other faction from the map, which means you’ll need to win every stronghold battle.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm (DoW:SS) continues this trend and by and large as the campaign is the same, with one big difference. Namely that you now need to defeat eight other factions instead of a measly six. As a consequence the campaign is lengthier, even if the gameplay itself hasn’t changed very much. There are also a few more bonus regions, so that there’s roughly one per faction alongside more stringent routing between areas (i.e. the map now has more choke-points) which gives the campaign a modicum of extra strategy. These two new factions in the form of the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are of course one of the major selling points of the game, as at the time of release every faction with models was represented with the exception of the Tyranids. Much like the rest of the factions these two have their own unique units and voice acting although I must confess that I’ve always found the Sisters of Battle to be a bit boring. You see both the Sisters and the Dark Eldar have ways of gathering up a special resource (faith and souls respectively) that enable them to activate abilities, but generally these abilities don’t do that much. For the Dark Eldar these abilities are on your toolbar and can be popped at any time and anywhere that you have vision, and while the ability to enable a squad to detect infiltrated enemies is useful, the rest are kinda meh. As for the Sisters of Battle these abilities are used by certain squads and often require that you research a piece of technology to permit them to be used, with these abilities also being kinda… meh. To gather these resources you either build upgrades on your listening posts (Sisters of Battle) or have to send your builders to gather souls (Dark Eldar), with the former being super boring and the latter being a potentially interesting mechanic that gets squandered. This is because the Dark Eldar buildings can build themselves, the builder only has to start the construction process and is then free to go do something else. So far, so good as this fits with the asynchronous nature of the factions within the game. One of these buildings can be upgraded to produce souls though, so what ends up happening is that you build up your base, build a couple of these buildings (which are required for increasing the amount of squads and vehicles you can field in battle) and then have your builder sit in your base gathering souls. There’s no risk/reward ratio to consider from having your slaves wander around the battlefield, but then again as previously stated the abilities kinda suck anyway so it’s not a big deal really. Either way even with these lame abilities I still think the Dark Eldar are the more interesting faction, especially as their most basic infantry unit can infiltrate (letting them turn invisible and still attack enemies).

As for the other big selling point of this game in the run up to release, it’s also a bit underwhelming. Across Dawn of War and the first two expansions all units had been ground units (well except a handful of hovering ground units), which meant that the inclusion of Flying Units in Dawn of War: Soulstorm was HYPE. Unfortunately the engine just can’t handle flying units and as such these aircraft basically just acted as hovering ground units, which were still cool but were also just vehicles that could ignore some terrain. Ironically enough the developers of Dawn of War: Soulstorm (at this point the original developers at Relic were working on Dawn of War 2 and as such this expansion was outsourced to Iron Lore studios) didn’t want to add “flying” units initially and instead had planned to add some units that were commonly requested by the community. Sadly Relic insisted that Iron Lore get to work adding flying units, which while still useful and having some minor battlefield uses were relatively half-baked and a disappointment for many players. The Imperial Guard for example were bequeathed an aerial bomber, but it couldn’t really conduct bombing runs and as such just hovered around occasionally using a souped-up grenade ability. In spite of these flying units being half baked however Dawn of War: Soulstorm remains the definitive edition of Dawn of War, as it has everything that the other games had alongside a lengthier campaign, even more maps, more factions and of course more units. As a consequence of being the most feature complete Dawn of War game, it’s also the one that still retains an active community both in terms of being able to find multiplayer matches and with regards to the modding community which is still adding new races, maps and units to the game to this day.

Which of course begs the question, why is Dawn of War: Soulstorm still so popular? Well aside from the gameplay as mentioned earlier, and the sheer variety of units and races that you can play as, the game also has a handful of features which have kept players coming back. Part of the game’s enduring popularity is the way in which the game has managed to faithfully and accurately capture the W40K setting, with it’s bombastic units and fantastic voice acting. While strong voice acting is not unique to Dawn of War: Soulstorm, the game is absolutely brimming with memorable quotes delivered well by actors who clearly relish their roles. Every single unit is quotable and while they don’t have a huge pool of quotes, there are enough to avoid repetition whilst not too many that they fail to remain lodged in your mind. The depth and range of the performances are strong, while the writing clearly reflects an understanding of the lore of the W40K universe. There are some weird quirks in the game’s narrative, such as the Imperial Guard stronghold having legions of ostensibly rare Baneblade tanks and that weird screed against Metal Boxes by the Chaos commander, but generally the tone is faithfully conveyed and each unit and character acts as they should. Bolstering this performance is a handful of canny gameplay decisions, such as engaging (almost) every unit to engage in either melee or ranged combat, which ensures that even weaker units can successfully bog down stronger foes in ranged combat or try to force them to run around in circles. The game also has a “sync kill” system wherein units have special, pre-baked animations which play when they defeat enemies in melee combat. While these help to give the game some cinematic flair, they also have a strategic purpose as units are immune to damage while these animations are playing which can be abused to tank certain enemy weapons for the benefit of your less durable units. The combination of asymmetric factions, a high variety of units, fast paced gameplay and a host of little ways to tip the scales of a battle produce an engaging and enjoyable game, while the beginner AI settings are generous enough that newbies don’t need to fear getting completely and utterly stomped.

To summarise then Dawn of War: Soulstorm is an enduringly popular game because it is the successor to a great base game and two expansions which were of an equally high quality. By taking everything that had gone before it with regards to a strong, fast paced gameplay system that offered plenty of tactical depth across all nine factions the game ended up being a complex RTS experience that was still eminently approachable. Unlike many of it’s contemporaries the game was able to bypass a slow starting phase and encourage players to dive straight into the action, which had a strong blend of melee and ranged units to keep matters broadly balanced. This was then reinforced by an AI system that starts off weak enough to not overwhelm noobs, while being difficult enough at the higher levels that the game provides a significant challenge. Add to this a lengthy and replayable campaign mode, alongside fantastic voice acting that helps to immerse the player and you have a vast and engaging RTS game. The fact that the game has a huge quantity of maps, units and mods only cemented it as a long-lasting game that is suitable and indeed recommended for all RTS fans. If you’re a fan of the setting Dawn of War: Soulstorm is still one of the most commonly recommended games nearly 15 years on, whilst RTS players would be remiss to skip it. Even those without much experience with the setting or the genre should give this game a shot, as it’s approachable, memorable and riddled with content – plus it’s exceedingly cheap due to it’s age.

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Quick Note: As the Sega 60th Anniversary Collection bundle of games were released as part of a promotional effort to celebrate Sega’s 60th Anniversary, the store pages for them have been taken down and so they’re seemingly no longer available. Fortunately there’s a work around (Credit to //ennui_72826 on Steam for this fix) that lets you tell Steam to download them anyway and as they’re free they’ll be added to your library forever more. Just open your browser on a computer where your Steam account is signed in (or open the Windows Run tool) and enter the following command(s);

• Armor of Heroes: steam://install/1368440
• Endless Zone: steam://install/1368450
• Golden Axed: steam://install/1368460
• Streets of Kamurocho: steam://install/1368430
• Bonus related game, 8-Bit Bayonetta: steam://install/1368460

Despite being synonymous with the relatively young videogames industry, Sega much like Nintendo has been around for far longer than you might initially expect. While it’s first true home console might have only hit Western shores in the early 1980’s, Sega itself has been around since 1960 and as a way of celebrating it’s longevity the company released a handful of free promotional games back in 2020. Now these games are far too short to deserve a review each, especially as two of them can be beaten in around 15 minutes! Yet after browsing through my Steam library I remembered that I had received these games years ago and thought that I should give them a try, just to see whether they were of any interest. To my surprise they were each cool in their own way, although unfortunately the one I was most excited about (Golden Axed) is also the shortest one here. So without further ado, I’m going to take a quick look at each game and then briefly conclude with which one was The Best

Golden Axed

Starting off with the one I was most excited to try, Golden Axed is a resurrected proof of concept for a Golden Axe remake that was in development around 2010. There was going to be a couple of remakes in this vein for the 7th generation of consoles, but for better or for worse they were all scrapped and the Australian development studio working on them was closed down. As such Golden Axed is an insight into what could have been, albeit a fairly short one as there really isn’t much going on here. You get to play as the Ax Battler class, with a couple of different attacks that you can use to face off against two enemy types across a single level. The combat itself is fairly faithful to the original games, as you only have a jump, light attack and heavy attack but there is still a surprising amount of depth to the move as various combinations of movements and attacks will unleash multiple different moves. As it’s just a proof of concept demo, there are still some rough edges to this combat including how easy it is to abuse the light attack “combo” (just mash it) to prevent enemies from being able to deal any damage. In spite of the limited amount of content however, the game is still able to demonstrate that there was a concerted effort to make the concept of a remaster work. You can see this in the elements of this demo that illustrate what can be done on modern systems, including the appealing visuals and large amount of enemies to fight on-screen. Plus the game has been able to recreate some of the more amusing elements of it’s predecessors, including the ability to knock enemies off the stage or the prospect of a magic system. As a consequence it’s disappointing that this little teaser as all that was ever seen of this game, as with some time and energy it could have been a decent game. Instead the Golden Axe series has languished since this project was cancelled.

Streets of Kamurocho

The next one I dove into was Streets of Kamurocho as I’ve enjoyed the Streets of Rage games in the past and this is essentially a (sanctioned) knock-off. While that might sound like a criticism, I don’t intend to disparage the game as it’s enjoyable if brief and manages to accurately capture most of what makes the Streets of Rage series enjoyable. You’ve got a similar combat system, with light attacks, heavy attacks, weapons you can pick-up, jump attacks and a constant barrage of enemies with different attack patterns. Even the smaller details such as how health items are picked up, the UI, the number of hits that different enemy types take and so on are almost identical to the Streets of Rage games. This includes the handful of boss fights, which are dangerous but manageable and culminate in a final boss fight that can be pretty tricky as he has goons that respawn multiple times. Unfortunately much like Golden Axed the whole thing is very short indeed, and once you’ve cleared the first stage it loops (unlike Golden Axed which goes straight to the title screen). With that being said, both the soundtrack and visuals are well polished and when combined with the combat provide an enjoyable if brief experience. Once you’ve cleared the only stage on offer, you unlock Kasuga alongside Kiryu and Majima but aside from this modest goal there’s nothing to aim for outside of a higher score. There are online leaderboards available for the game, which is a nice touch but that’s about it.

Armor of Heroes

Perhaps the most unusual game of the bunch is Armor of Heroes, an ostensibly Company of Heroes themed game that has absolutely nothing to do with the series or indeed the RTS genre. Instead it’s a top-down arcade-y multiplayer game where you control a tank across a variety of game modes and it’s playable with up to 3 other players, 3 AI bots or a mixture of the two. Despite being arcade-y, there are still some sops to realism as the tanks don’t handle particularly well and so you need to slowly rotate your vehicle instead of just being able to turn on a dime. Similarly, the stages are cluttered with debris some of which can be shot through (or driven through) and some of which is more resistant to your efforts. Shots also have a degree of bullet-drop, although you don’t have to worry about shot angle and armour penetration so there are limits to the realism. The game is therefore in a slightly odd position, as it is far too fast paced and liberal with the simulation elements to be considered anything but an arcade experience. Yet it also has some elements that get in the way, for want of a better way of phrasing it. To make matters even more complex, there are a handful of game modes such as Survival, King of the Hill, Deathmatch and so on but there are three variants for each mode which are essentially Arcade, Hardcore and a somewhat balanced middle. The tweaks are mainly related to fog of war and how shots act, alongside tanks being easier to destroy on the non-Arcade difficulties. This is solely a party game however, as there are no progression systems and no single player content (aside from matches against the AI) to speak of. The game does at least have a handful of maps, so there’s enough new content to support around an hour of playtime before it starts to get stale. With that being said, much like the other games this is more of a novelty due to the relatively lack of content even though it supports local multiplayer.

Endless Zone

Last but certainly not least in this collection is Endless Zone, an attempt to emulate the Fantasy Zone series made by the team behind the Endless Space 4X games. Much like Armor of Heroes, this is a pretty abrupt change of pace on the part of the developers but unlike Armor of Heroes, Endless Zone is close to being an entire game! Of course that is a backhanded compliment at it’s core, but I was still surprised by how much depth was packed into what is a throwaway promotional piece of software. Not only are there multiple stages, each with their bosses, but the game also has a full shop interface just like the Fantasy Zone games which provide access to a multitude of different weapons. The caveat is that these weapons have very limited amounts of ammo, so you’ll need to choose wisely and be prepared to return to slumming it with your default blaster before long. Fortunately the upgrades to your bombs and thrusters are permanent, plus you’re able to buy additional lives which always helps! To access the shop, you’ll need to fly into a beacon which appears roughly once per level after you destroy a certain amount of targets and then you’ll be able to buy what you desire. Be careful though, as weapons and lives get progressively more expensive as you buy them and so extra lives will quickly eat up vast amounts of currency. Now this wouldn’t be an issue, but you die in one hit so this is a surprisingly challenging little experience. To win all you need to do is shoot down 10 floating orbs that are spread out across each of the 4 stages, while dodging or shooting down all of the infinitely respawning enemies and then dealing with the boss. That’s easier said than done however, especially as the enemies spawn more and more frequently as the time you’ve spent on a stage increases. Don’t let the difficulty curve get you down though, as each stage has it’s own unique ambiance, visuals, soundtrack and most importantly enemies to deal with! As such this is a great looking shoot em’ up with plenty of depth and a decent amount of challenge, although once you get used to it (and learn to save your money for the missiles upgrade and the thrusters upgrade) it shouldn’t take you too long. Just don’t be surprised if you see the game over screen a few times more than you’d like!

And the Winner is…

So after playing through all of those games, I had to confess that I had inadvertently left the best for last. While Golden Axed was a cool insight into what could have been and Streets of Kamuchoro was probably the most fun I had, the clear winner here is Endless Zone. Not only was it the longest game of the bunch, but it was also the one with the largest amount of challenge and perhaps most important the most strategy involved. It’s hard to lose Golden Axed or Streets of Kamuchoro before they’re over, and honestly I found that Armor of Heroes was entirely random as despite having the same AI the bots were incredibly unpredictable when it came to the final scores. Endless Zone on the other hand is a concise but challenging game that requires you to learn it’s systems to succeed, as it’ll let you keep blasting away at the infinitely respawning enemies or waste money on the wrong upgrades. But once you have an understanding of how everything works, the game itself isn’t too hard and I was able to clear the last few bosses without any real trouble. Then add a great OST and visual presentation, alongside plenty of enemy patterns to learn and the end result is a great little game. That’s not to say that the others aren’t worth a look as I enjoyed them all to varying degrees, with Armor of Heroes being my least favourite but it was still pleasant enough to mess around with. But with that being said Endless Zone is an actually enjoyable free game that you can still add to your Steam library today, and I would highly recommend you give it a try. Then again, you may as well give the others a try at that point as the whole batch will only take you maybe an hour to see everything once you’ve been able to beat Endless Zone.

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