Conclusion
So here I am after a few pages of text, some sore fingers and way too many hours of playing Winter Assault… time to tackle the most difficult part, summing up what I’ve rambled on about the previous pages and condensing it down to a few paragraphs, hopefully helping you to make a decision. Winter Assault is a welcome expansion to Dawn of War; it takes you further into the Warhammer 40,000 Universe and introduces a new faction for you to play. On top of this you now get a campaign as good or Chaos within a well written storyline. The story itself keeps things moving along nicely, not forgetting to keep you interested in what is going on with the scripted sequences. Control of the game is very easy to get to grips with and everything you need is onscreen and just a mouse click away, making life extremely easy when it comes to upgrades and research of new units.
Click for larger imageAfter playing Winter Assault for around 20 minutes I knew exactly what I was doing and was building up my bases quickly and efficiently, meaning that it is literally pick up and play. Visually the game does what needs to be done, you don’t need fancy shadowing, slow motion and high frames per second to run this so upping the detail to high should be easy enough to do on most systems without a performance hit. Multiplayer itself I found fun even though I have never played a RTS title online, this adds many more hours of play as the solo campaigns can be done within a few days at the most. So all in all, this is worth forking out for if you have the original, as you’ll already be into your RTS games. If you haven’t tried Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, it’s worth picking it up or looking out for the special double packs of the original and this Winter Assault expansion as you’ve got an easily accessible good looking RTS that should nicely ease you into the RTS genre.
Click for larger imagePros
Good Multiplayer
Excellent smoke and explosion effects
Easy to pick up and play
Solo campaign can be played from both sides
Playable Imperial Guard in solo and multiplayer
Cons
Once you have seen the first few solo levels it starts looking very samey
A.I has a few glitches
Solo campaign may be a little short lived for experienced gamers
Sound gets a bit repetitive
A welcome expansion to Dawn of War even though the solo side of the game can be a little short.
