by Joshua Brooks

Created on: April 22, 2008   Last Updated: September 18, 2011

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

Dawn of War Dark Crusade (first released in 2006) is a computerised version of the world renowned tabletop battle scene of Warhammer 40,000. For those who know little about Warhammer it is basically a tabletop battle between opposing races, each made up of exquisitely painted three - four centimetre high models each with unique characteristics which is played out using dice and rulers.

Dark Crusade is basically this projected onto a computer screen. In many respects it is much like the classic game 'Age of Empires' in the way that you can play as a variety of different races (in Dark Crusade's case seven) on a large amount of maps. The drawback of Dark Crusade is that although each race is very unique in units and abilities, there are not yet enough races to choose from and there is also a limited amount of maps. This is where those such as Age of Empires outdo it. This isn't to mean that Dark Crusade doesn't rate well as a game.

A revolution in gaming which I have never encountered before is the idea of being able to view the battle scene in an infinite amount of ways. In Dark Crusade a player has the ability to zoom in, circulate and move the camera back and forth as well as up and down. This concept has been improved from the previous Dawn of War in that you now have complete control of the camera to move it in three dimensions whenever and wherever you please.

The graphics displayed are also superior to most games currently out there and are extremely high quality even when zoomed in on an object to maximum! In playing Dark Crusade the option is open to the player to increase/decrease the lighting, shadows and even the length of time fallen bodies remain on the battlefield (on the highest setting after a particularly gruesome battle you can barely see you army for all the bodies).

The army painter is also a fantastic phenomenon introduced into Dawn of War. This allows those Warhammer fanatics out there the chance to add up to six different colours to their army's uniform at a time with an infinite amount of colours to choose from.

Game play is another unique feature of Dawn of War over other third person army commander games. In order to create an army worthy of defeating your enemies, you must first obtain the primary resource(s) (in most cases these are power and requisition), which are obtained after a unit captures one of the locations strategically placed around the map (which can be quickly navigated across using the mini

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