What’s on My Bookshelf? Dawn of War (1 & 2)
Sorry this blog is a little late–I debated whether or not to write this entry now, or wait until later, but I thought I’d get it out of the way as I’ve been wanting to write it for over a week now. I have two games that want to quickly mention as being on my bookshelf and why I like them.
Now, I have a confession to make: even though I bought them and have them registered on Steam, I’ve actually not played them. I know, shocking right? Me, not play a game? Have pigs begun to fly? Well, hear me out. I bought the games fully expecting to get a new computer by now, but then I started down the path of graduate student and all my money went away (there are other games that I have that are in this same boat–American Truck Simulator, I’m looking at you–but I’ll cover those at a later date).
Why Dawn of War (& what is it, anyway?)
Dawn of War is a real-time strategy game that is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (aka Warhammer 40K). This is a grim universe in which humans in powered armor that in enhances there physical abilities, explore space and destroy the enemies of the Empire and its Emperor. You can find out more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000. Essentially, its humans in Iron Man like armor blasting enemies away with various futuristic weapons–my kind of setting.
Why did I choose the game? Because I’m a sucker for Real Time Strategy (RTS) games and I really like the universe. There are two Warhammer universes–the 40K universe which is science fiction and then they have a fantasy one, just called Warhammer, and that’s the one I really enjoy. If there had been a RTS in the fantasy universe–there is now, I think, but not when these came out–I would have bought those instead.
Real Time Strategy
I think I said it before, but I love Real Time Strategy games (RTS’s for short). They are like being an armchair general commanding one’s armies and implementing tactics and strategies to defeat the foes in the game. I love building units, mixing different cohorts to maximize my forces’ capabilities, and using real military tactics such as flanking in real-time.
What I don’t love about the genre (& the reason why I don’t often purchase games in it) is its focus on resource gathering. Games like early WarCraft and StarCraft (the two most popular and influential game series in the genre) focus heavily on the gathering and harvesting of resources, turning many games into a click heavy race to see who can gather the most resources the fastest in order to field one’s armies the quickest. I HATE that! I prefer a more tactical game that minimizes resources to focus on units, tactics, and strategy. My favorite games of the genre, Kohan and Kohan II (I’ll talk about these later) were specifically designed to minimize the focus on resources to focus more attention on combat.
While I’ve not been able to dig into the Dawn of War games, I remember buying them because of that reason–hopefully, I was right. Like Jak: The Last Frontier, I’m going to watch a playthrough of it since it seems like I’m not going to get a new computer anytime soon to actually play these games.
Sidney
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