Soulstorm Review
well
I did the same thing for DC about 18 mos ago... so a year and a half later, Im older, thinner, and ready to finish law school in a month or two if anyone wants to know.. here goes:
Soulstorm is an interesting, enjoyable game if you like the Warhammer Dawn of War series by relic/thq that has pretty much defined decent RTS PC gaming over the past 4 years. Whereas many games take to WW2 primarily, or some alt. reality of the modern or near modern future, DOW takes the player to the WH40K universe, which makes those of us that frequent this forum likely interested in the game and willing to shell out money for a game that lets us play with multiple armies that cost MANY times more than the one time purchase of the game.
DOW has provided my college chums and I hours of endless entertainment, with all the khorne influenced catchphrases I could hope for short of a games-day size tourney devoid of players under the age of 21 and filled with Kegs of beer, bottles of Vat69 Scotch, pecan pie, and strippers... This was then followed up somewhat well by the Imperial guard being added into the game in WA.
WA continued the DOW franchise tastefully and in my opinion the guard were a likely, and enjoyable addition to the present races, however it left me needing more. WA skimped in the "Add another army department, and choked out by not really adding a WHOLE other army, but rather taking the models available, slapping some xtra stuff to it and sending the old girl out on stage like a drunken pitbull at michael vick's house.
Regardless, I still liked, bought, played, obsessed, and defiled the game, not in that order.... until DC rumors came about.
DC had alot of the same issues I had with WA, once again, an army was pieced together from available models (crons)... but here, we had a whole new army added, and say what you want of the tau, they were a welcome relief in the game that made "stealth" actual worthwhile in the game. DC is probably one of the better RTS titles/expansions I've played short of company of heroes and starcraft. Even then, the games cannot be truly compared, and for my own enjoyment, they rank about equal.
When I heard about SS coming out, I was honestly angry at first, because I had just gotten a new rig and was hoping they would go along to DOW 2 or its equivalent, and finally add the nids. As soon as I heard that the game would not be changing the engine at all, I felt it was highly unlikely GW or relic bothered to engineer nids for the game, so I was not really all that pissy about that. I will say however, that compared to the additions and improvements of the other expansions, these additions are actually a fresh breath of air in a rather stale room. sisters and DE, like them or hate them are rather different from the rest of the armies, and paint/swapped marines aside, I think the addition of a "witchhunter" army was not a horrid idea in the end. The DE are more or less as I imagined them, although I would have liked more warp-teleporting around from them on the boards rather than just skirting around.
Flying units basically work like over-hyped skimmers, and are not all that amazing to me... I would have preferred fighter/air unit SUPPORT in the manner company of heroes does this thing, where it is a chargeable power rather than a unit per se.
The campaign is basically an expanded version of the DC campaign... and sadly, no matter how you dress it, the campaign essentially consists of repeated skirmishes with the occasional base boss fights.
My point is, that its just not all that much of an addition, but at the same time, I was aware of that coming into the game.
At $40USD for a "Standalone expansion" (Read: way to get you to pay 80% of the orig game price for less than 1/2 the functionality of the original at initial release) it is basically a "booster pack" to the DOW series, adding some multiplayer fun, maps, and two characterful, new races.
DOW's draw has been its involvement with 40K and its variety of game factions... as such, Im not mad at all at the limited scope of changes in the expansion.
Graphics, etc are equal to DC, and I was able to run the game on high on my OLD 3 year old laptop (it runs flawlessly on the new rig)
If you like the series, go get it...