Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is a real-time strategy computer game developed by Relic Entertainment based on Games Workshop's popular tabletop wargame, Warhammer 40,000. It was released by THQ on September 20, 2004 in North America. Since its release, two expansion packs have been released: Winter Assault in 2005 and Dark Crusade in 2006. A third expansion, Soulstorm, is currently being produced.

The Game of the Year edition was released on September 20, 2005 in the USA and on September 23 in Europe, containing 4 exclusive maps. Later, the Game of the Year edition and Winter Assault were bundled in the Gold Edition in the USA. Most recently, Dawn of War and both of its expansions were released together as The Platinum Collection in the USA or as the Dawn of War Anthology in the PAL regions.

Reception
Upon release, the critical response to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War was on the whole extremely positive. It was congratulated most frequently for its varied and balanced factions and units, its polished presentation, in particular the high quality of unit animations, and the user interface.

One of the first reviews was by IGN, who awarded the game 8.8/10, in particular praising the large level of graphical and animation detail. They also cited the skirmish and multiplayer as one of the game's strongest points. Gamespot came to similar conclusions, in particular praising the game's presentation and audio.

Conversely, an area of the game that drew criticism was the single player campaign, which many reviewers found to be too short and unchallenging. Another area of weakness identified was a lack of originality in the gameplay. However, these weaknesses were considered be minor, IGN summarising "Nothing about the gameplay will really surprise anyone (though the addition of reinforceable squads is pretty neat) but it doesn't particularly matter…Relic kicked ass creating a great piece of entertainment."

Foreign language reviews were also positive. The French website Jeux PC (lit. "PC Games") awarded the game 16 out of 20, in particular praising the simplicity of the user interface and the intensity of the battles. German reviewer Daniel Matschijewsky awarded the game 83 out of 100, in particular praising the user interface and the sound, but identified the campaign and the AI as weaker areas.

Overall Dawn of War was well received by critics, earning aggregate scores of 86/100 from Metacritic and 87/100 from Game Rankings.

Awards

 * Gamespy: 7th Best PC Game of 2004, Best Use of License 2004, 7th Best PC Game of 2006(Dark Crusade), Best Expansion of 2006(Dark Crusade)
 * IC-Games: Editor's Choice Award
 * IGN: Runner-up in Best Strategy Game of 2004, Runner-up in Best Multiplayer Game of 2004, Best Expansion Pack of 2005(Winter Assault), Best Expansion Pack of 2006(Dark Crusade)
 * Tom's Hardware: Must Have award for December 2004
 * Gamespot: Best Expansion Pack of 2006 (Dark Crusade)

Miscellaneous

 * Dawn of War has an active modding community. Relic Entertainment released official modding tools for the community to use.
 * Dawn of War is also the name of a cancelled real-time strategy game set in prehistoric times by SouthPeak Interactive.
 * A model of Captain Gabriel was created as showcased in the back of Codex: Space Marines.