Baldstorm, now featuring the SwedeMarines

[kingcomrade]

SPESS MEHRENS, TODEH THE ENEMY IS AT OUR DOAR!

Anyone else pick it up? Is it just me or is the load time for the campaign screen abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous?

 

[kingcomrade]

 

[The Vanished One]

I'll probably pick it up sooner or later. How is it? I'm still disappointed at the lack of tyranids.

 

[kingcomrade]

I officially rename it:
Dawn of Load Time: Waitingstorm

Seriously, this expansion pack is so half assed it hurts. The loading time for the campaign screen is 2+ minutes. What the fuck did they do that makes it take so long?

 

[Szioul]

I think there's some sort of trouble with Reloaded's crack if you're using it. Takes about a minute for me to load when going from Main Menu to Campaign map. The battles take a couple of minutes to load though.
Not to mention the slowdowns I get when I quit. Closing the program takes like 5 mins.

 

[Kingston]

I think there's some sort of trouble with Reloaded's crack if you're using it. Takes about a minute for me to load when going from Main Menu to Campaign map. The battles take a couple of minutes to load though.
Not to mention the slowdowns I get when I quit. Closing the program takes like 5 mins.

Heh, can't wait until developers start blaming crackers for making shitty cracks so that people complain about the game and their sales plummet and they have to shut down.

 

[Destroid]

Didn't that already happen with some game where the copy protection made the game crash randomly?

 

[MetalCraze]

considering that this addon is made by the now defunct TQ developers plus some of its features like those 2 races looked incredibly ridiculous - I decided that TPB is the best place to get it.
will post my comments about it too.

 

[Fez]

How does it play? Is the campaign any good? How does it compare to the Dark Crusade expansion?

I'm surprised they went for the Sisters rather than Tyranids as a new race. Are they any good balance-wise and to play? The demo seemed somewhat so-so. The flying vehicles were unimpressive.

 

[MetalCraze]

that's actually one of the reasons for getting it at TPB
flying vehicles look just lame. and if only they looked so. but not only it does not make the gameplay better - rather it makes it worse. but I think I will see that in the full game.
and if flying vehicles will be a totally unnecessary element - I do hope someone will make a mod that disables them. if it's possible.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

TL;DR Review of Soulstorm: shitsux not worth $40


DISCLAIMER: BY READING BELOW THE SQUIGGLY LINES, YOU, THE READER, HEREBY AGREE NOT TO NERD RAGE AGAINST THE AUTHOR, OCCUPATEDVOID.

~~~

After playing through Soulstorm I can pretty much see why Iron Lore tanked. Let's go through each aspect of this expensive patch or as the suits call it, an 'expansion'.

New Factions
Let''s start off with the Sisters of Battle. Though I have not really played them, I just love how they have a power exploit. Talk about QA, Iron Lore. Is it piracy's fault again?

The graphical aspects of the SOB are 'blech'. The buildings are XBAWKS HUEGE with blurry lowres texture, even on high detail. The same goes with the units. Except, one of the SOB tanks has purple and green spots on the skin. Nasty! SOB units lack sync kills, and have animations that only a mother could love.

Let's move on to the Dark Eldar. They also suffer from exploits. Soul powered abilities can be triggered by Observers. Apparently, Iron Lore wants everyone to be involved in the action of Soulstorm, including those who just wish to watch. There is a fix, but it is unofficial and may wreck your computer, a BIOS flash.

Graphically, the DE suffer from the same faults of the SOB. Bland textures, XBAWKS HUEGE buildings, crappy animations, lack of sync kills, etc.

Air Units
This would have worked well, if it was implemented properly. Although Chaos' flyer is a welcome add-on, the other races, not so much. For everybody else, the flyers seem to be there just to be...well...there.

Performance for the flyers is horrible. Playing as the Space Marines, I ordered my Tempest flyer to scout the map some more. Unfortunately, the hilly terrain, somehow caused my fighter chug slowly across the map, constantly starting and stopping.

I don't really have anything else to say about the flyers, except, "Don't forget to bring a towel," because you'll need it.

Campaign
This is what really pissed me off about Soulstorm. If you thought DC's campaign sucked and had a shitty story, STAY THE FUCK AWAY from Soulstorm's campaign as it has absolutely no story, introduction excluded. Remember special missions like Hyperion Peaks and Pavonis, well, they're gone, and instead, we have standard Take & Hold missions. Oh, but what about strongholds? Remember the banter between commanders, the unique-ness of each faction's stronghold, that's gone too, and we have strongholds with a short intro and generic 'kill factory' objectives.

Balance
Well, Iron Lore did alright here, but in some areas, they still screwed up horribly. The Necrons are nowhere near as imbalanced as they were in DC, so that's good. IG recieved well-need buffs as well. However, the Space Marines, were nerfed...AGAIN. This time our good pal, Khorne Bezerker, can chop through your standard and assault marines like butter. In fact, Chaos most definately was buffed in this expansion, as far as I can tell. Get ready for a surger in the dreaded ZERKER RUSH KEKEKEKE.

Voice Acting
Now I know nobody really gives a damn about voice actors, but they suck. I am talking about the stronghold voices, not the skirmish one's because those are the same. Gorgutz's signature voice has been replaced by Generic Warboss #4927's voice. I really don't feel like going through the rest of the voices, but serioiusly, Iron Lore, did you have to be different?

Teh punchline
What happens when you put the developers of a shitty diablo clone in charge of a deep RTS franchise? An uninspired, shitty RTS. lulz

 

[MetalCraze]

it seems dawn of war really died in dark crusade.
winter assault was the first and the last normal expansion.
also I like how it's a 3rd expansion and nobody still put the cliffhanger of the original space marine campaign to an end.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Go to every forum you know and warn them of Shi--Soulstorm. It'll be TQ all over again. :twisted:

 

[Annonchinil]

I would like to give the game another try, but it all feels so bloated that I couldn't be bothered.

 

[ricolikesrice]

...

i liked DCs campaign. sure, it would have been even better if they replaced all the skirmish fights with missions like hyperion peaks or the strongholds etc but overall it DID tell a story and wasnt half as bad at it imho.

Soulstorm s campaign is a huge step back, no banter, almost no fluff, feels simply soulless and generic combined with crappy voiceacting and units/animations that look worse then the 3y old original game.

other then that can only repeat what the others said...... if thats how iron lore ticks, i m fucking glad these uncreative shitheads are gone for good.

oh and relic loses sympathy points with me too for not stopping this PoS in the first place.

 

[Fez]

Holy crap, it sounds like this went completely to shit. Sloppy and generally poorly made all the way. I am glad that Iron Lore died if they are to blame for this. Good riddance.

It would be such a shame that a good series is capped off by a piece of shit like that. Cheers for the warning, OccupatedVoid. I'll wait and see what kind of nerd rage goes on and what fixes might happen before buying this.

 

[kingcomrade]

I liked Dark Crusade, the campaign mode story bits and banter were well done. The fluff that goes along with this campaign is horrendous and makes me, the 40k fan, nerd rage at how they knew jack shit about the setting.
"The Sisters attacked the Imperial Guard. Then when the Guard fought back, it proved they were heretics to the Sisters, and so that's why they fought."
lol what? They didn't even bother trying to find reasons for any of these factions to be here. Even the intro just kinda says "they are here, tee hee"

Voice acting is terrible, the graphics, animation, and art are terrible (the Sister's building animation is the reskinned Imperial Guard animation). Like I said, so half-assed it hurts.

The company Iron Lore that made it, by the way, shut down before it was even released.

 

[Fez]

Urgh. Even worse. I liked the fluff for the 40k universe, it was part of the fun. They can't get that right and have an idiotic or almost non-existent story to hold it together.

I'm amazed they managed to go so far wrong when they could have just followed the formula laid out and not gone as far wrong. Obviously reskinned and reused assets? Cheap.

 

[MetalCraze]

I didn't like the balance in Dark Crusade. otherwise it was pretty OK.
but ffs - I still remember playing the multiplayer game as Tau vs. Eldar. we literally were fighting in the middle of the map - so intense it was with no one of us being able to reach enemy base - but then the fucker built Avatar. and you already know who sucked in that game.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

I tried the demo. The narrator annoys me (why does he stretch vocals like this : "Boreale fought HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD bla bla"), the graphic design isn't good, somehow it seemed like pathfinding doesn't work anymore (my units just got lost and stuck on everything), I'm not sure what's the difficulty level of the demo but it seems like DE units are strictly better than their Space Marine contemporaries, the DE buildings are too big and I found out the hard way that the unit's need a lot more space that they would seem to when they're moving, so I got units stuck between terrain and the factory and noticed I can't demolish the damned structure (also, the vehicles are skimmers which in the board game translates to being able to fly over forests, but whatever). Soulstorm felt like unfinished, kind of like some kind of a fan mod.

Also, http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pSOJOiSWQWA

 

[Szioul]

Has anyone noticed that you lose your honor guard when you defeat an enemy faction?
I doubt it was meant to be a feature.

 

[The Vanished One]

So is it this bad? Ugly-looking, buggy and unbalanced?
I wonder how good the technical support will be, now that Iron Lore has closed its doors.

 

[Human Shield]

No way is it worth $40, I'm pirating it to play the SP thru once or twice. I couldn't even get through the DC campaign with every race because every mission I could just base rush and the HQ missions were grind fests through the whole map.

Fan mods are always better for balance in Relic games, Relic doesn't seem good at balancing on time. I'm waiting for a quality no-buildings mod so you can fight it out with no resources excepted your starting army and run it like Total War instead of a series of skirmish maps.

 

[Oarfish]

It's pretty dissapointing. The SOB seem way overpowered in single player. Seen lots of pathfinding and AI bugs - sometimes squads will just stop firing, or one heavy bolter guy will keep shooting at nothing long after stuff has died. The air units are for the most part shit and the campaign seems pretty dull. I prefer skirmish to scripted set piece battles in RTS, but they should really have added a little variety to the skirmishes - at the very least move the damn starting base locations about on defence.

 

[MetalCraze]

I even delayed the torrenting of this shit after all these comments - still don't understand why relic asked the shitty dev team that never released anything good - not only a good rts - to make an expansion for wh40k.
I'd better torrent something more useful.