Relic’s masterpiece back for another episode!

Nuns in battle armour! Elves in spiky leather! It can only be Warhammer 40,000: Soulstorm!

But wait, this episode was co-developed by Iron Lore Entertainment rather than Relic alone. We assume Relic was busy developing Dawn of War 2 (more on that to come). Can ILE match the quality and depth of previous episodes? Well kinda, sorta. The game is still great fun and is pretty much a must have for fans of the genre but on release, it had several annoying flaws which might put off a casual player or one new to the series.

New Races

Many fans of the series had been hoping for the terrifying swarm race, the Tyranids to be added this time but instead Relic opted for the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar. The Sisters of Battle are a devout group of women from the Imperium of Man who are utterly devoted to their God-Emperor and are fond of incinerating heretics and non believers with their “Righteous Fire” (flamethrowers to you and me). The Dark Eldar are essentially bad elves with guns who delight in doing bad stuff and wearing lots of spiky leather.

Gameplay

The single player campaign revolves around several planets each with multiple territories and the player controls one of the games races or factions in an effort to capture all the territories and destroy all rivals. Generally speaking, this is pretty good fun but one serious flaw is the player frequently has to fight in the same territory (i.e., map) several times in a row as the computer player immediately attacks a captured territory. This is very annoying and somewhat tedious as few players would want to fight essentially an identical battle over and over. Having said that, the game is very stable and we didn’t have any crashes to desktop or hang-ups so a patch to fix the annoying AI behaviour is all that was really needed upon release. Units remain balanced and the races and factions are fairly well matched and cater for a variety of playing styles.

This episode also added flying vehicles although these are not really true flyers, they add an interesting and fun dimension to the game with the option for rapid strikes on your opponent and massed air, land and hover attacks. Multi player remains as good as ever and the graphics are still excellent even if the game engine is aging.

Installation woes

It is very important to remember that although this is a standalone single player game, only the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are available in multiplayer unless the player has the pervious episodes of the game. Players who do not play multi player or who only want to play the new races needn’t get the previous episodes. It is also worth noting that the routine for the game to identify your CD keys from previous episodes isn’t flawless and somewhat fiddly. We recommend having the previous games installed already and the CD keys handy when installing Soulstorm.

Verdict

A must have for fans of the genre and owners of the previous episodes

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