Dark Crusade: A return to the grim darkness of the far future...

Author's Rating:

Pros: -Great graphics
-Good audio
-Great gameplay, very epic battles
-Good online

Cons: -High-end machines are needed to get the most out of it
-Difficult learning curve

The Bottom Line: 
Get it, especially if you are fan of real-time strategy games, this is a must-buy. Great game, although very challenging, and unfortunately you need a kick-butt pc. 4.8/5 stars.

Author's Review
I was very surprised that this game didn't already have a review on it, but since it doesn't, I thought I would help to get it out there.

Let me get this outta the way: This game is MATURE RATED. It features violence, blood, and even gore if you set the graphics high enough, so you may not want to get this for children under 17. Just a warning.

Speaking of "high enough", this game also requires a pretty hefty computer to run, so for informative purposes, here are the system requirements:

-Windows 98/2000/XP/ME • DirectX 9.0b
-1.4 GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon XP processor
-256 MB RAM
-2 GB free hard drive space (for only this game, more if you have the first or second games)
-DirectX 9.0b compatible AGP video card with Hardware Transform and Lighting and 32MB of Video RAM
-DirectX 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card
-4x DVD-ROM drive


And those are just the minimum... got anything better and you should be in the clear.


Now let's start this review already!! The game is a real-time strategy game for the PC, based off of a tabletop game of the same name, which uses miniature models that players build and paint and fight battles with. However, that game is turn-based, so the developers did quite a good job translating that into real-time. A cool thing about this games is that although it is an expansion, you can play with just this disk, although you are then limited to only using the two new races which premier in the game: the dynamic, high technology Tau, or the soulless, Terminator-without-all-the-skin Necrons, but I seriously recommend getting the other games as it gives you a lot more races to play with... 5 more to be exact: The Space Marines (The Imperium of Man's super-soldiers), The Eldar(Elvish-looking aliens with psychic powers), The Orks (basically big, green, hideously-deformed humans with guns), The Chaos Space Marines (The Space Marines' evil twin brother, with more spikes and deformities, and black), and the Imperial Guard (humanity's non-super-soldier soldiers, which are only available from the 2nd game). It's quite a bargain to get them so I do suggest it as this series is a great series. This game is one of the best games I have played in a long time. The interface is quite easy, but I do suggest that newcomers take the tutorial to get up to speed with the how the game works. Instead of resources that you harvest, like in most other RTS'(Real-Time Strategy for future reference), this game you capture strategic points, which gains you requisition to produce more units and buildings and generally advance through the missions, and the other resource is power, for which you build plasma generators. For both resources, the more you build and capture, the more you get.

The races you can be is one of aspects where this game shines, although partly because they all have past history with the Warhammer 40k tabletop game. The races play completely different, where the Tau have dynamic jet-pack units, and large floating tanks, with considerable firepower; their primary infantry soldier does the most damage than any of the other race's primary infantry unit. They also use battlesuits, mounted with an impressive array of weaponry. In stark contrast to the mobile Tau are the Necrons. Most of their units are shaped in the form of skeletons, yet they are completely robotic. They are quite eerie to play as, since none of them speak when selected with the cursor, and advance with a certain impending dread. The guns they use emit green flashes, and their special ability is that their commander unit can raise them back from the "dead", to fight again. They have relatively small numbers to balance this out. Along with the main units, each race has a super unit that it can call fro in times of need. The Tau's firepower is so strong however, that their super unit is the weakest of all the races. For the Tau, it is the greater Gnarloc, which is a product of their mercenaries they employ, the Kroot, which smashes through the terrain and rips through whole squads of infantry. The Necrons technically have two super units, although one is only available after huge amounts of research. The commander unit can transform for a few minutes into the Nightbringer, the Necron god, and he is invincible until it wears off, and their other unit is the Monolith, which as said before, requires progressing up a considerably large tech-tree, although it has insane firepower.

By the way, I suggest reading the other games' reviews for descriptions of other races. This review is for this game.


The graphics are really good on high, but that requires a lot of high-end goodness pc-wise, so most people should set it on Low to Medium, and it still looks pretty good. The environments range from ruined cities to jungles to snowy mountains, and look real enough. The units all animate when moving or still, and have decent death animations, especially when sent flying from an explosion. The SHEER AMOUNT of units you can have onscreen(which depends, again, on your PC) is amazing, and you can have fierce, epic battles, with tanks zooming every which way, and infantry pouring fire into each other, and the commanders ripping their way through whole squads, all with orchestral battle music in the background. Overall, very good production values. Good job, THQ.

Campaign mode is basically a planet-wide free for all between races, with each race trying to take over the world. It's kind of like risk except you play the actual battles. None of the missions ever felt the same, which is great because you don't get bored, and there are large cinematics for when you hit an enemy combatant at his planetary HQ. Victory over that race eliminates them from the planet, and winning minor battles lets you upgrade your commander to near god-like status,as well as have a retinue of vehicles and infantry support him/it in each battle.


The cool thing about this game is that, just like the tabletop game, you can create your own paint schemes for your races, which means you can personalize them down to their weapon colours. This lends a good deal of personality to your race, and it's pretty cool to see your own army advancing on an entrenched position. This, along with multiplayer online support for up to eight players in a game, lends a good deal of replay-ability to the game, and me and my friends have LAN-parties like crazy with this game. Again, online with eight players requires a decent computer to pull it off.


This game excellent, but there is a difficult learning curve - take the tutorial first before playing! It's what they're there for. Again, good job, THQ