Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 5.9 (2.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Greg Kasavin
• Reviewed on: 07/30/1999
• Updated on: 05/05/2000
• Released on: 06/30/1999
• Originally published on GameSpot: Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War (PC) Review

Of all the computer games inspired by Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 tabletop science-fiction wargame, Rites of War is the first to place the fanatical Imperium of Man in a peripheral role. Suddenly the space marines are the enemy, and the game centers on the proud and mighty Eldar, a fallen race still clinging to life thanks to remarkable technology and limitless courage. Fans of the source material will no doubt appreciate the opportunity posed by Rites of War to take on the Imperium with the Eldar's alien weapons and will be further pleased to learn that they'll face the Tyranid as well, who haven't shown their ugly faces on the computer screen since Space Hulk. Together, these three races are a fascinating bunch, so much so that they clearly influenced their counterparts in Blizzard's wildly popular real-time strategy game Starcraft. Even so, they still can't save Rites of War from feeling like the typical and underwhelming turn-based strategy game that it is.

The Eldar may be a mysterious race indeed, but what's especially mysterious about Rites of War is why its system requirements are so steep. The fact is, Rites of War looks like a very old game, largely because it runs on the two-year-old Panzer General II graphics engine, which arguably didn't even look that great for its time. Yet while mediocre graphics are acceptable in the turn-based strategy genre, poor performance is not. You'd think smooth, fast gameplay would be the least a developer could offer, when having to work with an old graphics engine. But you can expect sluggish performance from Rites of War even if you exceed its preposterously high minimum requirements.

If you can get it running, you'll find that Rites of War plays more like a wargame and not so much like its source material. Most missions have you moving around 15 units one by one over a hex-based map in an effort to defeat your enemies or claim their territory. The majority of these units can only attack adjacent hexes, at which point the game compares unit stats for initiative, strength, toughness, and so forth to resolve the combat. You'll need a variety of units to succeed; tactical units are useful in any situation but are vulnerable to artillery. Artillery can soften up most any target from long range, although assault units can easily destroy them or most anything else if they can get close enough. Devastator units are especially important, and while slow, their powerful attacks can provide cover fire for their allies. Scouts can see far ahead and attack without fear of retaliation, catching their foes by surprise. You'll also deploy aerial units, war machines, and psykers with their devastating psychic powers. True to its source, Rites of War feels well balanced, and all three of its sides play differently yet are similarly powerful. It's an interesting and effective variation on the Warhammer 40,000 rules, although its combat is regrettably far less visceral than the preceding Warhammer 40,000 strategy games Chaos Gate and Final Liberation.

Part of the reason is Rites of War just doesn't look or sound very good. Though the game is colorful, and its maps are fairly detailed and cleanly rendered, the unit graphics themselves look sloppy and animate so poorly that you'll wonder whether it's your computer rather than the game that's at fault. If you're very familiar with the pewter Warhammer 40,000 miniatures that the six-dozen-odd units in Rites of War are taken from, then you'll be able to distinguish the game's renderings of a Howling Banshee Exarch from a Dire Avenger without too much trouble. But if you aren't so experienced with the source material, the game's units will utterly fail to convey the detail and charisma that helped make the tabletop wargame so popular. The units aren't shown to scale, either - a fact that will put your ability to suspend disbelief to a serious test. Even behemoths such as the Tyranid Carnifex are reduced to the size of everything else. Consequently, the battles in Rites of War are abstracted so much that you'll need to work hard to convince yourself that some important battle is raging, even more so than you would playing the original game on a table with metal figurines.

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