Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade, released on the 31st of October 2006 by Relic Entertainment, is a real-time strategy game for the PC. A 'real-time strategy' game is were the player takes control an army to battle and conquer other armies. The game is one of three expansions on the original Dawn Of War game with the other expansions, Dawn Of War: Winter Assault coming before Dark Crusade and Dawn Of War: Soulstorm coming after Dark Crusade. In the game, the player can select units or buildings with the left button of the mouse and perform an action like 'move' or 'attack' with the right button of the mouse. Each army (or 'race' as it is known in Dawn Of War') has its own unique units that range from the well rounded infantry squads to tank hunting veterans and super heavy tanks, so there is plenty of choice when using these armies.
Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade has a PEGI 16 rating. PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) is an age rating system launched in the spring 2003 to replace numerous national age rating systems with a single system throughout Europe. The reason that Dark Crusade has a rating of 16 is because it contains 'realistic looking violent'.
The audience for Dark Crusade are mainly 16+ males as it contains a lot of blood (not enough to be an 18+) and has some language which under 16s may not understand. Since Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade is based on the tabletop wargame; Warhammer 40,000 (known as '40k'), it is mainly aimed at the fans of 40k. The people who play Dark Crusade are likely to be Tribe Wired from the LifeMatrix because of the creativity the player needs to win against the enemy (that and most 40k fans are single). The price of the actual 40k miniatures themselves are reasonable with the Dawn Of War game being at a similar price but with the PC being the most expensive, possibly attracting an audience from the C1, C2, D and E categories of the socio economic model.
Just like what was said at the start, Dark Crusade is a real-time strategy game. This means it will rely on how the player control his/her army in a battle. This genre will likely appeal to those who like to feel in control and have a lot of power, otherwise known as Suceeders (a category within the 'Cross-Cultural Consumer Characteristics' audience profiling technique). An example of this in Dark Crusade would be when playing as the Imperial Guard; when clicked on, the Guardsmen units will respond by saying “Sir, yes, sir!” or “What are your orders, sir!”. This shows the player that they are currently in control of that unit and thus adding more appeal for Suceeders. The language the game uses can range from simple to technical, depending on what race you play as, with the barbaric Orkz having a simple and primitive language skills or the elegant Eldar using technical terms nearly all the time. This adds further appeal to the game because it gives the audience a choice in how simple or technical they want it. Since all the player needs to do is left click to select and right click to move or attack, it makes the game easy to use and thus more appealing towards a simpler audience.
To totally sum up Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade, I'll do a short review of the game. The graphics (depending on what setting you've put them on) are great despite the game's age, though on the lowest settings the model detail can be a bit dull. The audio for Dark Crusade is some of the best a real-time strategy game can have, with small skirmishes having shouts of men and aliens charging into melee combat to full scale battles having the sounds of artillery shells pounding the earth and tank cannons blowing apart whole infantry platoons. As I said before, most of the gameplay is just left click this, right click that but it's how opposing units interact with each other which is the most exciting. With long ranged heavy weapon teams firing at close combat specialists only to equip bayonets as the close combat specialists close in, resulting in a brutal and agonizing death for the heavy weapon teams as the close combat specialists hack them to pieces. Very fun indeed. So in my opinion, this is why people like it. They like it because it's simple to use and can play out some very awesome battles with detailed models and great sound effects.
I hope you've enjoyed this blog and thank you for reading!
