No, really. It did. Well... okay... it didn't cheat, per se, but it isn't playing by the same rules that I have to play by.

And that's not really fair.

I've been playing Dawn of War: Soulstorm whenever I have time, lately. I'm probably 20 hours invested now with the majority of that in the single player campaign. And I am finding myself giving the screen the stink-eye, even growling in frustration, FAR more than I did with its predecessor, Dark Crusade. From my first hours into it, I was already let down (see my review) by the lack of innovation or even real change and now that I am getting further along things are just getting worse for me.

Taking the Space Marines as my first foray into the campaign, as is customary for me, I faced off against the Orks and Tau as my first opponents. While the Orks weren't much toughter in execution, I did notices that the AI had gotten a bit more aggressive and was more prone to intelligently avoiding a pointless assault than in DC. The Tau showed no mercy and I don't look forward to playing one of the other forces that will have to fight their way from another planet and thus allow the Tau to build up their strength. Even weak, stealth units rushing you with a commander (or two) backing them up is damned mean.

As I move on to other planets, this ruthless AI only gets worse since I am attacking entrenched positions and more honor guard. It was when bringing boot-to-ass against the forces of Chaos that I noted the "cheating". In the first territory I attacked, I thought it was odd that I was seeing so much opposition so quickly. But all of it could have been garrisoned, if Chaos had enough requisition, so I just figured that this was the case. In the next territory, one that they had just taken from the Dark Eldar, though, I elected to be more aggressive and with my faster expansion found both units and buildings that aren't available to garrison on the map FAR sooner than any human player could get to them. Two battles later, Chaos struck at that second territory I had taken from them and this is where I found out that buildings didn't remain on the map after your conquests like they did in DC. Having counted on this, I hadn't garrisoned much behind me. Now, that feature was easily abusable and could make the game far too easy, so I didn't cry a river though I did enjoy carefully planning my builds to optimize the eventual defense later. Garrisoning buildings just isn't as logical because the placement is haphazard. Furthermore, it is highly unfun to watch such a large and one-sided rush come rolling into your hopelessly undefended base while also being highly unreasonable given that the AI comes straight for you where a human player would have to come looking.

Now what I consider to be the kicker. I favor seeing the story over claiming a larger e-penis, so I'm playing on Easy. If the AI is this ruthless, efficient, and possibly even receiving handicaps to "increase the challenge" on Easy then what retarded levels of frustration can I expect on higher difficulty levels?

I think designers, and possibly the playtesters who advise them, have forgotten that some people just don't have the same skill or time to hone it as they do and, maybe, just don't care about being able to tell others how they beat this game on supercoolawesomebadassyoudaman difficulty. If I select Easy, I don't want to ever deal with frustration that doesn't stem from me doing something that I KNEW was a big risk in the first place. I should always have a fair chance at victory without having to pull something out of my ass or be a savant at the game. That is why it is called Easy.