With the deluge of mintox console releases your PC may be feeling a little neglected. Poor wee thing, all alone in the cold, peeking through the window as you laugh and frollick with your console.

Well here's a sure fire way to give your PC a little love, read Spare Change? for this week, then run out and pick up a copy of Dawn of War for less money than the salad bar at Sizzler.

The Chaos Spacemarines give the Imperial Guard a hard time, note the burly Ogre units.

If I said Dawn of War and you had any other reaction than, 'whats that?', you could probably stop reading about now. You know all ready that Dawn of War is one of the best games to grace the PC game in history, that its probably the best RTS (thats Real Time Strategy mum) games of all time with a compelling and exciting single player campaign and terrific online modes, not to mention three (count 'em three!) expansions each more brilliant than the last! You know all that stuff so you don't need to read on and learn it. For the rest of you, read on.

When Dawn of War materialised on retail shelves a few years ago I was feeling more than a little over RTS games having played just about all of them from Warcraft and Command and Conquer onwards I didn't have much of a desire to branch into another one. My oldest boy at the time had followed his father in a number of nerdly pursuits and even added a new one to his repertoire, painting citadel miniatures, particularly the infamous chain saw sword carrying Space Marines and their various vicious foes. When he saw Dawn of War on the shelves he all but begged that we buy it, being a stern and cruel parent, spartan even, I said no. So he asked his mum and she bought it.

The Grey Knights are an elite melee focused unit of Space Marines available in the Dark Crusade expansion

Naturally I couldn't let any game enter my house unplayed and was obliged to have a go. I was expecting a Command and Conquer or Supreme Commander clone with the various Warhammer units substituted for their generic hover tanks and soldiers, instead I found the first RTS to really blow me away in a long time. Relic had taken the RTS game style with Dawn of War and strained out all the lumpy boring bits leaving a pure unspoiled strain of war game complete with copious helpings of blood and flame. They also made you care about your units and squads, not just your hero units, every single little thing you built. Even your basic squad of Space Marine's could be upgraded and modified dozens of ways with the simple tech trees. Best of all resource mining was out, instead you earned credit to turn into troops by capturing strategic locations around the map and pushing into enemy territory. So rather than sitting on your ass and slowly, boringly, building a huge crushing army you were constantly fighting and defending for the advantage. From the first moment you meet your enemy and the line is drawn the fighting just doesn't stop. As I said, its an RTS without the boring bits. If this is all sound similar its because Ensemble borrowed heavily from Dawn of Wars design for Halo Wars and adapted it to the console. Halo Wars is very much Dawn of Wars Lite, so if you liked that, you'll love this.

As you upgrade your squads they get better weapons and extra support units

One of my favourite features of the Dawn of War series has always been the unit animations which are always detailed. There's always a little thrill when you see your scout units whip out their sniper rifles take a bead on an enemy commander and pick them off, or watching an Orc Dreadnaught snatch up one of my Space Marines and literally tear him limb from limb before tossing the torso away in a geyser of blood. Glorious.

You may be aware that Dawn of War 2 was released in recent months, the game does vary from the original in a few ways, mainly by being focused primarily on the squad rather than building an army as you did in Dawn of War. Plus the fact you need a liquid cooled sentient super computer to run it, whereas Dawn of War and its expansions runs okay on my clapped out PC.

Give us blood, blooooood, gallons of the stuff, give us all you can, but it'll never be enough

The first Dawn of War game does have some issues, two spring to mind. Firstly the single player campaign in the original game only features the Space Marines and doesn't give you the chance to command the Chaos Space Marines, Eldar (space elves) or Orcs despite the fact you can use all four in multiplayer. This pretty much cleared up as an issue in the expansions though. Secondly multiplayer is competitive, furiously competitive. Before you hop online and try to mess with the big boys its in your interest to do a little research, read a few message boards and learn about things like 'Rush techniques', otherwise you're likely to get steam rolled while you're daintly deciding where to build your barracks.

Dawn of War has three very comprehensive expansions added to it. Winter Assault adds the Imperial Guard, regular humans (the Space Marines are freaky surgically enhanced psychos) with a whole campaign featuring the Imperial Guard and the Eldar as playable races plus new units for all the previous races. Dark Crusade features two cool new races, the tech heavy Tau, a conglomerate of aliens similar to the Covenant from Halo and the unstoppable Necron, a cross between an undead army and the Terminators whose base is a giant pyramid that lifts of from the ground, hovering over the battlefield zapping enemies. Dark Crusade also introduces a Risk styled territory control game as the single player campaign. You choose a race and then try to push all the other races of the planet one region at a time. The last pack Soulstorm includes the Sisters of Battle which are sort of Space Marine nuns and the Dark Eldar, like regular Eldar but they hate their parents and listen to Marilyn Manson too much. For the cost of a full price game you can download all four.

Still undecided? Well because Dawn of War is a PC game there are demos for the original game and all the expansions available from this link right here. The original game isn't actually required for the expansions but it means you won't have access to all the races, just the ones in the game you have. No no, don't thank me, the knowledge I'm doing good deeds in this world is thanks enough.

Feel free to head to our forums to discuss all things Dawn of War.