Company of Heroes (PC, 2006)

I have been on COH since it came out. Here is my review.

First of all, I am very thankful, that Relic didn't release this as a "Modern Day" Battle.

Setting in the WW2 era, you are in command of squads, each group or squads of soldiers has thier own personality that is expressed in a verbal response to your command...I will have to admit, that you kinda go through a cycle of getting attached to the men & when I lost them, you do feel a sense of loss that I found, very unique in this game. If you really enjoyed the movie "Saving Private Ryan" you will fit right in.

Lets get right to the PROS - If you have a good system, you will get rewarded in a cinematic epic presentation. Relic went through great detail of idol standby movement as your men sits in place until the action arrives. The physics of the game is excellent! Ragdoll physics is common for those who have fallen and when you see body parts flying everywhere then you may have just touched the tip of the reality of this game.

Hours & hours of gameplay...the difficult settings is simple...if you have the enemy on 'Normal" be prepared to have your butt handed to you...

The best enjoyment for me, is the start of the game. The setting up of positions, line of fire, territory grab & good defense. I find myself to enjoy less when the enemy's tanks comes into play towards the middle of the game. Because if your not ready for them, your going to get owned.

The CONS - Relic needs to have a game setup that allows the option of no tanks or artillery.

A random map button would be absolutely wonderful!

To be able to save a soldier at the end of one battle to be able to fight in another.

Hand to hand combat! a must have!

"Easy to use" map editor / creator...

New maps! Got to have them...the community itself has gone through great efforts to create a custom maps for all to enjoy, and I understand that the majority of them can no longer be played under the latest patches of online play...this is not acceptable Relic! It is those that has done the footwork for you folks that deserve better respect than that...without the community, you have no client.

Finally...an A.I. that can learn from your tactics and respond accordingly.

Conclusion...This game is still worth getting if you have not done so. They have done real good with this game...the avenues of option is endless...a Pacific Conflict...now there's another game all on its own.

C & C can't come close to this...
World in Conflict should of been like this...
Age of Empires Series & Empire Earth should have grown into this...
Pacific Storm can learn from this...

Relic has done good on this...I sure hope that they don't gum up the works by reinventing the wheel when the wheel isn't broken, just needs adjusting.

Thanks for your time here.

JHSchwarzkopf
USMC

This is the most realistic RTS game out there so far. The attention to detail is breathtaking with a beefy graphics card. I'm running a Geforce 6800GT with 1GB of HyperX memory and it is great. Although an up to date card will bring up all the visual options at your disposal.

The game play is intense. Units have realistic limitations. For example, machine gunners would just tickle a tank and the rear of the tanks take more damage due to weaker armer there. Units such as the anti-tank artillery, machine gun squads and various directional projected units have an effective range, the farther the target, the less accurate the shots. Building damage is dependent on where it's damaged. You can see your men through the windows ready to shoot. You have to see for yourself how well this game is made. One more thing I like to mention is the camera is full motion. You can zoom down to the face of the solder, and see at his eye level of the battlefield. You can move any way you want like turn, pitch, zoom and rotate.

The game can be even more fun if it lets you have more units on the population limit though... This is a true strategy game in which no one unit can do it all, you have to use strengths of different units against the weaknesses of your enemy. Replay value is very high du to entirely destructible requirements so no two games are ever alike.

Sometimes a game is over-hyped by the media. Sometimes the media can't give a game enough hype. This game is one of the latter.

The basis premise of this game is that you are an army leader during World War II. In the campaign, you lead the Americans to victory, starting with the D-Day invasion.

Unfortunately, this game does not have a German campaign, but that is no problem for me since I bought it for skirmish, lan, and internet matches.

During a non-campaign match, you choose to be either Americans or German army. As you start defeating enemy units, capturing varies points of the map, and build buildings, you earn command point to spend in one of three specialist trees. The American and German's get different trees, and it is quite interesting to see how the abilities and units you unlock can drastically change the way you plan your strategy.

The way you gain resources in this game is to capture control points across the map. They are divided into three types: strategic (manpower only), ammunition , and fuel points. All three points increase the amount of resources you get per minute and increase the amount of manpower you get and let you build a larger number of units.

Take note that ammunition and fuel points are special in the fact that they are your only real source for ammunition and fuel respectively. Ammo is needed for upgrades and abilities; fuel is needed for building vehicles and for a few upgrades.

In the units department, the game divides units up into three categories: infantry (engineers, rifle-men, grenadiers), light-vehicles (jeeps, motorcycles, half-tracks), and tanks (Shermans, Panzer IV). This is the place where the game excels greatly: no two different units are the same, and each unit has its strengths and weaknesses. You will learn very quickly that you will not go very far unless you learn those strength and weaknesses and balance the units you use to offset those weakness.

That is Company in Heroes described in a nut-shell, but how fun is it to play?

Extremely.

It is fun to try out each faction and to learn what the best strategy in different time is. This game is quite enjoyable to play; just note that an average round takes at least 45 min. to finish, so this game is not the best if you plan on having short rounds unless you plan on resuming from saved games extensively.

I highly enjoy this game, and if you are interested, download the demo to see if you like it.

I definitely do, and I hope you will to.

It took me approximately 12 hours of play time to run through the game the first time. Artificial intelligence of opposing players and allies is dynamic resulting in greater or lesser challenges and varing strategies being applied by allies/opponents. The control panel was unusually large and provided only minimal functionality. I would like to see it's size reduced giving more screen real estate. The video and memory management in this game are the best I have seen. The game does not sit and build memory when in pause (even for hours). There were no difficulties with switching to other applications and no video issues. Installation was likewise faultless.

The game also includes a good number of skirmishes. Approximately another 12-15 hours worth of game time.

While intuitive, I felt that resource management played too great a role in sucess. Exact planning and timing of resouces management trumped strategy in most skirmishes. If one is very agressive about monopolizing resources you will just smother your opponent with assets despite the fact that your war fighting strategy may be less than stellar. Come to think of it maybe this does reflect reality in WWII.

PROS: Amazing graphics, Amazing sound, Amazing gameplay. Great multiplayer matching service.

CONS: Long load times, need a pretty hefty system to run it properly, only two factions US and Nazi. loss of friends and sleep as you will never be able to stop playing it.

WOW! I mean what more can I say than WOW?! This real time strategy game has set the bar so high, games will be trying to copying it for years. The game is set against the backdrop of World War 2, at its core its a standard RTS, resource gathering, base building, etc. Resource gathering is very intuitive, as you need to man control points around the map, this than forces an exciting tug-o-war system as you battle it out for control. Once you enter combat it becomes so much more, the graphics are amazing, with so many little details like destructable enviroments and ragdoll effects. When you control a squad of troops they dont just stand around waiting for orders, they make use of surrounding cover and look for flanking routes. Units are balanced pretty accuarte to their true life counterparts, dont for a second think a sherman can go toe to toe against a Tiger! There is just so much I can say about how amazing this game, BUY THIS GAME!