Company of Heroes developer: Relic publisher: THQ genre: RTS Stretching the WW2 license to the breaking point, purveying the fantasy of WW2, but making an incredible RTS in the meantime.

littlemute

When the first WW2 games started hitting the computer after Saving Private Ryan turned our brains to shit with its ultra-realistic depiction of the random death lottery that is modern warfare, I figured it would be a few years before the game publishers got the ‘play the movie’ cash cow out of their systems. Unfortunately, the SPR game diaspora continued on and on for getting close to a decade now, and the cheese level started to ramp up to Sergeant Rock proportions around 2001. So, eight years after the plump faced Tom Hanks died at Ramelle, Relic plopped in our laps is a yet another run at D-Day with some of the exact cut scenes from Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942, Close combat 5 and I’m sure I’m missing 15-20 games here that delve into the same background material. Also Relic didn’t spare us the cheese-factor with the name: “Company of Heroes.” I assume they chose this because every other possible name for Easy Company was taken by other game developers and some marketing board got together, brainstormed over lattes for 8-12 hours, narrowed it down to two and with a bit of mob rule, the cheesiest name for a WW2 game to date was chosen. They could have called this game “Choke on a Greasy Cock” and it would have still sold, it’s just that good.

Two things almost stopped me from buying this game: the name, of course, and the fact that I did not enjoy Relic’s other offering in the 40K universe at all except to be able to say the words: “It’s about fucking time Games Workshop ripped off Blizzard for once and not the other way around.” The graphics were great, but as an RTS, DoW was sub-par compared to Warcraft 3, and especially Starcraft. However, after a bit of research and viewing a couple game-play videos, Company of Heroes became a MUST HAVE title and I scraped together what little fundage for games I could muster (read: “begged the wife”), and picked it up.

Whao Nellie! My criticism, other than the cheesy cut-scenes we’ve seen before (done better as well) in many other games, is that the game is too short and doesn’t have a German campaign. Other than that, even from my hairy Close Combat worshiping ass, I cannot tell you how cool this game is to play, how tense, how horrifically beautiful and how they hit the mark dead on compared to Dawn of War. I was upset at first that the game’s morale model wasn’t all that great (again compared to Close Combat) and the fact that in RTS ridiculousness, they left in the chore of having to build buildings to build tanks and train troops on the same map at the same time that you’re fighting (never has this looked more preposterous in a game), but once you start to play, your grognardish suspension of disbelief that has been shattered time and time again becomes irrelevant to the fantastic gameplay and fawesome graphics. The environments, models and explosions look much better than Call of Duty, and that’s an FPS! Check out the video links below before reading further and you’ll see, Relic was not fucking around with the graphics. Also performance wise the game didn’t lag at all with my GeForce 7800 GTX (only one so far).

Gameplay
The gameplay, like DOW, focuses the player not only on destroying enemy buildings and units, but taking strategic and tactical points on the map. Strategic points, when one player controls a majority, remove victory points from the opponent. When their VP total reaches zero, that player loses. The tactical points increase the amount of ammunition, fuel and soldiers available. A delicate balance must be reached between going for Fuel points to start building Armor units and grabbing and holding strategic points. It might be OK for the enemy to hold two out of three points while you get your panzers rolling, but it’s never OK for the enemy to hold all three strategic points. Being able to react to attacks, stage ambushes and set up static defenses under serious time and resource pressures (resource points are usually better spent on units, and having units sit and build defenses, while fun, means they are not out fighting) is the heart and soul of CoH, and the style of game forces players to be aggressive at all times, quite a change from the static, defense dominant Dawn of War..

The meat of the gameplay in any RTS worth its salt is the battle micro. It’s much less arcade like (for better or worse) than Warcraft 3, but timing is still important. It’s usually a question of ‘is my unit in cover?’ and ‘where is the closest cover?’ than pressing button sequences to release special powers. Typical units can opt to throw grenades, lay suppression fire or the RTS-unprecedented command: ‘run away!’ Never before seen in an RTS game (where all minions fight to the death at all times), CoH has turned that on it’s head by allowing the player to retreat units as he sees fit. Yes, they will route as well when they take a lot of casualties, but the player can have units haul ass back to base when they are in a tight spot rather than ordering them to move away while still engaged. Unlike real life (where running units are shot down as they break from cover), routing units are virtually impervious to damage.

Unit placement is much more important than in almost all other RTS games I’ve ever played, where your units are either totally exposed to fire or hidden from view completely. In COH, units in cover have a distinct advantage, and can be very difficult to dislodge. Unlike the harsh Close Combat, infantry units caught in the open are not instantly shot down to a man, but, like Dawn of War, can take some damage before taking casualties. Relic probably had no choice but to implement it in this way as you have to do the typical RTS base-management at the same time as fighting. I find it a tiny bit lenient on lazy players, but that’s just me. Infantry in buildings or other hard cover can take serious punishment from small arms before going down. Placement of heavy infantry weapons is absolutely key to victory on many maps. See the church tower? Better get a MG 42 up there right quick.

I’m typically against building defenses and turtling in RTS games: we all suffered the nonsense of Total Annihilation on all metal worlds or the poorly designed Age of Empires (i.e.: age of sitting and waiting) defense over offense nonsense. But in COH, building defense around a strategic point and being successful at repelling attacks against combined Armor and infantry assaults is one of the pure pleasures of the game

One gameplay complaint is that Tanks are all-seeing and can pick out infantry hidden in cover as well as infantry can. This simply should not be. Unsupported armor units in areas with a lot of hard cover were dead meat to enemy infantry. Remember in SPR when the rangers close assaulted the “Tiger” tank with the sticky bombs only to be shot into charred morsels by the nearby Flakvierling (I think that’s what it was), imagine what would have happened to that tank without infantry support? A couple of rounds in the view holes to bounce around inside until randomly finding a piece of meat to lacerate, a grenade in the port and blammo, easybakeoven time.

Secondly, snipers are amazingly powerful in the game, able to cause instant casualties to a unit in whatever cover they occupy. Probably as powerful as a heavy machine gun for holding ground, you should have as many of these units as possible as early as possible.

As for armor, with the fact that parts of tanks can be damaged reducing the unit’s combat capabilities and movement, it’s curious why damage to armored units is still ablative rather than hits either penetrating to do damage to the crew, gun, treads, engine. I assume this was a design decision to remove the luck factor a bit from the game. A single panzershrek shot can take out a Sherman tank in real life if it hits something important, but you’ll find yourself firing again and again at tanks to get their hit points to zero, regardless of whether the engine or main gun is damaged.

Graphics
There’s not much to say here: the game must be seen to be believed. Graphics are fan fucking tastic, and the destructible terrain is nothing short of brilliant for both gameplay and immersion.

Overall
Company of Heroes is by far the best RTS since Warcraft 3, with a German, British and Russian campaign this would be a true achievement in the genre. As it is, it’s brilliant, short and without a kraut campaign, unfinished business.

Binary rating: 1
NUTS!

Vids!

A barrage ends badly

Grenades vs building

A barrage ends well

littlemute
12/29/06 4:19PM

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