Company of Heroes Review

I have played a lot of World War 2 RTS games over the past few years, which has meant that I’ve had to deal with a lot of frustration and disappointment. Things had gotten so bad that I was beginning to wonder if anyone would be able to find a way to translate the action from that war into an RTS game that would be both challenging and entertaining. It’s a good thing that I hadn’t completely given up hope though, as my patience has been rewarded by Company of Heroes. Not only is it an excellent World War II RTS game, it is an excellent RTS game that ranks right up there with some of the legends in the genre. Yes, it is that good.

Company of Heroes is developed by Relic, a company that has some experience with producing top-notch RTS games. If you’re familiar with the excellent Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, then you’ll see some of that game’s influences in Company of Heroes. However, Company of Heroes is much more than Dawn of War with World War II units.

The game’s campaign is centered on the exploits of Able Company as they partake in the Normandy Campaign, from the storming of the beaches to the final blow that breaks the back of the German defenses. After the initial beach landing, you’ll face battles in both the countryside and cities of Normandy in which you’ll be faced with a variety of missions and challenges. However, the basics of the gameplay are always focused on acquiring and maintaining supply. Key locations on the maps are designated as manpower, munitions, or fuel points. Capture these locations and you’ll get a steady stream of the associated resources with which to create and upgrade units. In addition, you’ll only be able to benefit from these resource locations if the sectors in which they are located are currently in supply, meaning that there must be a contiguous line of controlled sectors between the supply point and your headquarters. As it should, it drives strategy in the game to taking key locations and defending them against counterattack. This resource model works quite well for a military RTS and is certainly a lot more realistic then putting an ax into the hands of an airborne soldier and telling him to go and chop down the nearest tree.

The game also allows you to choose from one of three “doctrines” during the game that determine which bonuses are available to you through the course of the game. For example, selecting the airborne doctrine will periodically make a group of rangers available for you to drop into the battlefield. These bonus “powers” are not powerful or common enough to upset the game’s strategic balance. Instead they add another component to the strategy and help to craft your forces to your style of play or strategic approach. Select the wrong doctrine at the wrong time and you can find yourself in a bit of a bind and facing tougher odds.

When you start to play the game you’ll be amazed at the level of the AI in the game. Your soldiers behave realistically, among many other things going prone or seeking cover when under fire, cursing at the approach of a tank, or providing covering fire for their squadmate who is trying to toss a satchel charge into a building. You’re free to concentrate on giving out orders rather than seeing that they are carried out or wasting time baysitting units that are too dumb to jump behind a wall when an MG42 opens up on them. Company of Heroes is a strategy game in which not only strategy matters but tactics as well. Your units are not going to last very long if you throw them headlong into a fight and a squad of soldiers can’t go toe to toe with a tank and win. You’ll need to constantly work to flank enemy positions, suppress enemies with mortar fire before advancing, and maneuver a bazooka to a firing position behind an enemy tank. On defense you’ll need to strategically place barbed wire, mines, and sandbags to funnel enemy troops into your well-placed machine gun nest fire arcs. This is not a strategy game for players that rely solely on fast-clicking fingers.

The attention to detail in the game is impressive. The structures on the maps are fully destructible, so villages really do look like warzones once you get through with them. You can catch a sniper taking aim from a window and then ducking back, and then watch as he comes down with the building’s façade after you manage to get a satchel charge at the base of wall. You can use grenades to knock down a wall and create an opening for your squad to flank an enemy position. Mortar rounds will send bodies into the air on impact and leave craters behind, tanks will throw twisted metal around when they are hit, and the rubble from buildings will pile up in the streets. This attention to detail extends to the audio portion of the game as well. You’ll be able to tell what arms a squad is equipped with just by listening to the reports of their weapons. Explosions sound appropriately destructive as do the cascades of rubble. You’ll even be able to pick up on what is going on on the ground by listening to your soldiers as they’ll yell to each other when they encounter enemy troops, positions, and weapons.

The 15 mission campaign is challenging enough to give veteran strategy gamers a run for their money, but when the dust settles and you emerge victorious you have the skirmish and multiplayer modes awaiting you. In these modes you’ll also be able to command the German forces and you’ll find that they play a little differently than the Americans. The Germans rely more on heavier and entrenched weaponry as opposed to the fast-moving Americans who try to use their mobility to their advantage. The skirmish games take a different approach than your typical “annihilate the enemy” RTS battle. Strategic victory points are added to the maps in addition to the resource points. Each side begins with a set number of tickets like in some first person shooters and you’ll begin to lose your tickets if the enemy holds more strategic points than you do. The more strategic points that you hold, the faster your enemy’s tickets are subtracted. The game ends when on side runs out of tickets.

Multiplayer games are run through Relic’s own matchmaking system and you can select from two player duels to team battles between Axis and Allied forces. If you thought the Ai presented you with a challenge in the game, wait until you go up against other players. The game design makes for some exciting and unpredictable play against other gamers and the multiplayer game will have you coming back to Company of Heroes for a long time after you’ve finished the campaign.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 96%. World War II finally gets the epic strategy game it deserves.