Company of Heroes PC Game Review

Ratings: Gameplay: 23/25, Graphics & Audio: 24/25, Creativity 25/25, Fun 25/25
Total: 97/100

THQ and Relic Entertainment definitely have a hit on their hands with Company of Heroes. Relic has taken the gaming experience and created not only a great game but an excellent overall package of a real time strategy game from the opening credits of the games campaign to the intense and unforgiving multiplayer action available on line or over a LAN. Relic has some great past games in this area such as Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Homeworld and have continued their marks of excellence with Company of Heroes.

Company of Heroes has an extremely good campaign that is 15 missions long and even on the lowest difficulty setting will take a good fifteen to twenty hours to play. The time is kind of an iffy thing in Company of Heroes because some missions have you defending for a set time and others have you trying to conquer an objective in a certain time limit. Just getting the hang of tactics and retrying different strategies takes time so things can play out very differently according to your playing style.

But the games campaign is quite good and well worth playing levels over and over again on the different levels of difficulty. The game uses a very familiar menu and interface that is common to RTS games and the mechanics are very easy to use. You have the usual mini map and ability to select units and place them into companies for quick deployment. Company of Heroes also progresses quite nicely in difficulty and how the missions add a unique twist the further into the campaign you get. Not only do you have some unique battle zones but some of the simplest can also be the most difficult.

You have different units from foot soldiers like infantry, Rangers and engineers to light vehicles like jeeps and half-tracks to heavy tanks like the Sherman and Panther. One mission in the campaign is a hunt for seven Panther tanks across a pretty mixed combat area so using your armor is essential to destroying the German Panthers roaming the combat zone. There is a good mix of combat areas and types of missions with Relic taking quite a few liberties with the real World War 2 D-Day invasion story line they used for the games campaign.

Company of Heroes has great tactics and the AI is definitely out to get you from the start. The computer does a great job of varying the attack style and uses good mixed units to blend the different abilities of units like foot soldiers and tanks to protect them to attack your resource points and headquarters. The games main tactics of obtaining resources at resource points across the maps and defending them to be able to build more units gets thrown in with the tactics of the objectives. You do not have any automatic resupply or rebuilding of units so you need to actively keep units healthy or respawn them when they are conquered. You do this using your headquarters and other buildings the engineers build and the ammo and fuel resource points.

Company of Heroes has a really good tutorial to get you used to your units, the games menu and mechanics and unit building and resource management. This will be a great help to get you used to playing the game and the camera movements but does not really completely prepare you for the missions of the campaign or multiplayer fighting. There is no such thing as practicing for war and Company of Heroes does this exact thing by showing you how to do the things you need to in the game but not the tactics and strategy that means your success in objectives.

Using your units abilities and other tactics like flanking, using available cover and other combat tactics will be learned if you don't already know most of them from other games. Company of Heroes does use these types of tactics to good advantage but even experienced strategy gamers will find some new challenges and fun gameplay in Company of Heroes. There is also a unique gameplay system in it's company commander tree for earning additional abilities during each mission. You earn commander points when fighting and surviving in the game and use these points to earn new abilities that cost your resources when used just like all your other units. Some of the new abilities and weapons range from simple things like a unit of rangers to artillery and air strikes that can change the course of the fight.

You start the campaign at D-Day trying to land troops on the beach and securing the area. From there your companies will take towns and areas across the invasion front to secure valuable roads and bridges that were a key to the Normandy invasions success. Company of Heroes' story line is very good with extremely well made graphics and cut scenes but the story does not exactly follow the real time events of World War 2. Some of the things like a company that first storms the beaches of Normandy and then is taking the crossroads and hedgerows of France did not happen in the war. This did add the variety of the different combat areas but still uses the same companies of soldiers to get that familiar feel to the game.

Your missions usually start out with a building of some sort and a unit and you need to create the rest of your base and build the units you need for the mission. Most of the campaign will be an offensive based affair but two of the missions are strictly a defensive objective of surviving an attack on a hill. Your tactics can vary according to the style you wish to use but there are parts to the game that make certain strategies limiting like the population cap so you can't build a huge base and then attack the enemy. There are other parts to Company of Heroes that make the game fair and difficult at the same time but war was never supposed to be easy.

Company of Heroes uses a new game engine that Relic designed for some extremely good looking graphics and visuals in the game but that means you will need a good system to enjoy the eye candy of the better graphics. I have a good system with plenty of memory and a Crossfire setup with some really good graphics cards and had no problem playing the game at highest graphics settings. I really enjoyed all the tank battles and the artillery barrages you can call in look fantastic. Relic also used a physics engine for realistic physics like explosions, building destruction and great effects.

Common events in the gameplay like buildings being destroyed and seeing damage just to parts of them look fantastic and are great to watch. The gameplay is well done with all kinds of great features such as the buildings being able to be manned as well as destroyed. You can even see the characters inside the building looking out of windows or past damaged parts of buildings. The use of cover by the individuals in the game as you send them from one spot to another is great and the AI does a nice job of every aspect of the gameplay.

While attacking you the AI uses cover just as well as it uses it for your own troops and enemy units will also use groups of well mixed units taking advantage of each units abilities to complement each other. The AI will also probe your defenses and attack points lightly defended to try and capture the resource points across the map. Your units can pick up dropped weapons and man unoccupied equipment of the enemy like artillery and anti aircraft weapons so destroying these weapons is not always the best way to defeat your enemy. Using a sniper can make the smaller fights often easier so you can man the AA guns afterwards and use them against the Axis.

The campaign is a great time and really fun to play but the game also comes with a good multiplayer setup. You can join others playing over a LAN or online at the Relic Online multiplayer system. The multiplayer system works well and is easy to use when joining a multiplayer game online. You have two main game types for online play; Annihilation and point conquest. They are pretty much what they sound like when playing, in Annihilation you need to destroy all the enemies buildings while the conquest is whoever captures and holds statues the tickets will decrease for the other team. More captured statues on the map mean more points or tickets get deducted from the enemies score. The one who runs out of tickets or if all your buildings are destroyed loses.

The scores used in the cut scenes and other parts of the game are great and the music really added to the games overall style and appeal. The audio had some great sound effects and the voice acting was fantastic. Again they have done a very good job of creating a fantastic overall game and Company of Heroes shows how games should be made. In the campaign you really need to pay at least some attention to the soldiers as they often give you useful tidbits of information about your mission or objectives that will really help you during the mission.

Company of Heroes is a very visually appealing real time strategy game and features a great variety of fantastic features. The game does not require a fantastic computer to play and enjoy but it is a bonus to be able to watch battles and all the great graphical effects that the new game and physics engines create. I really enjoyed Company of Heroes and it is a definite must have game for anyone who plays any kind of strategy or simulation genres.