Product Details
 | Company of Heroes |
| List Price: | $19.99 |
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Product Description
Company of Heroes is a WWII RTS game that brings to like the journey of the brave men of Able Company as they fight across Europe in the greatest war makind has known. System Requirements:Windows98/ME/XP/2000 DirectX: DX9 1 (included) but DX81 (supported) 3GB HD space 1.5GB Processor 512 MB Ram GEFoece 3 64 MB or Ali Radeon 8500 64MB or greater Direct X certified sound card Broadband or 56kb modem Format: WIN 98ME2000XP Genre: ENTERTAINMENT UPC: 752919492970 Manufacturer No: 49297Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #813 in Video Games
- Brand: THQ
- Released on: 2006-09-11
- ESRB Rating: Mature
- Platform: Windows XP
- Dimensions: .50 pounds
Features
- From the award winning RTS studio Relic
- Redefines RTS genre, visceral WWII gaming experience, bringing soliders to life
- Proprietary Essence Engine delivers unparalleled graphics, destrutible battlfield using havoc engine and rag doll physics
- 2-8 player multi-player competition via LAN or internet with Clan Support
Customer Reviews
Excellent RTS give great WW2 feel
First let me say other
reviewers mentioned this is a difficult game to play and win because of
all the action. It is difficult until you realize two very important
things:
1) You can give orders to your units while the game is
paused! This makes the game almost like a turn-based game. If you try to
play without pausing it does become a very tough click-fest.
2)
Relic themselves published a 'cheat' that allows you to adjust the game
speed from its default of '10' all the way down to '1'. So if you do not
like pausing you can simply slow the game in general.
So having
said that how is Company of Heroes (CoH)? First the graphics are
outstanding. They are almost equal to that of a FPS game of just a few
years ago. You can fully rotate and zoom the view. Like Relic's previous
'Dawn of War' title you cannot zoom out very far but they did include
an 'operational' map view that shows the overall battlefield with unit
icons. This helps alleviate the problem with the inability to zoom out.
Sound
is very well done. Weapons sound correct and the various audio clues of
what is going on are vital. The units do swear, which is unnecessary
and really adds little to the game, but it is humorous the first few
times you hear it.
Game play is very similar to `Dawn of War' and
most RTS games. What CoH does well is it includes the objective
resource system from DoW but expands it to include four different
resource objectives: fuel, munitions, gas, and area. Combinations of the
four allow you to build and improve your units. In addition, as you
capture resources you gain control of an area. It is also possible to
cut off an area and thus lose the resources from it. This simple system
encourages not only attacking but also higher level options such as
flanking. This is unique to a RTS title and is very well done and works
even better.
CoH is not a wargame but a RTS game with a bit of
wargame feel to it. The game plays much like a normal RTS game. The unit
choices are interesting and mostly historical. Most of what you would
expect in a WW2 title are here. You can even call in artillery,
airstrikes, paradrops, and other support functions. Engagement ranges
are ridiculously short and this hurts some of simulation feel as
vehicles and heavy weapons are not able to stand off as far as they
should. But, again, this is a RTS title not a wargame.
The
biggest complaint with the game is the AI. The enemy AI does a very good
job overall especially for a RTS game. But the friendly AI reactions
have some real brain dead moments that will either cause you a lot of
grief or force you to micromanage more than you would wish. For example,
an enemy tank will move up and fire on your infantry squad and wipe it
out while a friendly tank of yours sits just half a screen away doing
nothing about it. I've lost buildings to infantry attacks while my own
infantry sat by and watched. Units will also make some silly moves.
Tanks will sometimes ram each other and rarely try to flank each other
or seek nearby cover.
But overall the limits of the AI and few
other quibbles are overshadowed by the great game play and overall great
`feel' of the game. It provides the most tactical and combined arms
options of any RTS game to date and for that it succeeds and for that
any RTS fan should pick up `Company of Heroes'.
An impressive addition to Relic's RTS stable.
Company of Heroes is the
latest real time strategy game from Relic who are known for their
excellent Dawn of War RTS titles set in the Warhammer universe.
In
Company of Heroes Relic takes a more realistic approach to the RTS
genre. Set during WWII CoH follows Able and Fox Companies from their
landing on the beaches of Normandy through their closing of the Falaise
pocket.
In CoH the gameplay has been adapted and enhanced from
Relic's Dawn of War games. Instead of capturing generic control points
on the map just for resources and territory, instead in CoH capturing
points gives you control over that territory and in addition provides a
population cap increase and generates more manpower. Manpower along with
fuel and ammunition are the three resources that you will use to supply
your army. While you gain manpower by capturing any control point there
are specific control points that generate fuel and ammunition.
Obtaining and defending those points successfully is a major part of the
game.
Because of this gameplay mechanic, playing the game
defensively is usually not a very successful tactic. The game rewards
players that move in and capture territory. During the campaign as you
capture territory and destroy the enemy you receive special command
upgrades that allow you to obtain more advanced units, build units more
quickly and call in air and artillery support among other things. These
special abilities still cost you resources to use though and the person
that has resources to use them when necessary will be the winner in an
engagement.
The AI on both sides of the game is able to handle
itself fairly well. Your soldiers are usually very intelligent about
taking cover, but they still require micro-management to use their
special abilities. All infantry units have special abilities that can
tip the balance of an encounter in their favor, but without your
guidance these abilities will never get used.
The vehicle AI is
generally good with the exception of some pathfinding problems and an
annoying tendency for vehicles to present their lighter armored backside
to enemies at inopportune times. In tight combat situations
micromanaging which armor side is shown to enemy gunners is critical and
at the same time you'll need to maneuver your armor to flank the enemy
and catch them from the rear. At certain points the enemy AI is very
good at keeping their armor effectively positioned and at other times
they ignore facing completely and present an easy target. Sometimes this
is the difference between facing a green or veteran unit, but at other
times the AI just seems to give up their back.
Another issue with
vehicle AI is that vehicles when ordered to directly attack another
vehicle like to run right up on that vehicle and collide with them
rather than come to a stop at a distance and fire. This can be
problematic when the enemy you attack is grouped to the rear of other
enemies and your unit ends up presenting their rear armor to the other
enemies.
The enemy AI can be challenging and in some scenarios
overwhelming. The scenarios in general vary in difficulty that way, but
usually the challenge is in finding the right mix of units and support
to utilize. Each scenario presents primary goals to complete and a
secondary goal which will earn the player a medal for outstanding
performance. These secondary goals often involve inflicting additional
casualties on the enemy or avoiding excessive losses on your side.
While
there are only fifteen scenarios to complete these are packed with
details and can often last for several hours as each scenario will have
multiple goals embedded in it. For instance you might be tasked with
capturing a town from the axis and then afterwards you must hold it for a
period of time against a counterattack. The aforementioned secondary
goals also add performance challenges that will make you rethink how
effective you were in completing the scenario.
The graphic engine
makes use of as much hardware as you can present. The units are well
crafted and scaled, the terrain is detailed and the destructible
environments are well done. Being able to reduce buildings and obstacles
to rubble adds to the gameplay experience immensely.
Running on
two year old hardware my play experience was limited by my Radeon 9800
Pro AGP graphics card with a measly 128mb of RAM and limited support for
the latest technologies. In addition I'm running an Athlon 64 3200 with
1GB of RAM. While the game recommended running at 1024x768 with most of
the more advanced settings turned down I found that even at that
resolution I was getting a good amount of slowdown in large scale
battles. I ended up lowering the resolution to 800x600 to keep things
moving smoothly. I found the graphic presentation to be quite good even
without being able to turn up the juice.
If you haven't
bought/upgraded your machine recently with PCI Express and one of the
newer video cards then you'll probably have the same experience I did in
terms of performance as this game requires a lot of computer power in
every area. Loading a scenario for the first time can take up to a
minute on my machine even with a 10000 RPM SATA drive.
That said,
once you are in the scenario there are no loading screens and save game
loads within the same scenario are much quicker than the initial load.
It's worth the wait.
The sound in the game is immersive. The
explosions and weapon fire will rock you if you have a subwoofer
attached to your sound system. The units will call out and alert you
when they are under attack and in general respond appropriately
depending on their status in a battle or otherwise. As one poster noted
there is a bunch of harsh language mixed in, but I didn't find it to be
out of place.
The campaign story itself is well put together, but
certainly doesn't approach something like Starcraft in terms of tying
the story and the scenarios together. This didn't detract from the
gameplay, but I wasn't really drawn into the campaign story very much.
Overall,
I found Company of Heroes to be a satisfying game in most aspects with
only minor quibbles and very few obvious flaws or bugs in the initially
delivered product. Unfortunately, now I think I think it's put me in
mind to upgrade my computer.
Just when
you thought you'd seen it all...
Let's face it, the Real Time
Strategy genre is getting old, and I don't just mean that it's been
around for a while (which it has). One might say the same for WW2-themed
games of any sort. How, then, can a WW2-themed RTS possibly be one of
the best PC games of this year? I'm still not entirely sure what the
answer to this question is, but I do know that Company of Heroes fits
the bill.
Anything coming from Relic can be expected to have
decent production values, but for CoH they have outdone themselves. This
is a title spit-shined and polished to do any parade ground GI proud. I
happen to be a military history buff, and can attest to the fact that
what you see and hear in this game is the genuine article. The campaign
story could have been taken, practically verbatim, from the pages of
Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" and "Citizen Soldiers," making the
game's name more than apt.
First and foremost, the graphics are
impressive. And by impressive, I mean they are clearly superior to any
RTS to date. The units, down to uniforms and weapons, look real. They
animate realistically, and the environments are detailed to the point
that they resemble pictures taken during the war. Even the mission
briefings look like what you'd see in a military ready room. I've heard
it said that the game can crawl on older systems, but it ran perfectly
smooth with all settings turned up to max on my (admittedly high-end)
rig. Stability is superb- I have not seen the game crash a single time.
The
game's sound is likewise superb, with excellent voice acting and the
best effects I've heard in any RTS to date. There's liberal profanity,
which is one of the reasons this game is rated what it is, but this is
realistic. Being shot at and shelled tends to warrant expletives. When
artillery comes down it actually sounds like artillery, and your men
will let you know if they're in the middle of it.
As can be
expected, the AI is advanced. Troops move and react realistically,
dropping behind cover or falling prone if under fire. Units support each
other and lay down suppressing fire. The computer can be downright
brutal, even on moderate difficulty settings.
Campaign design is
superb, and multiplay is available. Gameplay in general is somewhat
similar to the earlier Warhammer: Dawn of War, especially in terms of
the strategic point system. The big difference is that there's different
kinds of points and 3 different resource types, and the points must be
linked in a chain to your headquarters to provide anything. Innovations
include the use of resources to facilitate special attacks, most of
which don't require any sort of research, as they do in other games. For
example, you can have infantry throw grenades, provided you have enough
munitions available.
The one big downside is there's only two
factions- Axis and Allies, but there's also separate commander 'trees'
for each side. Axis (essentially the Germans) have Blitz, Terror, and
Defensive; Allies (essentially the Americans) have Infantry, Armor, and
Airborne. You gain experience by completing objectives or destroying
enemy forces, and then spend points in one of these trees. The
differences are significant, so there's essentially 3 ways to play each
side. Additionally, the two sides are very different to play, with
unique weapons and abilities.
I'll readily admit, despite the
fact that I was once a hard-core RTS player, I've started to lose faith
in the genre and stray to things that were formerly of secondary
interest- most particularly, RPGs and MMORPGs. However, Company of
Heroes has demonstrated to me that there is hope yet. In fact, it's the
only game that has actually managed to divert my attention from World of
Warcraft; no easy task, I can assure you. If you have even a passing
interest in real time strategy or World War 2, you owe it to yourself to
get this game as soon as possible.
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