Company Of Heroes

There are two kinds of good games. There are those which turn us on and keep us nailed in front of the monitor screen, and there are others, generally precious few, that fail to appeal to the vast majority but manage to change the "ways of gaming" forever.

For some reason or another, it has become fashionable for games entering the development stage to be announced as being both a turn-on and a new milestone in game design. Company of Heroes makes no exception. From what we have seen in trailers or ads, even the most reserved of us would have bet their Warhammer 40k CD collection against the perspective of a revamped Warhammer 40k game design. Well, it is like the song goes, "Some men you just can't reach... So, you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it!" Well, we've got it.

If there were some of you who believed Relic's latest creation to be a real-time WW II tactical game, the shroud of mystery dissipated, and unless the concept of "tactics" is redefined, there is no way in the world we'll see much in Company of Heroes to denote something as wild as the term "advanced tactics" usually does.

Concept

The advertising campaign did a sensational job, and thanks to series of "life bringing" teasers, I was thoroughly and systematically convinced to regard Company of Heroes as a nextgen Blitzkrieg or Sudden Strike. Rats! (It is rather difficult for me to comprehend what makes the advertising people believe that bombastic talk helps smooth things up. Gamers need the truth, not some kinky bedtime fantasies).

It is rather difficult to design a real-time tactical game. We have seen over the years that for tactics simulation to go well, the pause option is never enough. Due to their nature, tactics simulations work better if they are turn-based (Panzer General). And Company of Heroes is a RTS (read traditional strategy game) all the way to the Moon and back.

If you are into the C&C Generals game style, jolly good for you, because I am hardly open to digging for fools' gold there. True to their prized title, Warhammer 40k, Relic kept the recipe and added a bunch of features to adapt it to some of the facts of WW II concerning unit and terrain functionality. And from this point of view, there is plenty of tactical value.

Otherwise, analyzing the game as a whole, "zerging" (read exploiting an uber-unit, or feature of the game) still plays a consistent role for the winning strategy. Again, controlling "resource cashes" does the trick (as if conquest spawned more troops throughout the battlefields of the Second World War, on the contrary, over-stripped supply lines allowed "zee" Germans to beat themselves, like that!). Again, the superficial simplification of real life facts ends up in downright ridiculousness: here we need several hundred of "human resources" for a band of U.S. rangers, a pile of ammunition for setting up a military structure, or a couple of canisters of gas/fuel and some more "human resources" for an armor. "Hey dude! Pass me those human resources, will ya? I need more grenadiers to that vantage point, pronto!" Doooh?

And when I thought it could not get any better than foraging meat from bushes in Age of Empires? everybody has to win a war, if this means a pile of meat or stacks of "human resources".

The last guilty as charged are the totally unintuitive line of sight and weapon range of all units. Ok, maybe the line of sight has to be accepted as it is: a compromise due to the limitations of map spanning. But I don't see why I should content myself with anemic tank gun ranges. I mean (leaving aside its design) Starcraft should have been dead and buried by now, and not an infinite source of solutions for game development. Tank crews could as well get off their tanks and smack their faces and still make use of a decent range (an arm's length).

Gameplay

I guess many of you regard as good news Relic's sticking with the C&C Generals design that made their Warhammer franchise successful. Luck you! Company of Heroes is by all means 40k revisited. Pulling a bunch tricks out of the sleeve however won't turn a traditional RTS into an "advanced strategy game" in the slightest. It is a great difference between having a trait or attribute of some specified nature and being of that nature/essence.

In this sense, the original C&C Generals feeling still has its roots well hooked in CoH's gameplay, though heavily boosted by the tactical role/value of each unit and the overall historical atmosphere.

The major difference is the pace of the game. Making buildings - infantry strong points - and armor almost impervious to the effect of gunpowder and corresponding slugs, a skirmish may feel as the First World War was to the second. Due to the design of the game, the rush strategy is out of commission. And it was about time, too. From this point of view, at least from the multiplayer perspective, the game offers a new and original system of balance between factions. Gaining the upper hand means gaining the best vantage point and defending it with the best fitted unit assortment. A well positioned AT gun, a sniper, a detachment of rangers armed with hand grenades, sticky bombs and RPGs with a moderate machine gun cover may defend an urban landscape against almost any kind of attacks. As a countermeasure, a bombing run with incendiary load can wipe in an instant such a defensive.

With higher costs (both in resources and miscellaneous requirements) than the entire aforementioned defensive array, bombing runs, long range artillery support or paratrooper drops usually have the expected effect: utter devastation of the marked zone, a rusty pike in every exacting strategist's side.

Every kill, every strategic achievement, every erected structure improves your commanding capabilities. Both the Allies and the Axis have a range of three specialties to choose from with six commands each, defensive (artillery support, mine laying, tank traps, infantry boosters), offensive (armor support of different kinds like repair or refit lost units, including the request of Tigers or M26s on the battlefield). The other ones acquire a rather unconventional approach, being something roughly resembling their names: Terror Doctrine for the Axis (includes V2 rockets, and flier drops that forces targeted allied troops to retreat) or Paratrooper missions for the Allies which are, at this point, represented only by the U.S. Airborne (!?).

While the system looks good on the paper, the reality in the field is like meat foraging, the bigger brother of preposterousness. The system works like world spells do in Lord of The Rings: Battle for the Middle Earth games (something, yet again, introduced in C&C: Generals).

Gush! How in the earth can one counter these "world spells"? The only way to keep opponents at bay and prevent them from making excessive use of them means securing as many strategic points and resource cashes as possible. It is the same "plant the flag into the hole" thingies only that, this time you gain control over a map sector. And in order to guarantee a constant resource flow to your HQ, these map sectors have to be linked one to another.

Although, in theory, this opens up a new variety of strategic options, in reality it reduces the game to a narrow minded style of playing. Control over these strategic points is dealt in victory or defeat. Every map is made up of two sections, one mirroring the other. You can imagine what may happen if the balance is severed.

As soon as one of the opposite sides has secured an additional piece of its counterpart, the chances are that side will eventually win? usually through excessive "spell casting" over Bravo defenses. In other news, the game is decided in the first ten minutes. After that, its length will be prolonged directly proportional with the loser's stubbornness. And it may really be a drag (up to three hours on a medium sized map)?

No surprise here, as the resource system usually forced RTS players choose camping rather than storming the front. However, last time I checked, the battlefields depicted in CoH hardly resembled the real ones. Not that simulation has to do with anything, but aren't we all tired of Mutalisks, Gandalfs and Overlord Tanks? From the look of things, I guess not.

Video/Sound Effects

Graphically speaking, the "Essence" engine does a pretty spectacular job. I guess there is no need mentioning it supports almost anything to date, like high-dynamic-range lighting, normal mapping, dynamic lighting and shadows, and advanced shader effects.

But leave technical stuff to technical dudes, man! The unit model animation is so hot I dreamed about it all night: Gunners hiding behind fences, walls crumbling to heavy shelling, AT guns recklessly chewing ammo when set to shoot infantry barricaded inside a building. I mean, even the fire/duck sequence is there: a soldier caps a bullet towards its target, ducks behind the wreckage of a PzKw VI Tiger, reloads, gets up once again aims, a shell explodes and he goes flying with the angels. And you didn't get to see how the 75 mm Sherman shells bounce from the frontal amour of a PzKw V Panther. Unfortunately the shell does not bend? but it still looks neat.

If the graphics would spank any RTS buttocks to date, the sound effects mocked even my wildest of expectations. Imagine 88s blasting all over the place and you have some business at your HQ, far from your dreaded tanks. Now try to remember how those deaf sounds in "Saving Private Ryan" felt like. I did not believe my years when I heard them? And it is not like those in Call of Duty, a monotonous replay of some monotonous struggles. These sounds are created in real time. I can only guess how they managed to do that. It probably isn't that complicated to obtain. Anyway, the assortment of here and far, far away fire arms skirmishes and artillery pounding are simply outstanding.

Conclusion

There isn't really much else to say. The first impression is an amalgam of exhilaration and despise. Company of Heroes still hangs in Beta testing and may suffer extensive redesign. However, I do not believe the Parents of Homeworld are into innovation anymore. They seem rather content with their latest baby, whereas I and - I believe many others - expected something entirely different. I do not understand what's with the whole C&C Generals vibes. That game is a grandpa for crying out loud. It is high time for someone to move on and propose an alternative and matured RTS design. Come on, we should have been done with the resource gathering by now?

Downloads

Company of Heroes Trailer Company of Heroes E3 2006 Trailer Company of Heroes Trailer #3 Company of Heroes Trailer #4 Company of Heroes Trailer #5 Company of Heroes Trailer #6 Company of Heroes Trailer #7 Company of Heroes Demo Trailer