Played on:
Windows
1.5GHz CPU
512MB RAM
GF3 or Radeon 8500
64MB or better
Win 98/ME/2000/XP
Played on:
Dell XPS M170
2GHz Pentium M CPU
2GB DDR2 RAM
GF Go 7800GTX Video
Windows XP
It would be easier to just write off all of these World War II games if most of them weren't so damn good. From Brothers in Arms to Call of Duty to the various WW2 strategy games out there, developers keep finding new ways to revitalize the delivery, gameplay, and style, and keep players coming back for more. Relic Entertainment, creators of the Homeworld series as well as the very popular Warhammer 40K Dawn of War, are now here to make their mark on the WW2 genre with their new strategy game Company of Heroes.
Relic has taken elements that worked well in Dawn of War and ported them over to Company of Heroes. That sounds a bit goofy, but it actually works perfectly despite the massively different setting. Just like most real-time strategy games, you'll be collecting resources, building fortifications, recruiting troops, and creating war machines from your nearby base. But this game takes it much further by using an effective cover system, the ability to suppress or pin your enemies down under fire, send snipers to do their dirty work from a nearby window, create many types of semi-permanent structures to slow down the enemy with, and collect resources in a very realistic and natural-feeling way.
Breaking it down
Let's start with resources. There are three of them in Company of Heroes: Manpower, Munitions, and Fuel. Holding more territory on the map gains you more Manpower, and holding specific key areas of a map will gain you Munitions and Fuel at a faster rate. Manpower is your most vital resource, as it mainly allows you to recruit new troops into battle. Munitions is used to build many structures, and is also used for upgrades for certain squads and for your troops' special attacks like satchel charges or grenades. Fuel is used to build armor and certain buildings, and often winds up being the most scarce resource out of the three. The nice part is that while you can build certain things to help the resources roll in faster, you don't have to do any kind of collecting of resources. It just rolls in, leaving you to spend more time dealing with combat and tactics.
Capturing points is a key part of success in this game. You'll need to advance quickly and intelligently if you want to gain a better foothold on the map, and you'll also need to know when to retreat. And retreating is actually a distinct element here, because there's an actual button you can press to retreat - this allows you to get your troops out of a losing situation even if they're almost surrounded. It works well and it means that if your troops are taking heavy losses, you won't have to write them off entirely like you would in most strategy games. But capturing rather than retreating is of course more productive, and to do so you'll need to advance carefully, tear down enemy defenses around the capture point, and then hold it for a short while to make it your own. Then you can even build your own defenses, and the nice part is that even your regular troops can build some stuff - you don't have to go running engineers with you everywhere you go to build some things.
Engineers are still important, though,as they can build all kinds of stuff to hold back the enemy while you plug them with anti-tank rifles and small arms fire. Barbed wire holds back the troops, while mines will stop tanks and half-track vehicles quickly. Heavy MG emplacements will also cut down the enemy infantry, and you don't even have to staff these things with troops out of your current stock. Engineers can also build sandbag walls for your troops to get behind for cover. But this stuff often gets blown up or simply gone around (see: tanks smashing through walls and infantry pouring through the new hole), so you'll need to refresh or re-deploy your defenses often to really hold the line.
Keep your troops safe
Cover is very important to keep in mind in Company of Heroes, especially when your mission is to defend a specific spot. Your troops will be in one of three states when not actually under fire: exposed, mild cover, or good cover - this is indicated by an icon above that squad's head that's either red, yellow, or green. You can place your troops pretty accurately behind cover, too, because giving them a movement order shows with little dots on the ground where exactly your guys will stand when they get there. They'll also automatically try and find cover nearby too and will fairly intelligently get into positions, but it still helps to micromanage at least a little bit when you've got multiple squads with different roles (machine gunner, mortar team, anti-tank rifles, etc).
You'll quickly find out that when a German squad is holed up in a building, you'll have to change your tactics to win. No longer does firing from behind cover really help; you'll have to get in close to toss a satchel charge or some grenades into the building. And when they go boom, the explosion usually takes out part of the building (if not demolishing it almost completely). Using buildings as garrisons for your troops is particularly effective for both sides of the war, and it forces the enemy to charge in, exposed, to get a shot at taking out those troops. And blowing up these buildings is visually impressive, but much of the rest of Company of Heroes is destructible too. Sometimes this element will force you to change your tactics, while other times it just looks great.
Many of the memorable weapons and armor from WW2 have been reproduced here, as well as stationary emplacements like anti-aircraft guns and the like. You'll also find that the path the Allies took starting on D-Day has been reproduced, from Omaha Beach to Carentan to Cherbourg and beyond, and yes, the paratrooper drops early in the morning before the land invasion are here as well (and paratroopers are a great kind of soldier in Company of Heroes that do well in a large number of situations).
