Company of Heroes

An amazing new take on a war game.

Company of Heroes may seem like a Command & Conquer type of war game, but it really isn’t. There is a fresh new feel, a fantastic game dynamic, terrific sound effects, gritty graphics and thousands of variants for gameplay. You can play the same map 100 times and never complete it the same way (on Skirmish mode).

What Is The Single Player Campaign Like?

It feels a little scripted as you are railroaded into pushing the story forwards by recreating certain World War 2 battles. It is far more challenging than the skirmish modes, which may suit some people, but most players go for the Skirmishes; especially the online ones.

The Weapons And Units Are Brilliant

They seem to get better and better the more you explore them. For example, you may buy a half-track to carry around a few men. It serves its purpose and it gets your engineers to the bridge so they can blow it up. Then, you may upgrade it with four machine guns and suddenly it is a covering-fire destruction machine. You can lay down tons of fire on your unsuspecting enemies as they run away in disorder.

Capture Points For Resources

You dominate a map by capturing resources for fuel, ammo and personnel space. The more you capture, then the more you can have. The great thing is that you can defend them with buildings or units, but you need to be wary of your resources. What is more fantastic is that whist the enemy rolls tanks into your base, you can send out patrols of men (as few as one man) and capture all the points behind them. When they have just about finished turning your base to rubble, they turn around to see that most of the map is owned by you. Build up your base quickly and smash them before they can recover.

A Game That Is Difficult To Fault

It has brought such a new and innovative feel to the weary and worn out premise of WW2. It feels as if hundreds of other war games have been doing it wrong all these years. You can try to muster a big force and roll over the enemy, but they will undermine your efforts, and build up counter defences to beat you.

For example, you may figure that building a bunch of tanks is a good idea, but your enemy (AI or Human) will send in air strikes to where you have hidden your tanks, and will build anti-tank guns and set them up around their base. So, you figure you will build up a ground force full of highly trained soldiers, but your opponents will buy flame tanks, set mines, and lay machine gun nests in awkward corners and nooks between buildings to ambush you. So, you decide to put a bunch of snipers in towers and back them up with mortar fighters, only to have your enemies take out the snipers with motorcycles, and pick off your mortar fighters with a parachute drop right behind them.

Pros

• The sound effects and visual effects are out of this world
• Control and the user interface is natural and efficient
• Complete maps in a wide variety of ways
• Skirmish maps are wide ranging and fun
• Play with or against strangers if you like
• The more you experiment, the more you discover

Cons

• You have to pay to unlock a different country‘s army
• Getting the camera angle just right can be tricky sometimes