Company Of Heros Review - PC Game.

Another day another asthetically pleasing electronic enteractions. Today the game is an older PC release, Company Of Heros. This is not a new game but one worthwhile to check out if your a fan of good RTS games. The original game was released in 2006. An expansion (Opposing Forces) was released in 2007 and a third expansion (Tales Of Valor) was released in 2009. All of the expansions are worth owning. Like most expansions they add new missions, new skirmish and online maps and the ability to play as the British or German army. Oh by the way this RTS is set in the WWII era.
In 2006 this game won PC Gamer - Game of the year, Computer Games Magazine - Game of the year, Gamespy - PC game of the year, Gamespot - Best PC Game, and  IGN - PC Game of 2006, Best Strategy Game, Best Online PC Game.

I have always been a big fan of RTS games. Back in the day I tried pretty much every RTS that was released. The ones that I always looked forward to were the Command and Conquer series, and Starcraft. Both seemed a cut above the rest. I toyed a bit with Age of Empires and Empire Earth (loved the first release) also. I had COH game when first came out and liked it, but for some reason I didn't really give it a complete play. Likely to many other games pulled my attention away at the time. About 3 months ago, I gave it another shot. The first thing I found after installing it was there were tons of new updates to apply. They had really tweaked the gameplay and made it an even better game. After playing the original for about a week, I got all of the expansions!!

Gameplay

The player must control of certain points on the map. The more of these points a player controls, the more resources they acquire in which to build additional troops and weapons. In order to get these resource points the control points must be connected like a supply line. This means the player must try to expand the control or cut the other players supply lines. There are three resources: manpower, munitions, and fuel that can be controlled. Each point can be upgraded to produce more resource points.
Pretty much any building within a map can be occupied by your ground troops. Also most anything on the maps can be destroyed, including the buildings.
In addition to the single player missions, there are two modes of multiplay. Annihilation, where one army must destroy the other to win or Victory Control Point, where when one side has more victory points under their control than another, the other side's "points" start to decrease. It's much like the Battlefield series ticket gameplay. I love the Annihilation mode of play.
During game play you will also receive points that will apply to your armies doctrines. There are three different doctrines for each army and they will give you special abilities during game play. For example, the American army can have an Airborne doctrine which will allow you to drop in troops or Anti-tank wepons anywhere on the map.
The single player mission based games follow real battles, such as the Battle of Normandy and the Allied liberation of France for example. All are excellent.

Relic has very nice and free, multiplayer servers setup. When you first launch the game you will create an account and it will log on the the servers everytime you play after that. The servers have a built in automatch and ranking system. You can play against others online or as allies with others fighting the really good AI armies. Also after you have setup your account on the server, your DVD key is tied to your account, so you no longer need to have the DVD in order to play the game. Even now, when you log on the servers there are over 2000 multi-player games occuring at any time, day or night. There looks to be a large base of players of this game out there.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in this game have to be seen to be appreciated. If you video card is up to it, the graphics are wonderful. All of the screen shots on this page are actual in game play, not video cuts. You can use the mouse to control how close or far away your view of the battlefield is. All of the wepons are items used in WWII. They are detailed and have realistic attributes. So battles are detailed and very realistic. Guess I didn't menton it but this is no a kiddie game. Even the language in the game is rated PG. The sound is just as good as the graphics. When my sub-woofer kicks in on a battle, its like a big budget combat movie. Just wonderful.

Verdict

This is the mother of all RTS games. I can't stress enough how well this game is done. Some would argue that Starcaft is the best RTS in the world. While I like Starcraft a lot, this game is on a different level. Relic has done a great job keeping this game up to date and continuing to provide updates and support for it. After months of playing this game, I still play it almost every day. For me that's saying something as I move from game to game quite a bit. If you search you can find a demo in order to try out this great game.


My first ever 10 out of 10