Company of Heroes Review

The Basics

Lets get the basics out of the way, Company of Heroes was developed by Relic and published by THQ. Sound familiar? Let me remind you - Dawn of War. Company of Heroes is a cross between Dawn of War and Command and Conquer Generals, but during World War II (more Dawn of War'ish). In a sense, this is a RTS version of Call of Duty 2. Company of Heroes was best RTS at E3, 2005.

Resources and Strategic Points

Lets start with how it's like Dawn of War. You fight for control of strategic points and gain resources by controlling these points. There are 3 types of resources, and three different types of strategic points, each that give you one type of resource.
The resources are:

• Manpower
  Roughly equivalent to Requisition, the bulk of this income is generated by your base, the few strategic points that exist for this resource do little gain. Your basic infantry and support units use only this resource.
• Munitions
  Roughly equivalent to Power, this is your secondary and perhaps most important resource. Used for more advanced units and special abilities.
• Fuel
  Like you may gather, this is the primary resource of your armor division. Not very critical until later in the game.

You may build an observation post on strategic points, but you (in the demo at least) can not upgrade them to become weaponised. Observation posts almost double the income of most points.

Cover

Cover is also much like Dawn of War, but more sophisticated. There are three types of cover, light, heavy and negative. Cover is taken by ducking behind some sandbags or behind a wall. Negative cover is as simple as standing out in the open. You may move your mouse around the theater and little dots will appear where your men will move too if you move them into cover, it also indicates what sort of cover they will be moving into. Units will automatically take cover during combat.

Infantry units can also get pinned down. At first a unit taking suppression fire becomes "suppressed" and will prone and take cover, only able to only shoot a bit. If things get bad, they become pinned down, unable to shoot or move. This takes the place of moral in Dawn of War, if a unit suffers from these you may "retreat" the unit. When you press the retreat button the unit will pack up and bolt for home. They move a lot quicker while doing this, and you loose control of the unit unit it reaches base. This is an emergency get the hell out'a there option for units approaching certain death, and probably implemented to save you resources in a battle where every man counts.

Command Points

Taken from the Command and Conquer games, units now gather experience and become more effective as it increases. Further more you gain experience for everything that happens (including loosing men). As you increase in experience you may spend "Command Points" (Think 'General Stars'). You may choose from one of three tech trees to go up while spending the command points. During the demo as Allies, I was giving the options of Infantry, Airborne or Armor companies. Such abilities include off-screen artillery, strafing and bombing runs, paratrooper reinforcements and resource drops (just to name a few).

Units

Most of the unit types are very realistic. Fight with engineers who can use flamers or sweep for mines, as well as build your base, base defenses (such as MG bunkers or medic stations) and create good old fashion WW2 style hazards, including sandbag walls, barbed wire fences, tank traps and minefields. You gather differing type of infantry, light vehicles (jeeps, motor-cycles), artillery and of course tanks!

The tanks in the game are also perhaps the most accurate WW2 representation I've seen. Allies fight with their Sherman tanks, which can be equipped with flamers, machine guns, bulldozers and mine sweepers. Allied tanks made great anti-infantry units, and so they are. The axis get their Tiger Tanks, one of the most formidable units of WW2 armies. Vehicles have weak-spots (such as their rear) which they take more damage, they can suffer damage to part of the tank such as the engine or main gun, potentially stranding a tank. They may also loose control, which is rather amusing until you realise it's heading into your troops or that tree you had a sniper hiding behind.

What I found lacking was the air support. Relic still haven't got around to working on aerial units which is a pity. The only time you will see air units in this game is special abilities (such as a strafing run) which is un-defendable.

Conclusion

With the exception of the lacking aerial units, I have great trouble finding faults in the game. I highly recommend you check out the demo if you're a Dawn of War or Command and Conquer fan. This game will prove to be highly strategic and a game that will last. I didn't take any screenies, but if you head over to GameSpot, they have some nice ones.