Company of Heroes

[imported_Keith]

Got the game a few days ago. I really like it but I havent played online yet still doing the campaign.

Anyone else play this game?

[SgtMattBaker]

Re: Company of Heroes

yeah good game, but MP can take way too long

[solofowaffles]

Re: Company of Heroes

I love it.

[KrayboX]

Re: Company of Heroes

You need to know what your doing before going on-line and it can take up to 2 hours for 1 round

[Guest]

Re: Company of Heroes

Yeah I have the Demo.. Have to wait till Holiday break to get it....Yeah the online battle version is very hard, even against Easy bots....But the two campaign battles they give you (in the demo) are awesome.

[Mabes[31stMEU]]

Re: Company of Heroes

I love the game, heres a review I wrote of it.

Company of Heroes:
(This review was also posted on IGN.com)

When I first heard of Company of Heroes, I thought “Oh great, another copy-cat RTS about World War II,” and just left it at that. Didn’t read any of the previews or even bother finding out more information. Then, I was on file planet one day and being a paying subscriber, I came across the beta. Figuring “what the hell” I downloaded it and installed it, loading it up I went online and found a small multiplayer game against the AI. Luckily, the other human player timed out and left me to play against two AI opponents. That player timing out gave me the opportunity to take my time and explore everything that the game had to offer. Needless to say, I was impressed and impatiently awaited a single-player demo to come out.

I didn’t have to wait too long before the single-player demo was released and I immediately downloaded it. I usually don’t play the campaign missions in RTS’s, just because I dislike being limited on what I can and can’t do in the game. However, they did a great job with the single-player campaign and the demo just left me wanting more of the campaign (only other game that made me want to keep playing the campaign was the Blitzkrieg series). The single-player came with only one skirmish map, and it allowed you to try out the US side and the German Werhmacht team, while playing one AI opponent at three different difficulty levels (Easy, Normal and Hard). Just so I could try everything out and get a feel to the game, I picked an easy opponent. Again, the way the game played just amazed me and I was convinced to preorder this game. I did, preordering from EBGame.com and I anxiously awaited the game to be released and sent my way.

The game play is great in this game, I like being able to completely destroy a building, or use mortar/artillery rounds to soften the land and give my infantry troops better cover before assaulting. The graphics are simply amazing, and while holding down alt you can zoom down and move the camera and take a better look of what’s going on on your battlefield. When a shell explodes, it tosses up dirt, water, blood, body parts, pieces of a vehicle or house or whatever else you can think of being torn apart by explosions.

Each army (the US and the Germans) get three different company (Or Doctrines for the Werhmacht) choices to choose as your company to command. The US get Infantry, Airborne and Armor and the Germans get Defensive, Blitzkrieg and Terror. For the US, the Infantry company is more of your defensive company focusing on building up infantry faster, a QRF (Quick Reaction Force), Off-The-Map Artillery Strikes, Army Rangers, the ability to build a 105mm Howitzer and infantry that’s capable of building defenses (sand bags, tank traps, mines and barbed wire). The Airborne Company is for a fast infantry attack force, with Paratroopers, Para dropped AT-Guns, supply drops (gives Ammo, Fuel, a 60mm Mortar and a .30cal MG), a recon plane flight, a gun run (plane that fires its mgs along a designated area), and a bombing run (same as gun run, but with bombs). The Armor Company is the slowest of the all, focusing on a build up of a hardcore vehicle assault, with the M26 Heavy Tank, M4 Sherman with Calliope MLRS (multi-launch rocket system), an ability that allows light armor to capture supply points and the ability to build vehicles faster.

For the Wehrmacht, the Defensive Doctrine focuses on just that, better defenses, with an ability to have better defensive skills, an ability to increase your field of view, the ability for all your main base buildings to have machine gunners on top, artillery that can be called on top of any building or flag that you have (to defend it), an off-the-map artillery rocket barrage and the ability to build Flak 88 AT/AA guns. The Blitzkrieg Doctrine focuses on allowing you to make lightning fast (blitzkrieg) assaults on your enemy allowing you to equip all infantry with hand grenades, call for off-the-map reinforcements from Storm troopers, a resource increase (gives a large amount of manpower then freezes your economy temporarily), call for off-the-map reinforcements of Storm troopers and a Stuh 42 Artillery tank, call for off-the-map reinforcements of Storm troopers and Tiger Tanks, and an ability that gives all your units a speed increase for a short period of time. The Terror doctrine focuses on brute strength and propaganda to take out your enemy by enabling your troops to fight harder as you take casualties, an ability to make your troops fight extremely hard with no regard to their safety, a propaganda attack that will make any infantry in the area of effect retreat to their home base, an off-the-map incendiary mortar attack that does a high amount of damage to infantry and light vehicles, an off-the-map reinforcement of one Tiger Ace tank and aV1 rocket strike that does an insane amount of damage to anything in its AOE.

The objective of the game (in skirmish mode) can be set from either just capturing and holding the supply points until your get a set amount of supplies (ala a king of the hill style of game play) or just completely destroying your opponents. I usually opt for the second choice, either playing as the US and using Airborne, or playing as the Wehrmacht and using the Terror Doctrine. In the game, there are three types of supply points: ammunition points, fuel points, and manpower points. Because of the three different supply points, the game insures that there won’t be much of a slowed down “everyone just hunker down and wait” game going on, you have to keep pushing and because of this you’ll need to focus on using both assault infantry and vehicles and defensive infantry (mortar teams, machine gun crews, engineers, etc) because as you move forward, you’ll want to move your defensive teams up as well to setup defenses on your newly taken territory or else, you’ll just get pushed back again. Don’t forget to leave some of your stuff behind, if your newly captured point leaves some of your supply points in the rear open. The engineer can build a handful of helpful defensive positions including barbed wire fences that keep infantry out, tank traps that keep vehicles away, sand bags that protect your infantry, mines to destroy your enemy and machine gun nests to beat them down. You’ll want to use quiet a few of them to keep the enemy away, but remember the defenses work both ways, if you barb wire and tank trap an area out, your infantry and vehicles won’t be able to get through either. If you’re playing on a map with bridges, remember that if you’re the US and you upgrade to get demolition charges, your engineers can take out bridges, for the Werhmacht, use your Goliath remote controlled tanks and have them detonate on the bridge to take them out.

There are some things that I disliked about the game though, like the engineers not having the ability to dig foxholes or trenches as a way to set up defenses, because the sandbags are great for incoming assaults, but when the enemy is using mortars or artillery to soften you up before their assault, the sandbags offer little protection. The machine gun bunkers/nests are poor when you only have one or two, you need multiple to hold back the enemy (and mortars defiantly help with that), and they also take way to long to cut down enemy infantry, you can spend like a full minute watching infantry be shot at by four different bunkers before they’re completely taken out. The AI is real good about using the AT guns to attack you from a distance, so you’ll want to have some kind of long range weapon (mortar, an AT gun, or an artillery piece) to fight back at them (or use your infantry to assault it quickly. However, these little errors, or annoyances are not big enough (doubt they really could be) to ruin the game in any way shape or form, you just have to realize them early on and prepare to work around them. Hopefully they’ll release the map editor shortly for it.

Ratings:
Graphics: 10/10 – Superb graphics, I’d say the best seen in any RTS to date. Enjoy watching the physics, soldiers being blown apart by artillery fire, dirt being kicked up and the battlefield just changing from a pleasant little nature scene to a craters, brown battlefield.
Sounds: 8/10 – They did a pretty good job on the sounds, but they’re nothing extremely great. I do enjoy the little voice clips from your troops, some of their comments can give you a little chuckle, but its like they used one voice for all the main US infantry (non-airborne) and all the main Werhmacht infantry, so that could have been a little bit better, but all in all, they did a good job.
Gameplay: 10/10 - The game has so many different ways to play it, quiet a variety of skirmish maps (the Vire River Valley 2v2 map is my favorite), and a pretty nice campaign, you should be able to play for quiet some time before getting bored, and that’s just playing on single-player.
Multiplayer: 9/10 - It’s quiet a bit more fun when you’re playing with two or three human players against say three or four hard AI opponents (or play a strictly player versus player game, its up to you).
Overall: 9.3/10 - With as many options that are available to you, you’ll be able to keep playing this one for quiet some time now. It would be a little better if they worked on the sounds a bit more (or just added a few new voices) and if they had released the map editor for it. But still a great game, which will leave you wanting more.

Screenshots:



















More can be seen here and here

[Papi4baby]

Re: Company of Heroes

So is not a FPS???

[BlazinAngel-51]

Re: Company of Heroes

Obviously not.
I got it too, very fun.
Just MP is hard for me, lose everygame

[solofowaffles]

Re: Company of Heroes

Obviously not.
I got it too, very fun.
Just MP is hard for me, lose everygame

then play on skirmish more.

[Papi4baby]

Re: Company of Heroes

Obviously not.
I got it too, very fun.
Just MP is hard for me, lose everygame

Ah man, i almost gotit too. I found a deal on it for 20 bucks. I might still get it. From the screenies it looks something like command and conquer??

[imported_Apostle]

Re: Company of Heroes

Yes, a bit like Command and Conquer, it's an RTS game as far as I know. It looks good, there is a good deal on this game at www.play.com for UK residents, buy Company of Hereos and get Dawn of War with it free. Not bad :)

[shooterz]

Re: Company of Heroes

this game is awesome :P
playing the campaign for now
damn stuck at mission 5 now...i suck at RTS game

[5cent]

Re: Company of Heroes

aww damn i thought it was fps :/

[Garabaldi]

Re: Company of Heroes

Company of Heroes is an example of how games should be made.

Every small detail was taken care of.

[Guest]

Re: Company of Heroes

RELIC is having a contest for every other patch taht they choose a fan custom map