Company of Heroes is a new age in RTS games, setting a new high. Relic, the company behind the successful Dawn of War franchise, is implementing a new feel to War. In their latest game, Relic wanted to give gamers the opportunity to command infantry squads and vehicles into realistic battles that will span across historic World War II battles including D-Day and the movement into Germany itself. Relic is stressing to gamers that they want people to relive the battles of World War II itself, without the blood and guts thankfully. Relic have gone out of their way to include historic events, the weapons used are from the war itself and everything you see corresponds with their early World War II counterparts including tanks, fighters and locations.
The game is in everyway your typical RTS game but better. The game implements a very cool idea of supply points and controller territories. Each map is split up into various territories, which also have supply points that help govern how you can call in support for your infantry. This idea eliminates any of that boring resource gathering and stresses a bit more on action. Gamers will need to move swiftly and aggressively to secure strategic points that will effectively help you call in reinforcements or even cut-off your opponents supplies. There’s quite a bit of strategy behind this concept also. In order to get all your troops into the midst of the action, gamers must keep a line of controlled territories under their control to get your troops in the forward position. However, if your enemy drops a paratrooper behind the action and takes control of a strategic point, they can therefore cut off supplies to getting or upgrading your troops on the front line. So while all the havoc of destruction is going around you, gamers must still focus on the strategy aspect of the game and effectively supply their troops and hopefully cut off the flow of their enemies through this territory and supply point system.
Charge!
Another cool aspect that relies on a bit more thought is the game’s ‘environmental strategy’, which can shape the outcome of the battle completely and brings an all-new strategy of its own to the table. Relic are extending the boundaries in Company of Heroes and allowing gamers a bit more flexibility in what can be achieved and how they can use that to their advantage. Buildings can be leveled so you can move your troops behind the enemy effectively, you can blow up walls and use them as cover and anything else that can effectively be used as an advantage to yourself or a disadvantage to your enemy. For instance, your enemy may be camping inside a building picking off your troops with relative ease. Bring in a bazooka and blow up the wall and clear out all the enemies hiding inside. It’s really amazing seeing some of this stuff in action and brings to life a completely dynamic battle. And it’s amazing to see how this destructible environment aspect comes into play when trying to take out the enemy. On one occasion we were getting absolutely slaughtered by a mortar launcher, which was situated inside a building, every time we tried to push our troops forward. So, obviously, we couldn’t go that way. However, using our environment to our advantage, we managed to blow up a nearby wall that was blocking access to the building with our tank and then swiftly sent in an engineer to plant a charge to blow up the building and in turn allowing our troops to advance forward.
Much like Relic’s other RTS game Dawn of War, Company of Heroes will introduce a system where gamers can upgrade their units.However, unlike Dawn of War, this game rewards experience points which in turn can be used to level unit’s command trees and allowing you to customise your army.
The AI is unbelievably eerie. Relic has created an amazing AI system where the soldiers react instantly to the changing situations of the battlefield – no more toy soldiers. Soldiers will move around cautiously and in formation while walking (i.e. not following a straight path as to where you direct them), and when coming under fire they’ll quickly find whatever cover they can without given the order to do so. Taking into account of the destructable environments, soldiers will even continue to move between areas as objects are destroyed or chipped away. Looks very realistic seeing this in action. Relic mentioned that they don’t want gamers to micromanage every movement, but rather encourage gamers to look at the bigger picture of the battle and let the AI do what it does best.
The impressive AI comes into play everywhere on the battlefield.
As good as everything else is, the graphics are very impressive and add to the feel of the game completely. The game uses Relic’s “Essence” game engine and boasts some beautiful, realistic graphics. Everything is driven by the game’s physics engine including the explosion of buildings and objects, which add to game’s realism. While this game doesn’t have better graphics than World in Conflict when zoomed out, Company of Heroes certainly does shine in detail when up close – almost making it look like a third-person game. It looks superb.
While this game does excell in terms of graphics when compared to World in Conflict, Company of Heroes has a nice mix of everything making it contend as being one of the better RTS games we've seen mainly due thanks to the game's intriguing gameplay and advanced AI. The game looks, feels, plays and even reacts realistically and this has been achieved admirably.
Loading...
