Frozen rivers and flecks of snow on soldiers' boots are great little details. The weather details are the strongest point. In fact, given the detail of some of the units, we really don’t understand why each mission wasn’t just book-ended by a quick video using units on screen. The single player, which follows the horrors of the Eastern front during World War II, is almost comically narrated by CG sequences that would have looked better had they been rendered in game.
At times it looks beautiful, but the Total War series and the fact that PC graphics cards have come a long way since the first game, makes it graphically very disappointing.Ĭut scenes in particular are unbelievably bad. The same can be said of the game’s looks, which make it feel more like an add-on pack than a completely new title. We would have liked to have seen something dramatically different rather than what feels to us like a Company of Heroes 1.5. While this isn’t a bad thing, the original did come out in 2006. This is a much faster game than its predecessor.īut really, CoH 2’s gameplay hasn’t changed much from the first.
By themselves they are useless, but the rapid build speed and low manpower requirement means that conscripts speed up the rate at which you have to play. The Russians have an extremely cheap to produce unit: conscripts, who can be used to create overwhelming numbers to capture or defend a point.
Fuel, ammunition and manpower all govern what units you can build. You really need to get good at grouping units together, hot keying them and then skipping between each in order to win.īack from the last game is the need to gather resources by capturing waypoints. The game will also scatter battles across multiple fronts in both the single player and skirmish modes, which can be extremely tough. Unit cap has been lifted a lot higher for this game, up to 135 soldiers at points, which can test even the best of micromanagers. It works and more often than not led us into an unfortunate ambush. Units under your command need to be able to see the enemy in order for you to be able to see them as well. The game’s true line of sight mechanic also deserves mentioning, as it’s rather clever. The more it struggled to escape, the more the ice below it cracked, until eventually it was swallowed up by the river below. A highlight of our time spent playing the game so far has to be when we trapped a German tank in the middle of a frozen river. Perhaps best of all is the way that the scenery reacts to the freezing cold. The trick to winning then, in the colder stages, is to destroy any means the enemy has to keep warm. The problem is that all can be destroyed. This can be fixed by building fires, getting them inside vehicles or into houses. Marked by a small temperature gauge hovering around each unit, the colder they get, the closer to death they become. As soon as a blizzard starts soldiers’ temperatures will start dropping. Then comes the dynamic weather, which in the Winter stages of CoH 2 can destroy any advance you might be planning to make. If micromanaging is your thing, then CoH 2 will be a game you enjoy. There's also greater emphasis on smaller squads with more diverse sets of skills. Players now have to contend with varying terrain types, which can slow down or speed up units. Thankfully, all this has been translated across to Company of Heroes 2, but with even more. The standard “build more than your enemy” approach wouldn’t work, as skilled players could easily wipe out whole waves of units if they knew what they were doing. There was no single strategy which would result in victory. What made the first Company of Heroes such an enjoyable experience was its incredibly balanced gameplay style. But has it? Is Company of Heroes 2 the game we have all been waiting for? Gameplay It remains a classic and developer Relic has quite a responsibility to deliver a sequel that can match the first.
(Pocket-lint) - Company of Heroes was released in 2006, followed by two add-on packs and some of the highest critical acclaim heap on any strategy game.