Company of Heroes – PC – Review

Company of Heroes may not sound
original or that intriguing when you look at its box art. It essentially is
another World War II-themed video game – that’s right another war-based video
game. Not much new right? Well, not so fast.

What Company of Heroes has going for
itself is the simple fact it was developed by Relic. Relic is the brilliant
minds behind Company of Heroes. If you have no clue on what Relic has done in
the past, look no further than Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and even the
Homeworld franchise. Known for their radiant video games in the past, it’s no
surprise that Company of Heroes once again delivers an exhilarating experience.

Company of Heroes follows World War
II like I stated, but particularly it revolves around the Able Company and Fox
Company Paratroopers. The Able Company must land on Normandy Beach and shoot
their way across the French scenery against waves of Germans. There are 15
missions to enjoy and each come attached with a cutscene and briefing to aid the
player to progress the storyline.

If you have played Warhammer, you’ll
feel right at home with Company of Heroes. Sure, it is a little customized and
there are a few personalized traits added in, but Warhammer vets will be able to
jump in with ease. Company of Heroes revolves around collecting three main
resources: fuel, manpower, and munitions. The player must capture strategic
points all across the map and with those points comes the resources. There are a
few obstacles to overcome when capturing these points. First off, you’ll need to
connect these strategic points to your headquarters to receive any benefits.
Secondly, you’ll want to assess the importance of capturing each point of the
map and weighing out the win and loss situation. Would you be sacrificing too
many soldiers and vehicles for a point on the map that wouldn’t provide any
benefits? There are a lot of levels to the strategy of Company of Heroes – no
doubt many will have their own personal way of playing the game.

If you haven’t figured it out by
now, Company of Heroes only has two factions to use. The Axis which is made up
by the Germans, and the Allies, made up of the American forces. Each has their
own tactic and method of combat. Allies would be better suited to building up
fast and attacking at all angles. The Axis is slower and more methodical with
building tougher units that are hard to bring down. There’s a lot more depth
behind the simple two faction structure than what meets the eye.

The beautiful graphics can be
represented best by the incredible cutscenes. If not for the cutscenes, gamers
across all platforms will be able to appreciate the destructible maps.
Everything on the map and battlefield can be blown to smithereens with your
weapons and vehicles. The animations are solid to the point that the armed
services should be thanking Relic for representing them so realistically with
the soldier animations. Relic also incorporated a realistic physics engine to
assist the animations of Company of Heroes. The only drawback is the slowdowns
and framerate problems when there was mayhem all over the screen. With too many
explosions and animations, my computer slowed down to a snail’s pace chugging
along while it tried to keep up.

The voice acting is top notch and is
accompanied by great dialogue. I am proud of Relic that they didn’t put forth
corny dialogue or cheesy characters. This is an ultra-real WWII video game, no
jokes about it. The dialogue is strong in strategy and will help the players
advance if they are stuck on the next step in the mission. Outside of the voice
acting, Relic rounded out the audio with superb sound effects for all the
vehicles and action you could ever want.

Multiplayer is run through Relic’s
own online service which has launched with the release of Company of Heroes. Up
to eight players can join the matches that are tailored towards team-based
action. My best advice for online competitors – make sure to cut off any paths
of resources of your opposition. It’s a pain to see someone attacking your
strategic point way across the map and trying to gain it back. The multiplayer
is great to pick up immediately after playing the single-player campaign. You’ll
be at your best after completing the missions and jumping right into the
multiplayer will show you a whole new world of maneuvers and cunning tricks.

Speaking about the computer AI, they
aren’t lacking in their own ploys. They are intelligent enough to push the
player into a corner and cut off all your resources. If you aren’t a big RTS
player, Company of Heroes could prove to be difficult at times. I suggest
sticking to the easy difficulty from the beginning and trying your odds at that
for awhile.

This is one of the better games in
recent memory for me. What hurts is that I know in a few months there will be
onslaught of ‘AAA” video games released for this holiday season and Company of
Heroes may fall out of the spotlight. That definitely will be disappointing
since I would love to see this splendid WWII RTS take off in the right direction
with sales and a solid fan-base. Only time will tell if gamers catch on and make
the safe purchase of Company of Heroes. Your money couldn’t be better spent on a
title this fall.

Minimum System Requirements:
Processor: 2.0 GHz Intel IV
RAM: 512 MB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0 64MB video card
Disc Space: 6.5 GB
Operating System: Windows XP or Windows Vista
Video Cards: Nvidia: GeForce 3 or better / ATI: ATI Radeon 9500 or better

Gameplay: 9.3
There’s no better RTS this year so far. It borrows a lot of the mechanics from
Warhammer: 40,000 but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Graphics: 9.1
Relic delivered on all bases with the graphics: animations, cutscenes, art
direction, and soldier models.

Sound: 9.3
No recognizable voices? That’s fine by me since Relic did a better job without a
cast full of ‘D’ list celebrities.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
Please start out on the easy difficulty. You’ll save your keyboard the pain of
being bashed after being abused by the computer AI.

Concept: 9.0
Usually I bash on WWII-themed video games, but to deliver such a smart and sly
video game such as Company of Heroes, I am proud of Relic. It’s a job well done.

Multiplayer: 8.5
Nothing that will stand out above the FPS genre in terms of diversity, but
comparing to other RTS games, Company of Heroes is no slouch.

Overall: 9.3
I recommend picking this up immediately. There will be expansion packs to keep
your interest, I assure you! Company of Heroes couldn’t be any safer of a
purchase than investing all of your money into your child’s bank account for
college. Wait, take out $50 to buy this game and then invest the rest. There you
have it, buy this game and you’ll be connected to this game as much as I am.