Company of Heroes: The must have strategy game

In the real time strategy gaming world, where the norm is to build up a base, set up economy and then churn out forces, we have to agree that it has become too stale. We hoped for a breath of fresh air with the coming of Warcraft 3 which, in my opinion was a complete disaster with its extensive use of magic, buffs and all sorts of stupid icons being displayed on your units’ heads.

Then comes Company of Heroes, a breath of fresh air, a game so different that it totally changed the concept of real time strategy. Gone are the high tech science fiction weapons or crazy ass magic spells that sorcerers fire from their behinds. Here we have World War II era weapons, battling it out on mountain tops, country side and small towns. If you have played any of the WWII games, all the weapons are here and even some that you did not know that they existed. But rest assured, all are tied in well with history.

The basic mechanics are the same. You have a base, you build buildings and, you make forces. What is different is the resource mechanic. The developers used the Warhammer 40,000 : Dawn of War resource mechanic, where capturing the territory, gives you the resources. If the captured territory is not linked, you will not get resources. So the idea is to capture as much of the map as you can and keep it linked to keep a continuous flow of resources. Then there are three types of resources, munitions, fuel and manpower. Fuel is very important for all researches. Munitions is very important to use those researches. For example, if you researched grenades, then every time you throw a grenade, it costs 25 munitions. Also, the special abilities cost munitions and manpower too.

Then, when you battle it out, you gain experience points, much like in C&C generals, but you use these points after selecting the doctrine that you want to use. May it be Infantry oriented, armor oriented, defense oriented, it all depends on your playing style.

Speaking of playing styles you have 2 playable sides in the original (German Wehrmacht and Americans). The expansion pack, Opposing Fronts, adds the British and the Panzer Elite as 2 more sides. There is no buildup time. The game starts and you get right into the action and trust me the action in this one is extraordinary. There are so many things that need to be considered just like in real warfare. If your units are moving, they have less accuracy. If they enter a building, then the number of units that can shoot outside depends on the number of windows in that building. The infantry gets suppressed by machine gun fire. Tanks take more damage if you attack them from behind. There are three types of covers, green (strong cover), yellow (medium cover) and red (negative cover). The damage inflicted on the troops also depends on the type of cover they are in. It is these minor details that really make the game stand out.

And finally, the graphics; the game is beautiful and now with DirectX 10 support, it looks remarkable. But if you have a low end machine, that is, a machine that has nVidia geforce 6200 or equivalent, it will still run on it.

I have played enough multiplayer to decide that this game shines in that department as well, in fact, it is 10 times more fun than any RTS that is out there today. So if you are an RTS enthusiast, buy this game without a second thought and play it today. For more details, do visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_of_heroes