One of my favorite single-player game types is the Real Time Strategy, or RTS, game. In an RTS game, the basic idea is that you control a country, civilization, etc, and you build units in that civilization, and use them to ultimately control the map and take out the other side(s) to win the game. The first RTS that I ever played was Microsoft’s Age of Empires.  This game is pretty much a classic, and, along with the original Command and Conquer, is one of the defining works in this genre.

RTS games vary in their scale, both in space and in time. In Age of Empires, you went from the stone age to the iron age. In the sequel, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, you were playing through the ages of feudal Europe and Asia.  In Empire Earth II, you start out in the stone age but advance through about 15 ages, ending in a futuristic age with robot tanks and energy weapons.

Ordinarily, I like the “larger scale” games, both in terms of time and in terms of space. Conquering the world from the stone age to the space age is appealing for some reason. The smaller-scale games that don’t span as much space/time, ordinarily do not appeal to me.

Given this, it may be a bit of a surprise to learn that I have really enjoyed playing the game Company of Heroes.

This game, which is an RTS game set in post-D-Day Europe, only spans a very short time (the last year or two of the war) and space — usually just a small town or village in France or Germany. There is very little in the way of technology advances here, and the number of units is rather limited. But the “feel” of being involved in World War II is quite good, and the tactical and strategic elements of the game are outstanding. As a result, I have found myself really enjoying Company of Heroes, and I have played it for quite a few hours over the last several months. I’ve gotten about 2/3rds of the way through the campaign, and played it (solo) on skirmish mode a few times. There is a lot to like about this game, and so I will give it a thorough review and break it down into its “component parts” for easy reference.

Visuals - 10/10

The graphics and visuals in the game are simply first-rate.  In a lot of RTS games, when you zoom the camera in tight, everything looks good, but when you zoom the camera out, the units start to look just plain awful. In COH, however, this is not the case — the units and static objects look good no matter what the zoom, from all the way in tight, to all the way out at the widest angle. Explosions, rifle fire, and other special visual effects look fantastic. I can’t say enough about how the game looks — it really does a nice job of capturing the look and feel of WW II in Europe.

Sound - 10/10

The sound effects are, likewise, top-notch. The gunfire, tank tread noises, explosion sounds, and the like are excellent. There is some good music, particularly in the cut-scenes. And what I really like is that the unit leaders actually talk to you and give you useful information as the game progresses. Since Age of Empires, it’s been the case that units will say something when clicked on in most games. For example, I remember axemen in AoE saying something like “Pabadackus” or “Puervus” when clicked on (at least, that’s what it sounded like). In most games these are either nonsense sounds (as in the AOE line of games) or they are generic sentences that may sound good, but don’t convey any information about the battle conditions. For example, in Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II, you get lines spoken by the actors from the Lord of the Rings movies, which is pretty cool, but they just say the same cool one-liners all the time.

COH certainly does do this — when you click on a rifleman squad they’ll say something like “Rifelmen at the ready!” But they also, even when off-screen, will radio warnings to you. For example, let’s you’ve set your tank to move up a road and just “attack anything that moves”, and switch to another part of the map.  As the tank rolls forward, it encounters an Anti-tank (AT) weapon. Now, believe it or not, in a one-on-one fight the AT weapon usually will win against most tanks, because its ammo is designed to kill the tank, and the tank’s really isn’t designed to kill an AT gun. At the very least you will have a very wounded tank after they slug it out, if you just let the AI control things. But you get a warning, and not just an “alarm bell” sound as in most games. You will hear your tanker radio, “Sherman taking heavy AT fire!” At this point you can immediately scroll or map-hop back to the Sherman and deal with the situation (I usually have him back off, and call in a sniper, mortar team, or rifelman squad).  If, while you are doing that, the Axis sneaks a tank into your base, you’ll hear someone shout, “We’re being hit by enemy armor!” and you know to look for that as well. You will get warnings of being flanked, base being hit, and so on.

Now, in most other games, all of these events would  trigger an alarm of some sort. For example, in Age of Empires you’d have gotten an”alarm bell” sound and a flashing dot would appear on the map. But I find that the audio cues being more specific is very helpful. Some alarms simply don’t need to be dealt with immediately, and others are more critical. “Sherman taking AT fire,” for example, is not one I would ignore. However, depending on who is where, “We’re being hit by enemy armor” is probably lower on the priority list of things to take care of.

In any case, the array of audio cues combined with the great sound effects makes me give this game the highest possible rating on sound.

Gameplay/Strategy - 8/10

COH strategy is somewhat different from most RTS games. Usually in an RTS game, you have “farmers” or “miners” or some other “resource gatherers.” Their job is to go out, and farm resources, and carry them back to your base (food, water, gold, whatever). Part of the strategy becomes, how do you protect these (usually unarmed and vulnerable) units from enemy attacks and keep the supply lines open as you build your civilization.

COH does have resources like other games — specifically, manpower, ammo, and fuel — but there really are no “gatherer” units. Instead, you send your units out to capture “control points” on the map, and once you capture them, they automatically feed a certain amount of the resource into your economy every minute. These resource points are fixed, static, and permanent, so this forces you to defend them if you want to take over the map (and thus win). Solo games also have a “victory point” system, where each minute the control of certain special points on the map is evaluated and scored, and whoever gets to zero first loses. This adds another layer to the strategy.

COH generally lends itself to offensive gameplay, more than defensive, and to an extent this makes sense. The lesson of World War II was, after all, “go on the offensive and be mobile.” The Germans conquered almost all of Europe using that technique in 1940-42, and the Allies took it back after D-day with a similar strategy. Attempts to “sit back and wait for the enemy to advance” generally fail in this game.

Personally, I like defensive-offensive game. By this I mean, I like to establish my base and make it strong against attacks, and only then do I start to push forward. You can do this in the old RTS games, but the new ones play much faster, and in COH you really can’t do this, which is mildly frustrating. There are ways on skirmish mode to sort of “set it” not to attack you too fast, but this always feels like cheating to me.

Enemy AI is always an issue in RTS games, as the computer is generally not too smart. Historically it can only beat a remotely experienced human by cheating (I remember in one of the games, on “hard” mode, discovering via a replay that the computer just granted itself a magic 10,000 of every resource every so many minutes).  COH is a bit different in this regard as well. The AI is quite smart, and on skirmish mod, I have a very hard time beating it. There are basically 2 or 3 good “defensive maps” that I can manage to survive with, sometimes able to eke out a win. But on most of the maps, the computer totally out-plays me, to the point where I don’t even get into the game much at all before I give up and surrender.

Campaigns are not as brutal, and the campaign missions are mostly set up to allow you to survive and win (eventually) at least. The campaign is also interesting and serves as a good tutorial for game-play, so it is worth playing.  Overall, then, the gameplay is good, although I would prefer if it were a little easier to play a defensive sort of game.
Controls/UI - 7/10

There is nothing really spectacular here.  If you have played any RTS games the controls are mostly the same. You do have to worry about “cover” and the UI for that is quite nice — it shows you when you have a unit selected and hover over an area, whether moving that unit to the area will put them in good, light, or no cover. (Leaving units “exposed” is a bad idea, by the way). The interface is mostly intuitive and easy to use, so I have no complaints, but there’s also not anything really innovative here either. It’s about average.

Campaign -  8/10

If you have any interest in World War II the campaign is a great way to feel like you are in the action of it. Each mission is very different, and they not only challenge you but they teach you how to play the game by making you focus on one thing or another, such as building defenses, going on the offensive, coordinating multi-unit attacks, and the like. Quite well done.

Fun - 9/10

COH is one of the best RTS games I have played — up there with the original AoE, and Empire Earth II, which are my other loves. AoE is of course dated at this point, and I haven’t played it in probably 5 years. EE II is still good and not really dated much yet (although a sequel has come out recently) . These are the best RTS games I have played and COH is right up there. The combination of good sound and visuals, decent gameplay, and a good campaign, make for a very fun and interesting game.

Overall - 8.7/10

Overall, the game is fun, interesting, and enjoyable. If you like RTS games and enjoy the World War II theme, this game is a must-have. Even if you are not that into World War II, I think there is something enjoyable here for anyone who plays RTS games.

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