WW2 at its best: Excellent production values combine with revolutionary gameplay to immerse you into the heat of warfare

User Rating: 9.2 | Company of Heroes PC
By cyril_ryser | Review Date:
Since I first saw a video for this game from E3 about three months ago, I put it onto to the top of my 'high-priority wish list'... Now it's been released and we're all happy to finally get to play this jewel:

GAMEPLAY
Just like I imagined: Visceral and realistic firefights with all the gears that WW2 had to offer. What really elevates the gameplay up to a class of its own are the real-time-physics and the fully destructable environments that can be used for strategical approaches. For example: Is there a fence in your tank's way? Simply mow it down by driving over it or blasting it to peaces.
Furthermore, the controlling is done by 'squad command', a really simplyfying tool to the RTS-battle: Just select whole squads (of 1-6 soldiers) and order them around. Taking cover behind obstacles also is vital in this game: Your squads and vehicles will be much harder to hit when behind cover or if they are barricaded in a building... but attention again: Buildings fall apart when under heavy fire just like in real war... impressive!

GRAPHICS & SOUND
I'm not the kind of guy who always complains 'bout hardware requirements: "Want high-end graphics? Get a HIGH-END SYSTEM which can support it!"
But CoH really IS a hardware hog. It offers ULTRA settings for terrain textures, effects and physics... when you got the ressources to run this eye-candy it blows everything you've ever seen in the RTS-genre back to stoneage! Model quality, full with bump- and specular mapping, even tops Call of Duty 2! The animations are at First person shooter standard as well and the physics are the best and most consequent implemented I've ever seen in a game. Just have a look at it...
The sound is 'state of the art' as well: All weapons sound authentic and explosions will leave you with ringing ears (don't panic only simulated ;)

OVERALL
If you wan't to see how far RTS-gaming has come by returning to the roots of action-driven gameplay you need to get CoH... And even the presentation has become better since C&C 1 :D !

SOME SMALL MINUS-POINTS
- path-finding of vehicles sometimes isn't optimal
- hardware hog like hell (loading times and RAM-swallower)
- only one campaign
- highly addictive

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