Saving Private Ryan type action...
So how does Company Of Heroes actually play? To start with, every mission sees you either needing to build and reinforce your base whilst dealing with probing enemy attacks. To the game’s credit, the enemy AI doesn’t rush you at the beginning and it’s only once you managed to get a reasonable foothold that the AI starts attacking in larger numbers with heavier armour, giving you a chance to build up some decent defences.
In fact, overall, the AI is pretty good, with both yours and the enemy units being able to retreat if they’re taking a pounding. But it’s not perfect. For example, all of your infantry units have the ability to lob grenades or sticky bombs which are ideal for taking out entrenched positions or enemy armour. The thing is, the AI controlling your units doesn’t actually make this decision itself, you have to tell it to lob a grenade. In the heat of battle this can be a pain as you might be in the middle of a tricky flanking manoeuvre and now find yourself having to tell your troopers to lob in grenades when you’d much rather be telling your Shermans where to go.
Click for larger imageThat niggle aside, there’s plenty to be said for thinking tactically and figuring out how to flank the enemy as entrenched positions, even those manned only by a heavy machine gunner, can make mincemeat of your troops. In fact, Company Of Heroes is all about diversion, flanking and manouvering. It’s rare that you’ll meet success by taking the enemy head on… not unless you want to suffer some heavy losses in the process.
Now losing troops is a bad thing in any situation but in Company Of Heroes troops gain battlefield experience and become more efficient the longer they survive. That said, there’s no real sense of loss when a ranked squad goes down and, with the speed the battles move at, there’s no appreciable impact of their demise on the overall battle either. This means that you end up not being all that bothered when a ranked squad is killed… you just replace them with a fresh squad and carry on. Perhaps if there was more of an advantage from having veteran units in the battle this would make more of an impact on the gameplay. Relic seem to think so as there’s an option to deploy veteran units from previous missions but, to be honest, I’ve completed the game without bothering to do so, which kind of negates the point of having them there.
Click for larger imageNow to that bugbear of all RTS games, the pathfinding. Now, just as in Joint Task Force, the pathfinding is at times a joy and at others an utter pain. With Company Of Heroes you can tell your units which way to face when they end up where you sent them. This is crucial for tanks as their rear armour is far weaker and important for anti-tank guns as they need to be pointing in the rough direction of attack. The reason I mention this is that using this useful feature is fine if you’re not under fire as you’ve got time for everyone to sort themselves out… but in combat it can mean the difference between winning a skirmish or trudging back to base to build more units.
Even in the last few levels where there’s plenty of room for tank manouvers, using the dirction option sees your tanks all jostling for the lead point and generally getting in each other’s way. I swear, if you gave six women twelve parking spaces and told them to reverse in at the same time you’d have exactly the same situation… utter confusion. Once everyone is sorted out and as long as you go in a straight line it’ll be fine… but turn a corner under fire from the enemy and the resultant mess as everyone tries to get in place rather than just bloody fight can mean the difference between success and failure.
Click for larger imageUnit balancing is pretty evenly matched, with no single unit being able to devastate everything else on the map. That said, on replaying the campaign, I’ve found that keeping a small defensive perimeter around the base and then just building as many Shermans as I could is an easy to way to win. Just back the Shermans up with Engineers to capture points and repair the Shermans and you’ll whip across the maps. Even the last few levels that see the Germans come on in unrelenting waves can be trounced in this fashion. However, play Company Of Heroes properly, using a variety of units and defending the line as you progress across the map is a much more satisfying and involving experience. The Mortain and Mortain Counter-attack levels are simply superb and are probably the closest an RTS will ever get to that desperate final battle in Saving Private Ryan… simply superb!