Customer Reviews

Company of Heroes: Gold Edition

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The number of games set during the Second World War borders on the ridiculous. The number of titles which attempt (usually badly) to recreate D-Day or Operation Market Garden is vast, but the overwhelming majority of them fail to capture either the atmosphere or historical feel of the conflict. First-person shooters like the Call of Duty franchise have proven a lot more successful at depicting the conflict than strategy games, with most WWII strategy games being quite boring (such as the Sudden Strike series, which is so anal your soldiers can actually run out of bullets, which is taking pedantry to a new level).

For these reasons, when Company of Heroes was first announced there wasn't a huge amount of excitement about it, especially as the developers, Relic, were responsible for the entertaining-but-lightweight Dawn of War series. When it came out, however, it was an absolute revelation, doing for WWII strategy games what Medal of Honour did for WWII shooters a decade earlier.

Company of Heroes is set purely on the Western Front of the European theatre of WWII, starting on D-Day and proceeding through to the end of Operation Market Garden. The initial game features a single campaign focusing on the US forces and depicts the assault on the beaches, the behind-the-lines movements of special forces which silenced the German's artillery pounding the beaches, the assault on Cherbourg and the battles of St. Lo and Falaise that resulted in the final defeat of German forces on the Cotentin Peninsula. The expansion, Opposing Fronts (which is included with the CoH Gold Edition), features two campaigns. The first centres on the German Panzer Elite as they race to defeat the Allies' assault on Arnhem in Operation Market Garden, and the second (set some months earlier) focuses on the British assault on Caen, a gruelling battle that was supposed to be won in a single day but instead lasted more than a month due to the unexpected presence of elite SS forces in the town. A notable lack in the game is that the fourth side, the 'normal' German Wehrmacht, lacks a single-player campaign, but Relic have surprisingly noticed this and decided to remedy this with a downloadable German campaign, to be released in early 2009, although it will use different mechanics to the rest of the game.

The game is notable for minimising base-building, although it doesn't eliminate it as the Ground Control series did some years earlier. However, resource-gathering has been eliminated in favour of holding territory on the map. This mechanic encourages aggressive play from the start, as he who seizes the most territory in the shortest possible time will find the balance of power swinging in their favour. This leads to an interesting trade-off as players must decide to reinforce earlier in the game with lots of low-level units such as jeeps, mortars and machine gun teams, or instead holding off until more advanced technology such as artillery and tanks becomes available. The variation in these mechanics is what makes the game interesting to play, particularly in the compelling multiplayer modes.

On the single-player front, the game is unfortunately rather cliched. Some of the maps are excellently designed, but the stories are rather traditional WWII stuff featuring good old American boys and stiff-upper-lipped British soldiers facing off against the ruthless-but-with-a-sense-of-honour Germans (as usual for a game, the actual Nazis play no role in events). The storytelling is also weak, as it happens entirely within the cut scenes between missions. The actual characters do not appear in the missions and no storytelling takes place during the missions themselves, which means that after spending an hour on a tough map you've forgotten what is going on in the story, and don't particularly care about what is happening to these cliched characters.

The American and Wehrmacht forces are excellently-designed and balanced against one another, although the higher-level German units (particularly their tanks) are tough to stop once they get rolling. The game engine delivers the chaos of battle particularly well, with massive artillery bombardments, air strikes and ferocious tank duels giving us some of the most convincing WWII action in a game seen to date. However, the newer sides of the British and Panzer Elite are less interesting and, although well-balanced against one another (the British focus on static defence whilst the Panzer Elite are focused on attack) feel a bit off when fighting the established sides. In particular, the American and German ability to lock down and defend territory markers whilst the Brits and Panzer Elite cannot is rather unbalancing.

Where Company of Heroes comes to life is the excellent multiplayer which, after two years, seems to have finally gotten some stable and reliable servers. Cracking a particularly tough co-op skirmish or fighting a challenging battle with human players is tremendously satisfying, and the varied tactics and relatively fast pace of the game make Company of Heroes the most satisfying multiplayer RTS game since the venerable StarCraft.

Company of Heroes (****½) is a compelling and fun game where the single-player experience suffers slightly but the multiplayer and skirmish games more than make up for it. The game is available now in the UK and USA in a 'gold edition' with its expansion, Opposing Fronts, included. A second expansion, Tales of Valour, will be released in the spring of 2009 and Relic are considering a sequel, possibly adding the Russians or being set in North Africa.

I just bought the game Monday and ran into the same error as D. Freysinger. After installation, the game asks to download and install a 40MB patch. The game out of the box is version 2.202. During installation of the patch, it crashes saying that there is a problem with WW2Art.sga and error code 10104.

I spent all night long digging through the internet looking for a solution. It seems that there are tons of people on the Relic forums having this same patch problem.

As far as the Gold edition, it turns out that you need to enable DMA on your DVD drive. I had it on PIO. WinXP automatically downgrades to PIO and locks it if it encounters a certain number of errors on your drive.

In order for me to enable DMA again, I had select "DMA if available" on my Primary IDE Channel in Device Manager. However, it was still locked in PIO mode so I also had to uninstall and let WinXP reinstall the Primary IDE Channel. Ultra DMA was now enabled.

I reinstalled the game and not only did it take half the time to install, but both patches (the 40MB and the 70MB) worked.

So if you're running into the same problem I have, try enabling DMA. I don't know why it makes a difference but it does. Somehow, having your DVD drive in PIO corrupts some of the data files during installation.

Company of Heroes makes sure that you always have something to do, and that you're always focused on taking and holding map nodes. Positioning and cover are very important as well, so matches end up becoming contests for defensible buildings or fortifications around resource nodes. But even as powerful as cover is, there are plenty of tools to flush your enemies out of their fortifications, from mortar teams to flamethrowers to artillery strikes. It creates a very fast, very focused dynamic which is unlike any other game I've played.

Regarding people's objections to the forced online connection: yes, it is somewhat onerous for those who do not plan to play online. However, the things the game forces you to do (make an account and download patches) are what you would have to do to play online anyway... and you really will want to play online. The campaign is good, but the game becomes orders of magnitude deeper when played against other humans.

I very highly recommend this game to any RTS fan.

Both of them COH and COH:OF, are great games! I have play a large number of real time strategy games and this series is the most fun and realistic ones I ever play.

There are four Forces to play with, the American, the British, the German Werhmack and the SS Panzer Elite, where each one of these forces has 3 different ways of specialization. I must admit that at the beginning I believe that the Allied forces have a significant advantage over the German Forces, but them I discover a couple of strategies to stop the American Tank Rush, and the game took life again! Despite it is a good game in single mode or campaign mode, the real fun and challenge is to play it with one or more friends in multiplayer mode, so if you like to play Real Time Strategy Games this is one of those that you MUST play!! Give it a try!! I recommend it!!

Overall, very satisfied with this game - plays differently than I thought it would but that's one of the best things about it. The mechanics of the game's economy force players to get out of their bases and expand across the map, keeping combat and action a constant occurrence. 'Turtling' up in a few corners in this game will not win you many scenarios, but that's refreshing after playing Starcraft $$$ maps, C&C Generals, or something of that sort.

The WW2 atmosphere is great, the sound is accurate and spot-on with what you'd expect from each unit/weapon, and the graphics are some of the best I've seen in any RTS game to-date. There's a good reason why this is on IGN's recently released 'Top 25 PC Games of All Time' list - it really is that good as a strategy game. Throw in Relic's great online MP community system, and you've got a solid game purchase here that can give you many game-play hours, well worth the current price.

Only negatives I can think to mention are that the unit cap is kind of low (especially if you're used to something like SupCom), due to the graphics and mechanics, but makes sense and battles never feel 'small' despite this, thanks to the well done atmosphere. The game can be somewhat difficult depending on what types of RTS games you come from beforehand, and requires more micromanagement of individual units or squads and their abilities than some other games like SupCom - but I'd say that's to be expected with what type of game it is. All depends on what your preference is in an RTS game.

If you love RTS games in general and are thinking of buying this - you won't be disappointed if you do, and it just may turn out to be one of your favorites, as it did with me.

4+ years after storming onto the RTS landscape, this 2007 game-of-the-year is still fun. The graphics can compete with and actually surpass even the most recent RTS releases. Despite some reviewers deriding CoH as a simplistic tank rush affair, I wonder if that was the only way they could win? There are many strategies using varying combinations of hardware and tactics to foil your opponents. American snipers and anti-tank guns, for example, can crush a supposed overwhelming army of aggressive German panzers and infantry. The solo campaign is enjoyable but multiplayer with friends is the most fun.

this is one of the best srtagie games i have ever played but i like playing on the mods better because of higher pop cap

Game is defective. I can't even download it due to one little file in the disc that won't read. Thumbs down.

Company of Heroes Gold Edition is a fun game to play, if you can play it. I have installed this game 4 times on two different computers. Never once have I managed to accomplish the installation in less than 3 hours. The digital rights management on this software is the worst I have ever seen. The Cd key sometimes just stops working, requiring you to contact Relic to try to get a new one. You have to have an active connection to the internet to play. The patching process is very long, and very finicky. Oftentimes the game will encounter errors related to the settings on your DVD drive. Once you get past that, the patching process crashes repeatedly. Do not purchase this game unless you are willing to commit a minimum of 4 hours to installation and troubleshooting. This game is the poster child for terrible terrible DRM execution. I strongly recommend you do not buy this game, or that if you do, you purchase it via another medium (steam).

This is what my review initially looked like:

"I have an excellent computer that plays many modern games without any difficulty. I ONLY have trouble with this game. It's a shame because I was able to play it as a demo and it seems good, but it's not worth anything if it won't play, that's the bottom line. I couldn't even get the code that came with the disc to work, I had to get a new code from customer support (that problem at least I was able to resolve)."

Since that time I have received the following advice on a CoH forum:

"Go to My Documents>My games>Company Of Heroes>Local txt. file change the direct x version to ''9'' without marks"

THAT worked. Why customer support could not give me that help, I don't know. But perhaps someone else will be helped by this advice.

A FIVE for fun if you can get it to work, and a two overall for obvious problems with crashes and bugs (lots of people have complained about it) and poor customer support.