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Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 8:52 pm
by Leisher
Received this one for Chistmas. So far, it's pretty kick ass.

RTS in WW2. Cake would like this one because the tactics are pretty sound. For example: hitting armor in front is pointless and poorly equipped infantrymen cannot kill a tank.

The opening scene, the D-Day landing, has been done to death, but they added a new twist in the cinematic to make it a bit more interesting.

I've only played a few missions thus far, but each has been different and the action is intense.

My only gripe is that to get the most out of your units you really need to micromanage and when defending a town from a three pronged attack, that's not really possible. Still, they perform well enough that it's not a major complaint.

More later.

Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 8:54 pm
by GORDON
Leisher wrote:The opening scene, the D-Day landing, has been done to death, but they added a new twist in the cinematic to make it a bit more interesting.
Boobies?

Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 9:35 pm
by Leisher
Well, you've got to admit, if those boats had dropped off waves of topless women the Germans probably wouldn't have fired a single shot.

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 12:00 pm
by Leisher
I have enjoyed the game, and I'm close to the end, but I wanted to drop a quick thought on it as I don't know when I'll get to a full review.

Anyway, the game is fun. There is some interesting stuff in here, but this game in NO WAY deserved a 10 out of 10 that GFW the magazine gave it nor the 90%+ rating PCGamer gave it.

The computer cheats it's ass off, the game itself is a micromanager's wet dream, and friendly AI is horrible.

Any game in which your soldiers will stand around and be shot without firing back immediately cannot be considered exceptional.

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 2:54 pm
by thibodeaux
Leisher wrote:Any game in which your soldiers will stand around and be shot without firing back immediately cannot be considered exceptional.
Maybe if you were playing the French?

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 11:56 am
by Leisher
Ok, I have completed Company of Heroes and have some final thoughts on it.

First of all, the magazines and websites that are hailing this as such a perfect game must be RTS starved. Or in the case of Games for Windows: The Magazine. their 10/10 rating for this game, one of the first with the "Games for Windows" tags, might be a hint at their bias towards such games. This is not a perfect game, not by a long shot.

CoH is set in WW2, which seems to be required by law these days, and is a standard RTS.

The mission variety in CoH is decent, although you'll find yourself doing a lot of the same stuff from mission to mission. The game does a pretty good job of leading you into the various scenarios that play out by starting you off with just infantry based missions, then introducing vehicles, and then finally tanks. It also leads you along with your tactics by starting you off in situations that are more offensive and then putting you in more defensive roles. The pacing is very well done.

I do have three complaints about the missions structure though:
-The three levels before the final level of the game are odd choices. The first has you defending a hill for a set amount of time as you wait for reinforcements. The second has you holding strategic points on that hill. The third has you cutting off the German retreat, which is a timed level.
-I am not a fan of timed levels in any game. I think it's a cheap trick by the developers to make the game sense more hectic. But here, it seems REALLY stupid because the pre-level video shows how we've established air superiority and because an earlier level wasn't timed which should have been (stop missles from being launched which kills our troops and civilians). Why would you risk ground troops when you can blast the Germans from the air? I get why stopping a retreat is timed, but when you show forces moving across a map to cut off the Germans, don't start the player off with a base and no troops. I mean, did the guys who set up the tents cut off the Germans?
-The final mission is anti-climatic. I didn't even see 80% of the board before I won.

The graphics are pretty good whether you're zoomed way in or way out. There is a lot of detail on most everything. Explosions aren't really too impressive visually apart from the way bodies fly through the air, but they sound fantastic. Overall, the sound is superb.

The game play is just like a standard RTS with some differences:
-Instead of using a resource harvester or peons to go get resources, your troops must capture points around the map that reward you with constant resources. By the way, the main resources are Manpower, Fuel, and Munitions. I've seen how "innovative" this has been described by other reviewers. Well, it is and it isn't. While the idea of resources coming from map points might be kind of new, the points themselves aren't. Plus, needing to protect those points is pretty much like protecting peons and/or harvesters right?
-You get command points to spend on different "advantages" in battle. These come in three flavors: Infantry, Air, and Armor. Depending on what you pick you get different help. For example: Picking the Infantry route gives you access to howitzer strikes, while picking the Air gives you access to bomber runs, while picking Armor gives you access to a Pershing. None of these vary much and you aren't even able to get to the best stuff like the Pershing until later missions.
-Units gain veteran status and can be carried over from mission to mission. I never used this ability once so I don't know how well it works. And making units veterans is nothing new.
-Infantry can be pinned down by fire and completely lost if the building they can hole up into gets blown up. The pinned down part is different...maybe, the rest isn't.
-Tactics are much more important here. A sniper unit can decimate your infantry. When fighting a tank, you should try to flank it (But completely unneccessary to beat it as I discovered except for one stage with Panthers).

Other than that, everything else is the same as an other RTS. It's a standard RTS! Sure, the storyline might be kind of cool, but if you've seen Saving Private Ryan or band of Brothers, you're not seeing anything really new. Although, the game might be based on fact as they gives details about a certain character at the end. Even if true, it's nothing new...cool...but not new.

So the fact that it's "standard" is enough to make it far from perfect right? Just wait, there's more.

One thing that does piss me off about the other reviews I've seen about this game is that they praise the AI.

I'm here to call: "Bullshit!"

Let's say you have a three man heavy machine gun team and they set up shop to face east. Then a lone German comes from the west and attacks them. The third man on the team will fire back, but the other two just sit there. If your third man dies, the other two just sit there. They will continue to be shot and won't move an inch. The VAST majority of my losses in this game were because my units refused to defend themselves. Heavy gun troops won't reposition themselves, tanks sit there while getting hit by anti-tank weapons, engineers stand by damaged tanks and refuse to repair them, etc. Oh and clear all the enemies from a resource point and then watch as your troops stand there instead of capturing that point.

So now we've got piss poor AI. Enough to give it a lower review score right? Oh, but wait, there's more.

The AI cheats it's ass off. For example. one mission has me holding this hill and I get waves of infantry thrown at me randomly, plus some tanks later. I get reinforcements right away, a tank, a flame throwing tank, and an M-10 tank killer. Each time I restarted the mission, I'd sent these units to different areas. In return, the AI would sent it's tank units to different areas based on where I put the tanks. That's ok though right? That's AI. Wrong! The areas I moved these tanks to were behind my lines. Fog of war should have been in effect, and thus, the Germans shouldn't have known where to send their tanks to avoid my tanks. The two stages on the hill are the most obvious areas where the AI cheats in this way.

Between your non-existent unit AI and the cheating AI which knows where all your units are, it makes these two stages the toughest in the game, by far. The sad part is the developers probably thought "This'll be intense and thus awesome for the player." They were wrong. It sucks and it's frustrating. Not just because your units won't defend themselves or repair other units, etc. Not just because the AI cheats...

The AI cheating would be enough to lower the score right? Oh no, there's more...

There's also the level of micromanagement that goes on. Picture having 20 units on a vast map all fighting on a different front. Now make sure they're all stupid enough so that if the enemy comes from behind, they can't do shit about it nor will they heal or repair without being told. Hell, they won't even capture a resource point without being told! Now add in the element of having to tell them which direction to face, what to heal/repair, what to build, what to capture, where to go, how to defend themselves, etc, etc, etc. As you can imagine, it gets VERY frustrating.

P.S. I never found a pause button, so everything is real time and units get killed in seconds.

But again, the majority of your frustration will be those two hill missions.

With the combinations of all of the above, you basically need defenses for your defenses. Remember that and you should do fine in the game.

Ok, my ranting is done.

Yeah, CoH IS A GOOD GAME. However, it is NOT the end all be all that some reviews are praising it to be. I honestly think that most gaming review places just needed a RTS of the year contender since it was such a weak year for them.

CoH is a must play for WW2 and RTS fans, despite the frustrations the AI might bring you. For just RTS fans though, Supreme Commander hits in Feb and C&C 3 is right behind it...I'd wait.

6 out of 10.

By the way, I just looked at some screenshots at 1UP because I wanted to see what they based their review on, and all the pretty shots they have on the main page are bullshit. One's a cutscene, the other three are from camera positions you never use in game. Zooming in that far means you're ignoring the rest of the battlefield and that means you're going to lose.

I also noticed the reviewer there gushed mostly about the multiplayer aspects of the game and only had a paragraph about the single player campaign. Idiot.




Edited By Leisher on 1168880805