Relic Entertainment announces COMPANY OF HEROES 3

Relic Entertainment have announced a third full game in their Company of Heroes real-time strategy series.

Company of Heroes 3 is the follow-up to the original Company of Heroes (2006), which focused on the campaign in Normandy, and Company of Heroes 2 (2013), which depicted events on the Eastern Front. This time the game focuses on the Mediterranean Theatre, with a campaign which takes in battles in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, with the Allies versus the German Wehrmacht. The theatre was selected after discussions between Relic and fans on their forums (presumably at the expense of the Pacific, which we can guess will form the basis of a future fourth game).

Unlike the previous games, which had a linear story-based campaign, Company of Heroes 3 has a dynamic, non-linear campaign which unfolds on a large campaign map, similar to the Total War series (both Relic and Total War developers Creative Assembly are owned by Sega). Players can deploy and move units on the campaign map and use things like naval support and air power to clear the way for the ground forces to advance. Standard real-time battles unfold when ground forces meet in combat. This mode was previewed in the previous Ardennes Assault expansion for Company of Heroes 2, but CoH3 develops the idea in a lot more depth.

The actual battles are now brighter and sunnier, taking place in the desert or on the Mediterranean shore, and there is more focus on detailed infantry combat. Units can fortify buildings as before but they can also breach and storm fortified buildings. Single-player mode has a new "tactical pause" feature which allows players to pause the game and issue orders, a familiar technique from other strategy games but a first for this series.

Allied players will now get rewards for minimising collateral damage to civilian buildings, such as gaining intel from grateful locals or recruiting partisans to add extra firepower to their units. Allied players will also be able to sortie American or British forces, or on some missions a mixture of the two.

Company of Heroes 3 will launch in late 2022, though players will be able to take part in a pre-alpha demo study starting today.

Company of Heroes 2

It can be tough for developers to make sequels to best-selling games. Vary the formula too much and people will complain about you moving too far from what the game is about. Don't change things and people will moan that you've produced an overpriced expansion rather than a new title.

This is a problem Relic know well. In 2009 they released Dawn of War II, the sequel to their successful 2004 Warhammer 40,000 RTS. They changed a lot about the game, moving it away from being a real-time strategy game to more of an action RPG: Diablo in space with more than one playable character. Whilst it was a very solid game on its own right, it did feel like a different genre to the first game. Fans complained.

For Company of Heroes 2, Relic's sequel to their very popular 2006 strategy game, they've gone conservative. The shift in focus and time means new sides - the Russians and the German armies of the eastern front - but the improvements over the first game are modest. The graphics are better, but not as improved as you might expect given the seven-year wait for this game. This is less of a dig at Company of Heroes 2 (which is still the best-looking strategy game in existence, at least until Total War: Rome II launches in September) and more of a reflection of how astonishingly far ahead of its time Company of Heroes was in 2006. The sound is a lot better, with booming explosions and realistic machine gun noises, a lot of them sampled from the genuine weapons. Sound design isn't usually something that stands out in games, but Company of Heroes 2's is simply the best I've ever encountered in a game.

In terms of gameplay, things proceed much as before. The battlefield consists of a home zone for each team and a patchwork of territorial zones in between. By capturing territory you boost your resources and can summon new troops to the battlefield more quickly, as well as unlocking fresh abilities through combat. Units gain experience in battle, becoming more accurate or tougher, and so does the commander, unlocking abilities such as recon planes, artillery bombardments or air strikes. Company of Heroes 2 changes things a little by having both locked territories (which are pre-set to provide fuel, ammunition or manpower points) and 'open' ones, which you can set to a particular resource by building on them. This is a nice touch which helps factions if they lose a rare resource zone.

Of course, you have to fight you away across these maps. Infantry can be summoned quickly to the battle and are surprisingly versatile, with anti-tank squads perfectly capable of taking down individual enemy tanks (though they're less effective against larger armoured formations). Snipers can provide both recon and a way of eliminating infantry at range, whilst mortars are formidable short-range artillery units and heavy machine guns are excellent for disrupting enemy charges. In the mid-game armoured cars, anti-tank guns and light tanks appear, and in longer battles expect to see heavy tanks like the T-34 and the Panther enter the fray. So far, so much like Company of Heroes. Improvements are modest rather than revolutionary, although a much stricter 'true sight' system allows for some sneaky tactics and makes things like using smokescreens much more effective (as it removes the enemy unit from sight altogether, rather than making hitting him harder). Some may bemoan the less-effective MG units, which find it tougher to pin down enemy infantry and reduce their effectiveness.

It's all loud and fast-paced but the game retains satisfying tactical elements. It's possible for battles to swing quite wildly from side to side, with armies being driven back to their bases only to burst forth again, reinforced for battle against their exhausted pursuers. It's great stuff, as much now as it was back in 2006.

In terms of structure, there's a single-player campaign which takes place against a backdrop of different parts of the war. This is framed with a former Red Army soldier being interrogated for seditious activities during the war, allowing the narrative to jump from Stalingrad back to the opening of Barbarossa, the siege of Moscow and the battles for Kursk and Berlin. Relic try to do something interesting with this narrative, by focusing on the individual heroism and bravery of the soldiers whilst exposing the brutality of the Soviet regime (which was not much better than the Nazis in terms of the death and destruction it caused). It fails due to weak writing and a feeling that there's too much of a Western (and particularly American) sense of morality impugning on what was a true life-and-death struggle for millions of people. The ambition is laudable but the execution is poor. Individual missions are quite well-designed, especially in the latter part of the campaign, but ultimately there are too many arbitrary restrictions on what units you can or can't use in a mission.

More impressive is the Theatre of War mode, which offers up a variety of different missions to the player. Some are single-player, focused scenarios (such as using a squad of snipers to assassinate enemy officers in a village) whilst others are bigger co-op missions or full-scale battles against veteran enemy forces. The Theatre of War covers events for 1941 only; updates are promised for the future to cover the rest of the conflict. Freed from the restrictive narrative, these scenarios can be more inventive and interesting than the campaign missions.

Of course, multiplayer is a big focus and is as fast, furious and smart as the original game's.

The game also introduces a couple of other ideas. One is the notion of winter itself as a threat, with the temperature suddenly dropping and your soldiers no longer able to fight. Getting them into cover or, better still, to a campfire, becomes a priority. It's a nice idea but it adds an extra level of randomness to the game which most players will likely prefer to do without. Fortunately, it can be switched off for multiplayer. Another new feature is that an NKVD officer will be deployed to your HQ whenever new infantry are deployed; if the infantry retreat to your base, the NKVD officer will shoot them. This simulates Stalin's 'not one step back' doctrine which made Russian soldiers fear retreating more than advancing. Again, it's laudable that Relic try to reflect this, but in practice it's just rather annoying. It's also historically inaccurate that your soldiers won't simply kill the NKVD officer themselves (NKVD troops assigned to Red Army squads occasionally 'fell to enemy fire, honest' during the war if they proved too zealous in punishing their soldiers). Since the retreat order is the best way to avoid being pinned by MG or mortar fire, the game punishing you for using it is something that gets old rather quickly.

Ultimately, Company of Heroes 2 (****½) is a modest evolution of the original game rather than anything too spectacular. The Theatre of War mode is its biggest improvement over the original, along with some exceptional sound design and graphics. Some of the new features meant to convey the atmosphere of the conflict backfire a little, but overall this is an accomplished, impressive and enjoyable RTS. The game is available now in the UK and USA on PC.

ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE & COMPANY OF HEROES 2 announced

Two major new games have been announced for 2013.

First up is Company of Heroes 2. The original Company of Heroes was released in 2006 and was brilliant, easily the finest RTS released since StarCraft (a position it retained in the face of the latter's good-but-unoriginal sequel). Two so-so expansion packs followed, but it was the game's fiercely engaging multiplayer and its ridiculously inventive mod scene that really made it a success. Eastern Front, in particular, was an amazing mod that allowed players to play as the Russians.

Company of Heroes 2 is due for release in 2013 and will in fact be focused on the Eastern Front, allowing players to play as the Russians against the invading Germans (no word on if players will be able to play as the Germans as well; I assume so). The first game was noted for its destructible terrain and the sequel will continue to evolve that, with soldiers now able to leap over obstacles and snow forming a barrier which can slow troops and tanks down but can also be used as cover. A more robust line of sight will be featured and the game will apparently seek to recreate the massive battles of the Eastern Front, hinting at a possible move to a larger scale than the original game's smaller-sized engagements (D-Day, the largest battle featured in the original game, was only the 23rd largest battle of WWII, most of the bigger ones were fought in Russia).

The new issue of PC Gamer UK (on sale 9 May) will feature a lot more on the game and - most impressively - will come with a copy of the original Company of Heroes for free with every copy sold (UK only, unfortunately).

Also announced is The Elder Scrolls Online. In development at Zenimax Online for the past 'several years', the game will be set a thousand years before the events of Skyrim and see three factions fighting for control of Cyrodiil and the entire continent of Tamriel. Based on the Game Informer article, it sounds like the entire continent of Tamriel will be available for players to traverse and fight over. To be honest, it sounds a little MMORPG-by-the-numbers, but then few settings would suit that as well as the Elder Scrolls world. The game will be released in 2013 on PC and Mac.

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valour & Eastern Front

I previously reviewed Company of Heroes and its initial expansion, Opposing Fronts, here. In that review I noted that since its initial release in 2006, Company of Heroes has become the definitive WWII real-time strategy game and a compelling multiplayer experience, in the latter case becoming the finest RTS since StarCraft. This review focuses on the two subsequent expansions for the game, the official Tales of Valour (or Valor for those of an American persuasion) and the unofficial Eastern Front.


Tales of Valour is very odd. The expansion adds a couple of new units to the established four sides (the Wehrmacht, the Panzer Elite, the British and the Americans) but most of these are useless. The only really successful addition is the new American light tank, the Hellcat, which is more versatile and impressive than the previous tank-destroyer and, when properly used, can help overcome the Wehrmacht domination of the early game through the spamming of armoured cars. The (very few) new maps are okay, but the game focuses a lot on the new multiplayer modes which are, to put it mildly, utter drivel. The new single-player content borders on the laughably pathetic, with three insanely short campaigns focusing on new control methods and experimental ideas that are less effective than controlling the game the traditional way. Combined, the three single-player mini-campaigns will take you less than two hours to complete, and that's being very generous. Tales of Valour, thus is really not worth bothering with unless you can pick it up for a couple of quid.

Eastern Front, on the other hand is much more impressive. First off, it's free. You can download it from here with no charge whatsoever. It isn't made by Relic but a team of fans of the game who have put many months of work into designing new units, doctrines and making sure everything is balanced with the existing sides. There is no single-player content (so far; a single-player campaign is in the works), but instead the mod adds the USSR's Red Army to the game, along with a jaw-dropping TWENTY new maps to the multiplayer mode. The maps are very well-designed, tightly balanced and entertaining to play, and frankly the mod is worth getting just to get access to the new maps with the existing sides.


Of course, the addition of the Red Army is the mod's main selling point. Relic previously claimed that they couldn't add any more sides to the game due to programming limitations, so the fact that the mod-makers have had no problem expanding to six sides (a future patch for the mod will also add the Osteer, the German's Eastern Front-focused army) is impressive to start off with. The Red Army faction is a different sort of beast to the existing sides, focusing on cheap, easily-replaceable infantry units, an impressive mixture of tanks and light artillery and some extremely formidable heavy units which appear later on to make mincemeat of the German Panthers and Tigers. WWII games usually struggle to encompass the full development of the Red Army throughout the Second World War, which started off armed with rifles and wooden planes and ended as a lethal fighting machine which drove the Germans all the way back to Berlin. The existing sides put an emphasis on preserving your units and reinforcing in the field, but the Red Army faction is almost designed for its lower-end units to be disposable, with you feeding troops into the mincer to hold back the Germans long enough for the T-34s, Sturmokovics and Katyushas to enter the field in force.

Once you get used to the Red Army's foibles, they make an excellent and viable faction. In fact, they are a notably superior faction to either the Panzer Elite or British and are well-balanced against the Wehrmacht. A possible weakness is that once they acquire large funds they become almost unstoppable, particularly due to the population cap-free Conscript infantry and the easily-summonable T-34 tank-rider units which are not only formidable tanks in their own right but can also capture territory and transport infantry units into battle. Balancing of the Red Army faction against the existing sides continues (one patch has already been issued addressing some of their problems), and after a good couple of years of apathy it's great seeing the player-base for the game brought to life again by the introduction of this new side.

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valour (*) is pretty weak and not worth bothering with, unless you really want that new light tank unit for the USA. Company of Heroes: Eastern Front (****) is markedly superior and makes for an entertaining and highly intriguing addition to the game's multiplayer mode. Plus, IT'S FREE!

Wertzone Classics: Company of Heroes

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 (*****) 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.