8.0

Company of Heroes 2

As much as the West would like you to believe otherwise, it was actually the Russians who did the real heavy-lifting defeating the Nazis in World War II. Sure, the Americans like to talk themselves up, and in the Pacific they were da’ bomb (literally), but which front would you rather be stationed at? Amongst the hedgerows of provincial France fighting German teenagers, or slogging through the bitter winter of Poland and the Ukraine having to face Hitler’s Wehrmacht, the original storm troopers?  I don’t recall in Hogan’s Heroes, Colonel Clink ever getting threatened with a transfer to Paris. Indeed, the real horror was the Russian Front.

Company of Heroes 2 is the long-awaited sequel to its namesake, which dealt with the Allied push from Omaha Beach to Berlin. Here instead we start with the siege of Stalingrad. COH2’s campaign is the arc of horrifically bloody battles that made up the Red Army’s westward fight to ultimately meet up with the Yanks on the Reichstag steps.

If you never played the original Company of Heroes, COH2 is a real-time strategy game in the classic vein. However while most RTS concentrate on harvesting resources and base-building, COH2 is more about acquiring key map points, planting flags and gaining ground. The three resources are manpower, munitions, and fuel, and in order to maintain and potentially increase their flow, you have to keep your supply lines open. The more map you control, the more stuff that can be brought up to your front. There is fortification building and creating command posts, but you won’t be constructing any sprawling bases like in Starcraft or Command and Conquer. COH is all about keeping moving. And this is what makes it so different and fun.

The graphics are suitably spectacular, with well rendered models, detailed environments and maps, and plenty of horrific explosions. The sound is awesome, the tanks creak and groan, the men scream, the rifles rattle and the wind howls. Do yourself a favour and turn off the music. The audio of war will transport you there far quicker than any bombastic orchestra score.

In COH2 you don’t control individual men, you command squads at a time, which makes for more epic and chaotic battles of hundreds of troops facing off. Naturally you’ll have all the toys; machine gunners, snipers, engineers, tanks, artillery, paratroopers, air-strikes, HMGs, flame-throwers, and anything else you can think of. Epic Games have done a wonderful job integrating every deadly weapon, and making sure they are balanced and useful.

It wouldn’t be the Eastern Front if the game didn’t include the Russians most formidable ally – Mother Winter. The game’s maps sprawl through frozen cities, towns, tundras and forests. Forces can freeze, fall through ice, get caught in blizzards, or simply bog. Learning to use pitfalls of this deadly theatre against the enemy can be just as effective as any tank or dive-bomber.

COH2 is divided up into the usual fare. There’s the campaign, complete with well-animated but ultimately tedious cut-scenes, one-off battles and epic historical encounters, and a great multiplayer lobby to seek out human opponents. There are unlockable skins, medals and weaponry, most being cosmetic and ineffectual, but good fun all the same.

My only real gripe with COH2 is that, as always, there is no German campaign. They can be accessed for multiplayer or the singular battles, but the stigma of the playing the Nazis still hangs so great over all our heads, no game-maker will dare go there. Hey, I’m no Nazi, but I can play the Zerg in Starcraft, the orcs in Lord of the Rings, and NOD in Red Alert. If I can play as a rampaging communist one day, I should be able to play as a ruthless fascist the next.

Final Thoughts?

If you’re not into real time strategy, this game won’t change your mind. There isn’t a huge difference between COH2 and its 2009 original, just prettier graphics, and a new campaign. However if snow and shooting Germans is your thing, snap this up immediately. I know I’d rather be Red than dead, and all my comrades agree. COH2 is almost as enjoyable as a night on the Vodka.