Before Bioware’s role-playing game arrived, anybody who didn’t sleep in Yoda pajamas was thoroughly sick with all things Star Wars. Between a string of uninspiring-at-best games and a couple of dreadful films, the galaxy that was a long, long way away wasn’t long enough away for most. Then KOTOR appeared with a lot of style and even more vision and made everyone like all this lightsabre nonsense again, unreservedly. The universe had its romance renewed. At first glance it’s a standard RTS… actually, scratch that. “At first glance” Company of Heroes is immediately special. It’s more that on paper Company of Heroes sounds like a standard RTS. A string of single-player missions. Skirmish mode against the computer (with co-op partners too). Online multiplayer. Opposing sides with differentiated forces. The usual. In fact, since Company of Heroes only has two separate sides instead of the genre-standard three, on paper it could be taken even as inferior.
But it’s in the absolute fundamentals where Company of Hero takes the expected and pushes it into the realms of the extraordinary. Not since Total War have we seen a primarily mainstream strategy game decide to base its mechanics so firmly on real life. Most RTS still base themselves on the idea that attacking an opponent will reduce their health by a certain amount, simply modified depending on whether their unit is a counter to the other. In most, troops with swords can still hack down castles. Company of Heroes takes a more naturalistic approach, which makes things more dramatic, compelling and… well, tactical. And that’s just the interactions between a couple of unit types. It’s both completely naturalistic (so instantly understandable), detailed (the simple process of deciding which way your machine-gun’s going to point feels so right) and tactically compelling (the mechanics immediately make the gamer decide what they’re doing next). It also shows how Company of Heroes balances the competing desires of units to be self-sufficient while including satisfying ways to interact (i.e. micromanage) them. In this case, when in position, if positioned securely, you can just forget about the machine-gun. They’ll deal with anything that comes their way. However, the specific of what area they’re to defend is entirely up to you.
Before we get into more dramatic areas again, a quick take on the game’s resource systems. A word on expending resources: the game’s economy is based on the three resources of manpower, munitions and fuel, which you receive for having control of positions (ala Dawn of War), so forcing a player to expand and enter conflict if they want to gain in power. Manpower is mainly used for recruiting, with fuel as a secondary resource for recruiting vehicles. Munitions are used primarily for upgrades or one-off attacks, like grenades. Whether it’ll be best to blow all your 125 remaining munitions on a one-off calliope rocket-strike or a handful of precision grenades or anti-tank pipe-bombs is the sort of thing you’ll find yourself obsessing over in your passing moments?
