Bullets tear at the ground in front of my charging Red Army soldiers like the claws of invisible beasts. The capture point ahead will yield some much-needed fuel, meaning more tanks for the Soviet war machine, in turn pushing my forces one step closer towards victory.
Things don’t go well. My men find themselves crawling under fields of barbed wire, braving MG-42 fire and watching their comrades turn into pulp as a German mortar rains down death. It’s over as soon as it started – the few survivors sprint back to base in full retreat. Many more lie dying or in pieces, but the real blow is to my ego.
Commanding the tide of war in Company of Heroes 2 is not easy.
Company of Heroes 2 requires real-time strategy commanders to think about both what’s happening in the moment and how those events will shape the subsequent minutes of gameplay. You might move out with a machinegun team to hold down an important point only to discover your opponent wisely sacrificed that option to build a sniper. Unless you’re quick to react those men will die, leaving your costly weaponry open for enemy soldiers to steal. Your whole battle plan must repeatedly adapt based off of the appearance of a single unit, otherwise you’ll find yourself consistently countered by a savvy opponent. If they rush to roll out light armor, then you present anti-tank weapons. They bring in infantry to take those weapons, you counter with your own infantry, or mortars, and so on. Every skirmish becomes a duel of wills, where you and your opponent are testing one another’s playstyles and tactics; how brave they are and at what point they’ll retreat.
Company of Heroes 2 may not have the speed of something like StarCraft II, but it still requires a lot of split-second analysis and decision making. Franchise staples such as cover, suppression and destructible terrain all play equally major roles in Company of Heroes 2’s combat. And with the new True Sight system, which makes it so your soldiers line-of-sight only extends to where they can actually see, the ability to access a situation at a glance means everything. You might only get a glance at enemies in a village, but in that moment you could note that one enemy squad is behind heavy cover, another is in a house and there’s a tank with its rear armor facing you. Thus a smart commander could use a flamethrower team to burn down the house, try to find a way to flank the soldiers in heavy cover and hit that enemy armor in the back since that’s where it’s weaker. Hell, you may even get a lucky shot on it and kill the crew, allowing you to take advantage of Company of Heroes 2’s new vehicle capture system.
Man-made villages are one thing, but you also have to take the environment into account when planning strategy. The addition of winter weather effects means that you’ll have to consider whether you want to leave tracks in the snow that your enemies can follow. It also makes rivers crossable at multiple points, but might send squads and tanks to a watery grave if a well-placed shot knocks out the ice. If you’re caught out in a blizzard, which periodically hit winter maps, you have to find cover quickly so your soldiers don’t freeze to death. All of these factors are a lot to take in, but should give even battle-hardened leaders plenty of factors to adjust to.
Weather effects aren’t the only things Company of Heroes 2 adds, either. For starters there’s the new Russian army, which features awesome units like the rocket-firing Katyusha trucks, big infantry squads, and the legendary T-34 tank. Then there are the changes to the German forces, which include a number of new units as well as the ability to dig trenches. Each side plays differently from the other, too, with the Germans coming across as more of a defensive army with a heavy reliance on armor, while the Russians are all about fielding large groups of soldiers they can afford to lose. They both look great when they’re clashing in a multiplayer match, with the same fantastic and realistic looking destruction and violence that’s defined the series making Company of Heroes 2 look gorgeous.
Adding to the complexity and strategy of multiplayer are the reworked multiplayer leveling system and commander skills. Instead of commander trees, the commander abilities are tied to seven unlockable commander characters. Before each fight you now select three commanders as part of your loadout, and then select the one you want to use for your army mid-battle, reacting to the tactics of your enemy. Instead of the original Company of Heroes skill tree, each commander simply has six skills that they unlock after earning the requisite number of commander points. Commander points themselves are still earned simply by playing well.
The multiplayer level system further adds to your commander customization, because as you play Company of Heroes 2 you’ll unlock what Relic calls Intel Bulletins. These are basically perks gained by earning achievements, giving you tiny buffs such as 5% damage to artillery after you score a certain number of kills with howitzers, or maybe letting your tanks earn veterancy just a bit faster if you manage to destroy enough enemy tanks.
Limiting access to certain commanders until you reach a certain level, Intel Bulletins and mirror matches all compound to create a lot of potential balance issues. With a Beta coming sometime in the near future, the team at Relic will certainly have their work cut out for them. Having only played a few matches of multiplayer it’s really too early to tell how well they’ve done so far, but I walked away pleased with how it’s progressing so far. This is Company of Heroes with several twists, essentially two new armies and more maps and weather effects – and that should be enough to make any fan excited.
Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He enjoys scaring the crap out of himself with horror games and then releasing some steam in shooters like Blacklight and Tribes. You can follow him at @Chufmoney on Twitter or at Ant-IGN on IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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