Company of Heroes

Title: Company of Heroes
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: September 13, 2006
Date Played: Fall 2006
Time Played: 20 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
As a fan of real time strategy I have seen plenty of them over the years; however nothing could prepare me for Company of Heroes, it redefined the genre for me.

Right around the turn of the century real time strategy games made a transition from sprite based to polygonal models. While it allowed for in engine cinematics the graphical quality and detail suffered a lot. The units became blocky and looked pretty rough compared to the hand drawn 2d counterparts. While I dreaded the shift, it was inevitable. It made it a lot easier to make games and more and polygonal everything was the future anyways, so I just had to deal with it.

Along comes 2006 and the real time strategy community is rocked by the newly released Company of Heroes from the legendary studio Relic. CoH took a new approach to the RTS genre, it focused more on individual units, and taking them through war riddled Europe as opposed to focusing on base building and spamming units. This invoked much more strategy as each and every unit needed to be micro managed. Each unit had its own real life-like role. It is not just infantry, light armor, heavy armor. Instead its a grenadier, with his specific function and role on the battlefield, a machine gunner, with his own role, I guess the depth of each unit could be compared to classes in class based games (Team Fortress, MMOs), etc..).

The story is done through the in engine cinematics, and oh my god did they look amazing in 2006! The graphics looked as good as in the best looking first person shooters of the time, with each soldier's face, uniform, and equipment being unique. It was stunning to see a scene play out and then have the camera simply zoom out to the standard RTS view. The units looked incredibly detailed, the environments were destructible, and the story was very well told. Company of Heroes set a new benchmark in the real time strategy genre, just like Command and Conquer and Star Craft did in their day.

Company of Heroes remains one of my most favorite RTS games of all time. It was this game that changed my mind about polygonal transition of the genre. It was the first time where I felt that the 3d models were equal, if not better looking than the 2d sprite based games. It was the first time when I played an RTS and felt like I was playing a movie. I felt like I was in the heart of Europe during World War 2, it was like being inside of Saving Private Ryan.

Company of Heroes is a must play for any RTS fan. It is still one of the best games in it's genre and will likely remain there for a while since we hardly ever see new RTS games. That being said, I can not wait for the recently announced sequel. It has been 7 years since CoH hit the store shelves, and we are well overdue for more.