I didn't know how much I would like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War going into it. I knew it was one of the highlights in the grand list of Warhammer video games, but I didn't know why. I played it, enjoyed it, played it some more, finished it, eventually got around to getting the expansions and am currently working my way through those too. And that's before any talk of sequels, which is just as exciting.
But the grim dark future isn't everybody's cup of tea. Some folks prefer the grim darkness of the past, and it doesn't get much darker than the Second World War. What if an RTS like Dawn of War was set in 1944, with much-improved graphics and new mechanics? Surely I'd be onto another winner.
What say you, Company of Heroes?
Fun Times
I didn't know any of the backstory going into Company of Heroes, and by that I mean it's likeness to Dawn of War, not that the Second World War took place. It wasn't until the tutorials that I learned of the similarities when tasked to take over strategic points to increase my hold over the battlefield.
Left-click on units to select them, right-click to order them to go somewhere or do something, alter stances and lob grenades from icons on the HUD... it's all very familiar to me by now, but Company of Heroes does it all with a little more care at attention.
Let's get the obvious out of the way: It graphically impresses. This game looks excellent. I don't know if it's a new engine or just a new coat of paint, but it looks awesome. It reminds me of Commandos 2, which I was recently informed had a remaster that I might have to look into.
The not-so-obvious is the nature of the gameplay. In Dawn of War, I wouldn't think twice about chucking infantry against anything, especially playing as the Imperial Guard. Squad running low on numbers? Just spawn in some fresh meat for the grinder. Overwhelming numbers will eventually win the way, and if they don't, they'll at least put up some resistance until the tanks roll in.
In Company of Heroes, while you can reinforce your squads by having new soldiers parachute in, you almost forget about that mechanic because of how real and human the situations you find yourself in are. Objects and walls provide either half or full cover, and your men will make use of that as though their lives depended on it. Machine guns have firing arcs that you better avoid, lest you be suppressed, pinned down, or outright gunned down. Your orders matter - or you feel they do - much more than you'd have thought.
Smart play will reward you, too. You can pick up fallen weaponry to better equip your squad, and take over machine guns, resetting where they point to better use against the enemy. It's so much more tactical and strategic than Dawn of War, where it was so easy and fun to just bulk up and barrel through.
Managing your base and supply lines to each strategic point is just as important as keeping your men alive, and it works much the same as Dawn of War, except that you need to have a route from, say, a munitions dump back to your base if you want the resources.
Taking over a farmhouse to serve as a forward operating base of some description, where we can spawn more squads closer to the front lines, we're guided through how to make machine gun nests and sandbag walls and are then given the ability to call in some air support. It's at this point that the graphics really shine, gruesome though they are.
Explosions and gunfire in Company of Heroes are wonderful to look at, though the ragdolling bodies of German soldiers being flung into the air afterwards is a tad unsettling. The horrors of war may not be seen up close (not unless you tinker with the camera), but I felt them there. We're about ready to wrap up the tutorial and get going.
Frustrations
Off the French coast of Normandy sits a group of islands known as the Channel Islands. You won't see them here, nor in many other games, for reasons I can only assume are of the 'can't be bothered to draw them' variety. I'm sure this isn't always the case, but in this particular image, the lack of islands is painfully obvious, and not just because I spent most of my life on them.
A brief history lesson: The only part of the British Empire to be occupied by Nazi Germany in the Second World War were the Channel Islands. They were under occupation for five years before being liberated. In that time, their coastlines were dotted with concrete towers and bunkers forming a tiny but not insignificant part of the Atlantic Wall, many of which still stand tall today. Concentration camps were set up on Alderney. To leave these islands off the map is ridiculous.
To Company of Heroes' credit, you can see a badly drawn Jersey on some maps in-game, and it is most certainly not the only game to skip over these blobs of rock off the French coast. But in a game that wants to be historically accurate elsewhere?
A pre-rendered video transitions into an in-engine cutscene, which itself transitions into gameplay, and Company of Heroes begins with D-Day (where else?). Huddled behind tank-traps amidst the chaos of machine-gun fire, you need to get your men up the beach, a task which is surprisingly easy from this vantage point. It may not be as horrific as a first-person shooters depiction of these events, but it's just as loud and overwhelming.
Further Fun Times
Once up the beach, you need your engineers to get out the explosives to punch through the German defences. If your squads are pinned down by machine-gun fire, they are effectively useless, crawling around trying to stay alive, so you need to lob some grenades and focus your efforts on one threat at a time. Soon enough, though, you're up the top of the cliff, running through the trenches, pushing the Germans back.
You can order squads to take over weapons, and this monster makes the task of destroying bunkers and artillery quite easy. It's not long before the mission is complete, and the remaining German forces retreat.
After a hectic opening mission, you'll be relieved to find that the next is a little slower and a lot quieter, taking place the night before, with allied forces parachuting behind enemy lines.
A slower mission allows you to get to grips with the game a little easier. Two small squads and a hint to flank the German position up ahead? I get the idea.
It doesn't go flawlessly, but it's easy enough to order two squads around, and the AI is smart enough to know what I want them to do. There are options to telling them to move to a point and fire at everything in their way, but I tend to just put them into cover and let them shoot when they feel they ought to.
There's Jersey, or what passes for a 'good enough' representation of it. See, it's not that hard to draw an island, is it? It's not the map we're meant to be looking at, however. This main map is our mission map, and on it are anti-aircraft guns, landing zones that need to be free of anti-aircraft guns, and the main road, down which the Germans are patrolling. Our mission is to secure the road and silence the anti-air defences.
Working our way through the fields, we encounter German forces in a skirmish with some of our allies and can ambush them from behind and secure the area for ourselves. The farmhouse can be garrisoned, allowing a squad to stay safe while turning it into a makeshift bunker, and we can use the German machine-gun against them by setting it up facing the road.
When the dust settles in Company of Heroes, make use of the time by reinforcing your squads, upgrading them, giving them more firepower and so on. If you don't, you may end up regretting it, because the action doesn't stop in a real-time strategy game.
I end up assaulting a munitions dump and stealing an anti-tank cannon. It's a lot to lug around with us and takes a while to set up, but I do at least have the option for quite a lot of firepower now, though how to drop the weapon off and revert to a normal soldier I'm not quite sure...
The mission continues, though, and I need to secure this road. The darkness of the night is lit up with gunfire and explosions. This game looks great. Everything about it seems detailed, and even though there is the option to swing your camera around for a different point of view, I rarely did. Partly because the tutorial said the game is best viewed from the default angle, partly because it's true.
There were some odd moments were German troops just appeared out of nowhere, and it's really weird to see an anti-tank gunner just stand there and not know what to do against German infantry appearing three feet in front of him, but I'll let that slide because I'm having a blast.
It's a bit hectic to command so many squads, especially if you try to spread out across the map and do lots of things at once, but the tools are there to allow you to do so.
Pushing forward and taking over some bunkers, the map is ours, but the mission is not over. A convoy is heading our way. A convoy that needs to be stopped. We've got precious little time to reinforce, prepare an ambush, and hit the Germans where it hurts.
I lay down a couple of mines, badly. I put a soldier in a bunker, but then remember he can be reinforced with more squadmates, so pull him out of the bunker and wait for his mates to parachute into the battle. Another squad captured a mortar, so I plop them behind a bush and get ready for the convoy.
It's not the prettiest of ambushes, but it works. Mostly. Plenty of vehicles are allowed to drive through, and it seems that so long as 8 trucks are reduced to smouldering wrecks, it doesn't matter how many others slip through.
The half-tracks stop to fight back, the motorbikes speed through, and I'm sure I shouldn't be targetting the trucks with the Red Crosses on, but it's a video game and thought has long gone out of the window when I'm just selecting a bunch of units and telling them to focus their fire on one vehicle at a time.
I do realise rather late that my mortar team are essentially dropping bombs on themselves. They don't last too long but do serve as a distraction.
As do the graphics. This looked awesome in motion. A bit video-gamey if you looked at it too hard, but incredible if you didn't. It makes Dawn of War look like a cartoon. Then again, Dawn of War seemed to want to be a cartoon, so that's not saying much.
After wiping out 8 trucks and letting what felt like 18 drive on by, our mission was complete, and my session with Company of Heroes came to a close. But damn, did I want to carry on playing.
Further Frustrations
I don't know how much content there is in the base game, but perhaps alarmingly, 5/6ths of the campaign options on the main menu aren't just locked off but are behind paid DLC. Given how interested I am in seeing more of the game, there's a high chance of me picking these up some time, but to see it so obviously plastered on the main menu does feel a little wrong.
Maybe that's the wrong choice of words. This might just be how the menu to the Steam version looks, with the Legacy Edition not being so blatant.
What is nice to see is that, somewhere on my travels through various sales and bundles, I've picked up Company of Heroes 2, ensuring that I've got even more to play when I eventually finish Dawn of War and, now, Company of Heroes.
Final Word
And that's the takeaway for me, here. That I've yet another game that I not only like thanks to this 1001 list, but really want to play. Right now, really. But I can't, because I've got things to do today. Things more important than a video game, but so much more boring than a video game.
It's not a game where you feel connected to your units, but actually, you kind of do. It's not a game that hammers home 'real people went through this real Hell', but again, it kind of does. You can approach it in a few ways, and get a lot out of it.
My squads aren't named, I don't know them personally, but if they're crawling through a field trying to escape the gunfire, they're doing so because I was the idiot that sent them in that direction without scouting ahead or taking care.
It is so much more tactical and methodical than Dawn of War that I'll have to change my playstyle, but it is such a rewarding game that I do so willingly. I hope there aren't any timed missions, of course, because I doubt I could go slow and steady fast enough. Until I find out firsthand, I'll be sweeping through the French countryside, picking apart German defences, scavenging weapons, cutting off supply lines and having a damn good time doing so.
With easy controls and lovely graphics, if you're looking for a Second World War game that isn't a CoD or an MoH, or an FPS for that matter, give Company of Heroes a look.
CoH. That's not confusing.
FILLING YOU IN
It might be me, but these missions are long, and sometimes utter slogs. Pathing issues can cause some problems, overwhelming enemy units can cause a lot more. Knowing just how the developers want you to tackle a level can be a challenge because I'm pretty sure I'm not playing anywhere near as well as I should be.
But I'm still playing. 8 hours, 8th mission. The story is there but nothing memorable, and though I said that you care more about your squads than in Dawn of War, there still comes a point where numbers are more important to you than imaginary names.
Even after struggles and quibbles, Company of Heroes is still worth playing, and I'm sure expansions and sequels will do even more for me. I can't wait. I might have to put the Dawn of War expansions on hold...
FILLING YOU IN FURTHER
32 hours of playtime later and all five DLC campaigns, some of which were little, others larger, have been completed. Company of Heroes is done and dusted and pretty much thoroughly enjoyed.
I do prefer the missions to not be a slog, and the further into the list of DLC I went, the breezier it all became, apart from the last one, I guess, which was just a case of surviving until 183 slow-moving allied units evacuated, but it was something to do, and was an explosive finale, with access to the V2 Rocket.
I'm simply going to have to uninstall this to make way for Company of Heroes 2, my time with this has been that good.
Fun Facts
Remember Games for Windows? I don't. Didn't game on a PC back then, and it had stopped being a thing before I started this blog. Anyway, Company of Heroes was the first game released with the label.
Company of Heroes, developed by Relic Entertainment, first released in 2006.
Version played: PC, 2006.