Company of Heroes by Relic Entertainment, the same folks who created the excellent Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War title, are no strangers to the RTS genre. Just because they’ve been here before, though, doesn’t mean that they’re content to take the same game, change the models to WWII soldiers, and ship it. Instead, Company of Heroes brings enhanced features, such as use of cover, as well as new features like Strategy Points to capture on the battlefield. Fear not RTS fans, for there is also many of the classic strategy elements such as unit management and base building to be enjoyed, though even these elements may be a little different then you may be used to.

For those not familiar with the real-time strategy genre, the basics are fairly straight-forward. You usually have a main base, your headquarters, which you then must produce units to build up additional structures on your base that enable you to recruit or build soldiers, vehicles such as tanks, and other buildings that can give your force an extra advantage over the enemy. You then control your troops from an eye-in-the-sky view and order them to move around the battlefield, attack enemy units and bases, and attempt to meet the objectives which range from capturing a certain building to obliterating everything that moves on the map. In most games, you would then have to gather resources to build even more structures and units, but this doesn’t really fit with the realism of the front lines of WWII, so instead you have to capture strategic points which will put resources, such as ammunition or fuel, to your global pool.

The real longevity of the game comes from both the multiplayer and skirmish modes of the game. Both function very similarly, but one pits you against human players while the other puts you up against the computer AI. You can set different victory conditions between two choices: points or annihilation. The latter is fairly intuitive, completely obliterate the enemy. The former, however, requires you to occupy key sectors for a certain length of time; the longer you hold this sector, the more points you earn and the first to the pre-set limit wins the match. The plus side of these two methods of gameplay is that you can be either the Allies or the Axis! I found that playing the Axis required a little more of a learning curve since you don’t get to play as them during the single player campaign and so figuring out the best strategies to employ using their resources was a little difficult at first. The Allies, however, have the benefit of the very structured single player campaign to guide you through the different units and structures making them very familiar in the multiplayer modes if you’ve already played some of the campaign.

There’s a great deal more depth to the game then it may initially appear, including what seems to be virtually limitless strategies. Most units have the option to upgrade along the way, whether it’s giving your squad a higher caliber gun or even flamethrowers. Tanks and other vehicles also have these options available to them which ensures that no two vehicles ever have to be exactly the same. Since your squads are made up of a multiple soldiers, it is inevitable that one or two of its members may fall in combat. If you are close enough to a barracks or similar structure of your own, you can quickly call out a replacement member to fill in the ranks and bolster your squad back to full strength. Vehicles add even greater strategy—and realism to the game. It’s no secret that the front of a tank, the end that most commonly faces the enemy, is the best armored. Well, a wise commander would attack the rear of the tank, then! In addition, critical hits on vehicles can have any number of effects from killing gunners on turrets to disabling the engines, leaving the tank a sitting a target, albeit one with a very large cannon on top.

Graphically, Company of Heroes is a mixed bag. The graphics can be amazing, but to get to that level requires quite a beefy machine. On a more realistic machine, however, many of the textures and detail end up suffering when viewed up close. Thankfully, the bulk of gameplay is played zoomed out so you’re never really up close enough to really notice the lack of detail. It is only during cut-scenes, which are done using the game’s engine, does the graphical fidelity really shine, or not, depending on the power of your PC. Thankfully, there is a benchmarking tool that can be run and it will also suggest the best settings to get the most out of the game. Power tweakers can fiddle with these settings to try to get every ounce of performance out of the game, but I found that recommendations after running the benchmarks on both my machines seemed to perform very well.

For the single player campaign alone, I would recommend Company of Heroes. If you’re one of the many gamers who enjoy online gaming, especially strategy games, then you have no excuse NOT to get this game. Buy a new computer if you have to, you won’t be disappointed. Relic has once again raised the bar on what we can and should expect out of a strategy title. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a war to fight!