Gamescom : Company of Heroes 2 Hands On Preview Plus New Screenshots.
Developer Relic Entertainment.
Publisher THQ
Platform PC
Release Date 2013 tbc
The most important thing with the upcoming release of Company of Heroes 2 is that they don’t mess with a winning formula, and we were delighted to see that this is exactly the approach the team has taken. It looks, feels and plays just like the Company of Heroes we all love except now with a solid overall improvement to the gameplay, physics and graphics.
The screen layout has changed quite a bit but it instantly makes sense and without wasting too much time or effort you are back in command of your units, calling in reinforcements, building new buildings and vehicles as well ad training up new squads of soldiers. As you can imagine do to the passing of time there has also a big boost to the graphics (not that it needed much) but a brand new game engine ensures everything looks better including some amazing new weather effects.
It’s the Eastern Front a notorious location for its freezing temperatures that blast the battlefield freezing everything from the tank’s fuel lines to the soldiers into solid blocks. The weather is much more than a cosmetic feature but rather a dynamic character in the game. The snow and Ice now play a huge roll rather than just laying across the map it now has depth and layers. Hitting heavy snow slows your troops down to a snail’s pace as they battle to trudge their way through the heavy drifts. Hitting ice in a vehicle causes noticeable slipping as the tracks and tires struggle to get to grips with the slippery surface. One of the coolest animations in the game is seeing a halftrack trying to start moving with very little momentum as the tracks just keep spinning, suddenly as it grips it kicks off with a huge jolt.
As with everything if it is impacting on your troops you can be sure it is having the same impact on the enemy and as such can be used as a weapon. Ice for example can be used to your advantage as it can be blown up meaning you can set traps for heavy tanks trying to cross rivers and lakes. A well placed demolition charge can sink a tank in seconds while flame throwers can blast away heavy snow and ice to create new paths for your units to advance through.
You are not just battling the enemy and the terrain you also have to fight off the cold. As demonstrated in the demo, part of the new Cold Tech weather system see’s temperatures plummet to minus 40 degrees during blizzards. Exposed soldiers will suffer the most, units now display a temperature gauge and when a blizzard blows in that gauge starts shrinking. When it hits zero your squad can quickly die of hypothermia. It is important to get them inside the moment that freezing wind picks up. If you are exposed with no shelter you can use engineers to build a camp fire that will offer some hope of maintaining a correct body temperature as your men crowd around it. It is just one more thing to consider on the battlefield but making use of the weather is just as important a tactic as anything else you will deploy.
The weather was the big feature they wanted to show off when we got to sit down and play through two levels, one was a simple tutorial that had you going from point to point clearing out buildings and capturing points. Everything came flooding back and it only took around ten minutes to clear the map. A mix of units including engineers equipped with flame throwers and a new weapon a mounted heavy machine gun on wheels that you troops push into position.
The second was more challenging and offered around 45 minutes of good old fashioned base building, along with designing a complex plan of attack. Your full unit needed to be a mixed one, you needed a substantial heavy vehicle presence mixed with a lot of ground troops. Halftracks came in very handy for keeping troop out of the blizzards and to get them through the heavy snow drifts quickly.
Bridges were obsolete as the river had frozen solid and with a quick push across the middle with the tank division I had secured a strategic point on the far side of the river. Man a good man was lost by sending a team of half tracks around either outer edge of the map, but it meant we could quickly capture more strategic points and surround the enemy cutting off their supplies. They did not go down without a fight and after a good 40 minute long battle we had managed to flush them out and take back Moscow.
As a huge Company of Heroes fan I have to say I was delighted with how the game looks and plays, it is perfect. It’s the same Company of Heroes we all love only better and that from my point of view is just what the fans want.
