I’m going to write up a description of the game later, but quickly I want to post that they’re giving away keys to the closed beta for the game right now on curse gaming. You need a free account on curse and you’ll have to act fast, these things run out very quickly. Keys activate on steam.
Company of Heroes 2 is a real time strategy game based on the Eastern Front of WW2. It’s the sequel to IMO the best RTS game of all time.
3PC Gamer preview
Destructoid multiplayer preview
Gamesradar multiplayer preview
Alright, so I’m anticipating this game pretty heavily. Company of Heroes 1 might be my most played game of all time, I played it competitively for the last few years. Well, somewhat - I rarely rose past around 1800 on the ladders, but that’s out of hundreds of thousands of active players.
THQ, the publisher of the game, was split apart and sold a few months back and the game got pushed up a few months to a June release. It’s a little concerning, but it seems like Sega, the new owner, isn’t trying to make any drastic changes or anything. It’s probably the best place for the game to end up - they’ve treated the total war series pretty well. When THQ was sold off, a company that ran their online game service that does matchmaking/leaderboards/etc was disbanded, so Sega hired back a bunch of ex-COH devs to patch the original game to run on steamworks so it isn’t dependent on that service. That’s something they didn’t have to do - and that’s something that EA for example would never do in a million years - so I’m hoping it’s a good sign as to how they’ll run it. The new game is steamworks entirely. Here’s the steam page.
I’m glad they chose to cover the Ostfront. We don’t get nearly enough games or movies about it due to our American bias, but it is the largest and most interesting conflict in history. Everything else was merely a sideshow. The weather plays a big factor in the game - troops become exhausted and even die if they aren’t properly taken care of in winter, ice can break under tanks, a dynamic snow system can change the face of the map. There’s apparently a totally new line of sight system that changes what you and your units can see, but I can’t quite figure out what it is they mean, I’ll report back after I’ve played the beta.
On the downside, there’s some sort of level up system that unlocks access to more specializations and commander types that sounds like it might be really stupid. Why does every game have to have a stupid call of duty style progression system? If it’s unbalancing - if higher ranked players have access to better stuff - that would be incredibly stupid, so it’s hard to believe they’d do it. Another downside is that it’s still a DX9 native game which is just too limiting in this day and age, and PC exclusive games should finally be free of it by now. It appears at first glance to look just like the original game released 7 years ago. On the other hand, the original game still looks fantastic and holds up very well after all these years. The level of detail in everything is incredible.
I’ll write more after I’ve played the beta some and have some feel for it.
I pre ordered this a few nights ago to play the beta, as I’ve been very excited about it too! I’ve only played a few hours. My biggest surprise is that the graphics aren’t that much better than Company of Heroes 1. To their credit, the graphics in 1 were very good, so part 2 isn’t ugly or anything, I just thought there would be a bigger jump in quality.
The game seems to play a lot faster than the previous one. Vehicles come into play faster and infantry isn’t really viable for very long into the game besides capturing points. Units seem more expendable, but I guess that’s historically accurate for that front.
I honestly would have been happy with just a Eastern Front expansion to part 1, so revamping all these different things takes some getting used to. However, overall i’m really pleased with the game.
Also, the beta is only multiplayer and skirmishes vs the AI. I’ve only played 1 multiplayer game on COH1, although I like skirmishing the comp. I’m really more campaign focused, so i’m excited about seeing the single player campaign on part 2, but will have to wait till June.
Perhaps a console port is in the works. If not, hopefully it’ll run on my laptop.
There’s no way the game would be remotely workable on console, and please don’t quote entire posts just to add one line that doesn’t actually even respond to anything quoted.
I’m not so sure about that. Tropico’s controls were better suited for the console over the PC, Halo Wars played pretty damned good, and Civilization: Revolution was pretty damned good as well. In any case, I’m intrigued. I haven’t played RTS in a little while.
That Guardians of Middle-Earth game translated a genre to console control way better than I expected to be possible.
Also, the cold mechanic in CoH 2 blows. Just slows down the game and wastes time.
My knee jerk reaction is to agree with you, but that doesn’t mean I (we) can’t be wrong about that.
Halo wars is a joke of an RTS. Civilization is turn based and dumbed down. Tropico is in no way shape or form better with a gamepad. It’s serviceable. And it’s not a fast paced RTS. You constantly have to speed up time in that game. Company fo heroes isn’t star craft, but it ain’t turn based either.
Well, I’m glad you have your opinions as well. In any case, we’ll see what the specs are for this game.
I’ve never played the first one, but this sounds friggin sweet.
I definitely want to try this with some Dopers over mumble. I haven’t seen any real communication in any of the games I’ve played so far.
I have seen plenty of lagging and drops. I know that this is a stress test and all, but playing this game reminds me of trying to get Starcraft matches with decent lag back in 1999. That’s not a friendly comparison.
You definitely should. It hasn’t aged a day and it’s a brilliant game.
GMG has this game (pre-order) for 25% off with coupon code GMG25-COMPA-NYOFH
That’d make it $45 down from list price of $60. Coupon is good through the weekend.
Might be other deals out there between now and late June but SenorBeef had previously asked for people to keep their eyes open for deals.
The Dawn of War series (the first one) and COH were two of my fav RTS games, both made by Relic. Sega acquired Relic, so I think COH2 will be fine.
Playing the Open Beta now. (Got a key through PC Gamer, but they ran out before I remembered to tell you lot.) It’s more of the same and I’m pretty happy about that.
Bought the game over the weekend and downloaded the beta. It’s really fun, though all I’ve played is the AI so far. I can usually beat the AI on hard level (with standard level AI companions or solo), but expert still kicks my ass more often than not, and I’ve had a few games where they managed to beat down my entire base and finish me off completely (I generally play 1000 point games though, so they are pretty long).
Any got any strategy advice so far? Basically, I just try and shuffle my ground troops from point to point…it seems nearly impossible to defend anything with ground units, as artillery is just devastating and ground troops just get wiped out quickly. I usually go for armor as quickly as I can and then try and use them to fortify key victory points, backed up by as many mortars and artillery as I can get.
Alright, so today is launch day.
This is a game that is clearly inferior to the original COH. However, COH is IMO the best RTS game of all time, so it’s difficult to live up to. COH2 is still a fun game, and in a world where COH didn’t exist, would seem better.
But almost all of the differences between the two games is for the negative. The biggest stupidity is the whole experience system. Why does everything have to be an XP treadmill with unlocks and all that nonsense? “Hmm, I need more call of duty in my RTS” is something said by no one ever. I mean, seriously, unlockable shit in an RTS game? RTS games demand that everyone be on equal footing, otherwise it’s a joke. Now the only unlockables are sidegrades in theory - trade a 2% accuracy bonus for a certain unit for a 3% health bonus instead. But at some point the community is going to figure out what’s best, and if that isn’t the one that was unlocked by default, then new players have a mechanical disadvantage against others. Completely unacceptable.
Furthermore, there’s no ladder currently, which is amazingly WTF. An RTS game without a ladder? In COH, levels meant something. They reflected your position on the ladder and your relative skill. If you saw someone who was level 16, they’re going to kick your ass. Now levels only tell you how much someone has played. They can get to level 60 by comp stomping easy AI a bunch of times. It’s meaningless. Who cares? There’s no proper stats screen - I mean, you have to figure out how many wins and losses you have by subtracting your games won ribbon count from your games played ribbon count. It doesn’t break it up by bracket. Ridiculous.
The commander system is lame and boring. COH commanders were much more interesting. They varied more from each other in play style, and each commander had trees that made when/how you unlocked them an important decision as the game unfolded. The new ones have fewer abilities and no such tree, they just unlock linearly with progression. It seems like they’re going to release new commanders and even sell them, which is disgusting. It’s possible they don’t allow tree-style command points because they want to resell slightly rearranged orders of abilities to make new commanders. I guess I can tolerate pay skins, camos for vehicles and stuff, but pay elements for anything that affects gameplay is horrendous. RTS games need to be equal and competitive.
There are a lot of game mechanics not to like. I don’t like that you can capture territory without actually taking an action to capture the flag. In COH, capturing a territory left you vulnerable - it could be a tricky decision depending on the circumstances. For instance, a guy with lesser forces around a flag could potentially harass someone trying to capture a point by exploiting the fact that they have no cover when capturing to force them to choose between capturing and defending themselves. It added meaningful tactical choices to the game. Now it doesn’t.
The way sectors and resources works now is blah and boring. You can’t OP certain critical munitions or fuel sectors anymore, you can only OP the generic sectors to make them slightly less generic. There are fewer specialized sectors with varying value now - there are just generic blah sectors that give you a little of both, and a handful of munitions or fuel sectors, but they all give a uniform amount. So mapmakers can’t give resource nodes various levels of importance in their map design, which cripples the strategic possibilities. I see no upside at all to the new system and it makes the maps seem much more boring, limited, and with fewer tactical options. Every map plays out more or less the same, compared to say the difference between Angoville and Wrecked Train in COH which had entirely different sorts of resource layouts and strategies.
The interface is worse across the board. COH has a much more clear minimap, which is important because you need to be able to assess the whole situation in a glance. It’s better than it was in earlier beta (where you could barely tell what territory you owned) but still is worse than COH. The interface in general is poorer. It does give you a better idea what’s happening to your units at a glance, but that’s the only improvement, everything else is inferior.
The factions aren’t as diverse and interesting as the classic Wehr/American gameplay of the first. There are some weird balance decisions but these things will probably evolve over time. Right now early halftracks are kind of ridiculously dominant if played well, including the Russian ability to stick snipers in halftracks early on which is just an exercise in cheese and frustration. Flamethrower vehicles massively and instantly rape things, especially weapon crews, before you even have time to react. That’ll probably change somewhat, although they do seem to intend the 3-7 minute phase in which halftracks dominate everything.
The graphics are probably better, but not 8 years worth of better. It’s a disappointment in that regard. To be fair, COH still looks fantastic all these years later. The attention to detail in the models and animations is timeless.
The matchmaking seems poor. I’m not getting matched up against a consistent level of players, I can crush some guy who’s playing with his poop one game and then play a game where I get crushed by 3 vets. I thought perhaps it was a beta thing, and they were still refining the matchmaking (and ladder!) for release, but if anything the actual launch has been worse.
There’s probably more stuff I’m forgetting.
Things that work better? Well, the eastern front is more interesting than the western front. The weather system is interesting. There’s no way to register preferences or anything if you don’t like the winter maps, so it may turn out to be annoying, but so far I’m having fun with the mechanics. The spotting/sight system is better, very detailed, not sure how often it’s really tactically relevant but I suspect as the game becomes more familiar people will become better at using it to their advantage and it will become part of the skill. It didn’t deviate too radically in any area (except the inexplicably stupid lack of a ladder system) - which is good because the first game is a masterpiece. The twitch livestreaming works really well - if you’re interested in seeing the game played add me on steam and grab mumble, I do livestreams sometimes and talk to people about what’s going on as I play.
That said, this all sounds very negative, and while it is a disappointment, it’s still a very good game. I put 1000 hours into COH and I don’t doubt I’ll get my money’s worth out of this one, so I went ahead and bought it. I have fun playing it for the most part.
Oh, minirant. I guess this isn’t a downgrade because COH did the same thing, but why can’t we have rebindable keys? The whole idea of having a key vaguely attached to the unit ability name rather than its position on the menu is just stupid. Take DOTA for an example. You have the classic mode, how it worked in WC3, where each ability on a gazillion heros had its own key that you had to memorize, OR you just use QWE to be the top how, ASD to be the middle row, etc. Which is much faster to learn and more intuitive.
COH2 not only doesn’t seem to allow key rebinding, but they actually re-assigned some of the basic functions to different keys than they were in COH. I’ve turned off my mortars a whole lot of times already using H when I meant to Halt them. But apparently it’s now S for Stop.
And it leads to ridiculous shit. For example, the Molotov-throwing bottom left ability of conscripts is V, apparently for molotoV, but the grenade throwing ability of the shock troops, in the same slot and serving the same purpose is E, for grEnade. That’s how silly the system is. It has me constantly having to double check what key I’m supposed to be using, which can be a matter of winning or losing a battle if you can’t get that grenade throw off in time because you didn’t realize on this sort of unit it’s F for f this stupid keybind system.
Interesting and pretty comprehensive commentary. . . I actually pre-ordered COH2 through Steam and tried out the closed Beta, gave it a few days, then uninstalled and cancelled my pre-order. Sounds like the pros outweighed the cons for you, which is cool. But man, considering how much I loved COH, I *hated *COH2 (at least the beta version).
I had some of the same objections that you did, plus a few I also shared with some of the other beta testers. The ridiculously overpowered artillery and mortar spam seemed like a huge problem to me. Have they toned that down in the release version? In the first few minutes of my very first game, I had a squad of Russian conscripts and a squad of engineers (both full health) knocked down to *one *quarter-health guy by a single mortar hit! I was playing against the AI on easy, just to get a feel for the new game. I figured, ok, still needs some balance adjustment. . . Kept waiting, but the adjustment wasn’t nearly enough in my opinion.
On top of all the other problems, I gave up when essentially my entire army was wiped out during a blizzard by artillery. So they introduce a mechanic where you have to take shelter and stay put, fine. But then the available defensive options are incredibly weak and you can be completely devastated in seconds if you don’t stay on the move? Too frustrating for me.
I wanted to love the game, but it just wasn’t there. Now I’m bummed that I can’t get original COH to run on my computer. 