Company of Heroes: Is RTS Back Again?

1998. A memorable year for gaming, especially for PC gamers. What came out that year? Grim Fandango, Thief, Half-life, and Starcraft. Ah, Starcraft. The first and last RTS I every truly loved; I would play that game religiously day after day until it finally became tiring for me and I moved on to other games. But after starcraft, I must say that no RTS excited me anymore; Warcraft 3, Rise of Nations, Rome: Total War, Warhammer.. all fantastic games, yet I couldn't simply get "into" them the way I could with Starcraft.

Then, this game came along.

First, let me just say this; this game is top-notch in absolutely every single way. There are practically no flaws in this game. From everything to the absolutely amazing graphics(Never have RTS games looked so good) to the hard-hitting, brutal sound(Gunfire, explosions,pinned soldiers shouting for support) you would be hard pressed to find a major flaw in this game. If you have never been interested in RTS games that much or feel that all RTS games lately are all the same, take my advice and download the demo; you'll be blown away.

First off, let's start with the gameplay. If you go to basic structure, this game is quite similiar to other RTS games(especially Warhammer 40k by the same developer, Relic.) You still have your builder units, your basic infantry units, your bases, defenses, all that stuff. However, this game does not contain nearly as much base management as other RTS games do; in order to gather resources, your units must capture resource points which are outside your base. Company of Heroes has much more aggressive gameplay than other games do, which in my mind is a good thing; cut the slow resource gathering and send your units to attack and capture outside points; this results in many small skirmishes in the battlefield. In fact, the games battles are all mostly small skirmishes; you won't see any epic, 1,000 man battles here, but small skirmishes make battles much easier to control, which is a good thing, especially for this game.