14 DAY TRIAL // Many fans of the original Company of Heroes have complained that the sequel does not introduce enough innovation to the strategy title formula that was first revealed by Relic in 2006.
They don’t take into account things like TrueSight, which makes scouting for enemies before engaging more important, or the winter elements that can destroy any tactical plans via frost and snow.
Of course, these innovations are not on the scale of the control point-based gameplay that the initial Company of Heroes first introduced and the sequel still uses.
The basic gameplay can be eerily similar and the nature of the game also means most graphical improvements aren’t that impressive.
But Relic has added one big new element in Company of Heroes 2 that no other strategy titles has and might become a staple of the genre: Theater of War.
There are three components to the section: cooperative battles, single player challenges and specific computer battles.
Both the Germans and Russians get content and it’s all centered in 1941 at the moment, with more content promised by the development team at Relic.
I rarely had this much fun in Company of Heroes 2 without the involvement of another human as an enemy.
One Russian challenge involves just basic infantry and Katiusha rocket launchers and focuses on demolishing buildings rather than on simply killing enemies, all of it combined with a time limit.
One of the German battles delivers an infantry-focused AI that’s more ruthless than many human opponents, at least when playing on General difficulty, and managed to easily defeat me two times in a row.
There’s a lot of variety for fans to experience and in many ways Theater of War bridges the gap between single and multiplayer, which is far too large for most other strategy titles.