Company of Heroes 2 - From who? Ze Germans?

Tamren wrote:

Funny thing is, I couldn't hack the ability-based micromanagement of CoH. But I totally get the positioning/statistics micromanagement of Men of War. I guess I might get this one on sale sometime. Hopefully they will have a demo.

I actually really struggled with Company of Heroes, right up until the expansion came out and I tried out the British. Something about them was much easier for me to manage than the Yanks, they played completely differently. It didn't hurt that they were more defensively focused as well.

The artillery focused British commander was one of the more unique and genuinely fun RTS experiences I've had in over a decade.

I was just thinking that I need to crack out CoH again once I move and get webbernets again. I have logged an ungodly number of hours into that game. I absolutely love that game. A new and improved version sounds great. A chance to see a Russian Campaign, or a Japanese Campaign would be great. I would love an Afrika-Corps campaign as well(from both sides).

Color me in among those who needed the expansion for the game to fully click. I loved every aspect to the SS-Luftwaffe, Scorched Earth, and Tank Destroyer are great...I mean Panzer Elite. I loved the Commandos tree for the Brits. The gliders are fantastic as forward bases, especially late in games having the only tree capable of deploying forward bases when no buildings are left standing.

Also, link to the CoH homepage, nice splash image there.
http://www.companyofheroes.com/

My all-time favorite THQ game is Dawn of War 1, which I still play against the computer on a regular basis... the Dawn of Skirmish AI is good enough to put up a mighty stiff fight. It actually beats me with fair frequency, probably about a third of the time. It's one of the better computer AIs I've played against, enough that I still fire it up regularly, years later.

I enjoyed CoH campaign mode, but I never got that much into the multiplayer. I think it was because of the shift toward high-speed harassment instead of strategy -- it was much more reflex-based than DoW1. And they continued that into DoW2, which is even more reflex-based.

Being old now, my reflexes aren't so hot, so I haven't really loved anything since DoW1, but I loved that game with fiery passion. Maybe, if this thing is a step back from the nuttiness of DoW2, I could get into it. I loved the overall setting and graphics in the original, and have played through all the campaigns at least twice, but multiplayer just never grabbed me like the original Dawn of War.

That's something I like about playing strategy games solo, and ones that let you pause, that you can take your time so that the game is more about decision making than your agility with the controls (for all the fondness the fans have for it, Homeworld 2's controls aren't great, but making the best of a bad job). Once you take away the AI's advantage of being able to do much more than you in terms of controls, it really separates out the good AI from the bad.

Well, in Dawn of War 1, being quick on the controls usually isn't that important. It never hurts, but I can't think of any races, offhand, that really need quick ability activations to do well. Space Marines have some commander powers that are pretty useful, and one in particular that can benefit from quick reactions (the Librarian's "my guys can't die from damage" power) but abilities are usually slow enough that hitting them now, or a half-second from now, isn't that important. It's knowing that you need to hit them that matters.

From what I could see, CoH was much more reflex-dependent, small quick units could cause you tremendously more grief than they could in DoW1, and it was much harder to lock territory down in any kind of serious way, so it required a very different headspace. I never really liked the multiplayer because of that.

IMAGE(http://images.vg247.com/current//2012/05/Untitled-1.jpg)

Seriously. Can't wait.

Yep, the second this goes on pre-order for Steam, THQ better shut up and take my money.

No gameplay, but just setting the scene. Man I want some gameplay footage.

Wow, I was really hoping, when I saw the setup for that video, that it was going to go East -- we were talking about the Russians in WW2 just recently over in P&C, and how easy the Allies had it in comparison. I was bummed when they immediately zoomed in on Paris, and then so, so pleased when it ended up going East after all.

11 million dead soldiers, 15 million dead civilians, and they didn't break. They lost just short of 14% of their entire population, and they didn't break.

Think about what would happen in this country if 1 person in every 7 died, about half being young men.

According to Wikipedia, a few countries, including Poland, lost even a bit more than that.

Yeah, this is going to be really good I think.

It really is a bit of a shame that game companies have focused so heavily of the Western Front of WWII almost exclusively. There are so many other interesting theatres that could be explored, and not just in WWII, but in WWI as well. I find it truly bizarre that there have been almost no WWI games at all.

No mention of Canada? Though most people tend to fold us into the British. Same with the Aussies and New Zealanders. They finally put up a memorial for the WW2 Bomber Command, which included a lot of Canadian crew and pilots. It really surprised me to learn that over a tenth of our total population served in WW2.

Its good to see some light being shed on the Russian front. My public education taught me almost nothing about the world wars. I had to remedy that myself as an adult. Its certainly not history that can or should be forgotten.

Redwing wrote:

It really is a bit of a shame that game companies have focused so heavily of the Western Front of WWII almost exclusively. There are so many other interesting theatres that could be explored, and not just in WWII, but in WWI as well. I find it truly bizarre that there have been almost no WWI games at all.

My unresearched opinion says that for an entertainment product it's about the target audience's familiarity and attachment to the characters featured, in the case of a lot of WW2 games, young white male Americans.

I am very excited to be going back to WWII. After all the modern stuff lately I have actually missed it.

There's a new preview up for this at GamesRadar.

Nothing overly interesting in it, but I thought I'd link it for anybody else like me that's devouring every tidbit about this game

If by devouring every bit of information, you mean like this:

IMAGE(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m492vnWICy1r99f8m.gif)

Then yes, yes I am. I'm really looking forward to this game.

Rockpapershotgun has posted a hands-on preview as well.

Scratched wrote:
Redwing wrote:

It really is a bit of a shame that game companies have focused so heavily of the Western Front of WWII almost exclusively. There are so many other interesting theatres that could be explored, and not just in WWII, but in WWI as well. I find it truly bizarre that there have been almost no WWI games at all.

My unresearched opinion says that for an entertainment product it's about the target audience's familiarity and attachment to the characters featured, in the case of a lot of WW2 games, young white male Americans.

I can actually thing of one game about WWI, it was made by the guy who did dwarf fortress, it's called medic i think.

Ah here we go http://www.bay12games.com/ww1medic/

It's actually a lot of fun, oh and you never fire a gun.

More info from a gaming blog reporting on the Gamescom press demo.

Bit of a warning to anyone who plays CoH or plans to pick up CoH 2. You need to register an account with Relic to access online play. But they also force you to login just to play singleplayer. I don't see any reason why this would be changed in CoH. The password recovery system is a bag of dicks. You have to enter your CD key WITHOUT copy paste and then it gives you your secret question. What really sucks about this is that it then lets you pick a replacement password but then goes to a YOU GOT THE QUESTION WRONG DUMBASS YOUR PASSWORD WAS NOT RESET screen. You have to go through the entire process just to try again and it doesn't give ANY indication if you get the key or question wrong. WTF is wrong with an email recovery system? I've read people on the Relic and Steam forums saying they get secret questions they never chose and are thus impossible to answer.

One thing they allow you to do is make a new account and register your CD keys to it. This transfers the key over to the new account and you can only do this a couple times. I finally gave up and made a new account using my Opposing Fronts key. But when I tried to add my original CD key to the new account it asked me to insert a goddam GAME DISK.

I just want to play the singleplayer campaign :(. Whats worse is that THQ handles all of the password/key recovery for Relic and my support ticket is a week old with no response.

I know you're frustrated and all... but there's a thread for CoH 1 that I think that probably belongs in.

Duly noted. But the warning still stands, don't lose your account info. Or else you will end up in the same situation I'm in when you buy CoH2 but can't register it to an account because you can't remember what it is, can't recover the password and having to deal with slow customer support.

There's been no announcements of any kind regarding CoH2's online options, at least in anything I've read.

Odds point pretty heavily to it being a Steamworks game as that's what Relic went with for the last Warhammer 40k title. If that should end up being the case it means it has nothing to do with Relic online at all.

Remember. Relic hasn't used Relic Online for any of their games since CoH. Dawn of War 2 moved to GFWL, the first expansion for that stayed GFWL, and then they finally abandoned GFWL for Steamworks with Retribution.

I'd imagine that's what they'll probably end up sticking with.

Gah I hope so. Relic Online has all sorts of special ranking stuff, but I don't see why they couldn't just port it over. Steam does have it's drawbacks but it is hard to describe how much better it is than GFWL.

If you look on GreenManGaming.com, you'll see that they have CoH 2 for sale and it says "This game requires a free Steam account to play."

So yeah, that's a pretty strong indication of steamworks right there.

Any word on loyalty from Relic? IE for we poor schmucks who bought all 3 games for CoH 1? Maybe something super special for those who put in 1000 hours?

I just really liked what Fable and Guild Wars have done with loyal players so far as rewards go.

Well you can now pre-order on Steam. It's funny, seeing the lovely regional pricing of $79.99 really is a bit stinging. I really wish publishers could abolish this regional pricing crap. So the question now becomes, if I get someone to gift this to me on steam at the pre-order stage, do I get the pre-order bonuses?

Steam does have it's drawbacks but it is hard to describe how much better it is than GFWL.

If you look at the pre-order stuff, you can see it's going to have some form of xp system, an in-game shop and maps you have to buy. Along with the price that kicks my enthusiasm for CoH2 down a few steps.

Where are you seeing paying for maps? What I am seeing is paying for skins, but maps is scary. I figure the XP system will work into some DOTA 2 or League of Legends skill tree system.