Company of Heroes may not sound original or that intriguing when you look at its box art. It essentially is another World War II-themed video game – that’s right another war-based video game. Not much new right? Well, not so fast.

What Company of Heroes has going for itself is the simple fact it was developed by Relic. Relic is the brilliant minds behind Company of Heroes. If you have no clue on what Relic has done in the past, look no further than Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and even the Homeworld franchise. Known for their radiant video games in the past, it’s no surprise that Company of Heroes once again delivers an exhilarating experience.

Company of Heroes follows World War II like I stated, but particularly it revolves around the Able Company and Fox Company Paratroopers. The Able Company must land on Normandy Beach and shoot their way across the French scenery against waves of Germans. There are 15 missions to enjoy and each come attached with a cutscene and briefing to aid the player to progress the storyline.

If you have played Warhammer, you’ll feel right at home with Company of Heroes. Sure, it is a little customized and there are a few personalized traits added in, but Warhammer vets will be able to jump in with ease. Company of Heroes revolves around collecting three main resources: fuel, manpower, and munitions. The player must capture strategic points all across the map and with those points comes the resources. There are a few obstacles to overcome when capturing these points. First off, you’ll need to connect these strategic points to your headquarters to receive any benefits. Secondly, you’ll want to assess the importance of capturing each point of the map and weighing out the win and loss situation. Would you be sacrificing too many soldiers and vehicles for a point on the map that wouldn’t provide any benefits? There are a lot of levels to the strategy of Company of Heroes – no doubt many will have their own personal way of playing the game.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, Company of Heroes only has two factions to use. The Axis which is made up by the Germans, and the Allies, made up of the American forces. Each has their own tactic and method of combat. Allies would be better suited to building up fast and attacking at all angles. The Axis is slower and more methodical with building tougher units that are hard to bring down. There’s a lot more depth behind the simple two faction structure than what meets the eye.

The beautiful graphics can be represented best by the incredible cutscenes. If not for the cutscenes, gamers across all platforms will be able to appreciate the destructible maps. Everything on the map and battlefield can be blown to smithereens with your weapons and vehicles. The animations are solid to the point that the armed services should be thanking Relic for representing them so realistically with the soldier animations. Relic also incorporated a realistic physics engine to assist the animations of Company of Heroes. The only drawback is the slowdowns and framerate problems when there was mayhem all over the screen. With too many explosions and animations, my computer slowed down to a snail’s pace chugging along while it tried to keep up.

The voice acting is top notch and is accompanied by great dialogue. I am proud of Relic that they didn’t put forth corny dialogue or cheesy characters. This is an ultra-real WWII video game, no jokes about it. The dialogue is strong in strategy and will help the players advance if they are stuck on the next step in the mission. Outside of the voice acting, Relic rounded out the audio with superb sound effects for all the vehicles and action you could ever want.

Multiplayer is run through Relic’s own online service which has launched with the release of Company of Heroes. Up to eight players can join the matches that are tailored towards team-based action. My best advice for online competitors – make sure to cut off any paths of resources of your opposition. It’s a pain to see someone attacking your strategic point way across the map and trying to gain it back. The multiplayer is great to pick up immediately after playing the single-player campaign. You’ll be at your best after completing the missions and jumping right into the multiplayer will show you a whole new world of maneuvers and cunning tricks.

Speaking about the computer AI, they aren’t lacking in their own ploys. They are intelligent enough to push the player into a corner and cut off all your resources. If you aren’t a big RTS player, Company of Heroes could prove to be difficult at times. I suggest sticking to the easy difficulty from the beginning and trying your odds at that for awhile.

This is one of the better games in recent memory for me. What hurts is that I know in a few months there will be onslaught of ‘AAA” video games released for this holiday season and Company of Heroes may fall out of the spotlight. That definitely will be disappointing since I would love to see this splendid WWII RTS take off in the right direction with sales and a solid fan-base. Only time will tell if gamers catch on and make the safe purchase of Company of Heroes. Your money couldn’t be better spent on a title this fall.

Minimum System Requirements:
Processor: 2.0 GHz Intel IV
RAM: 512 MB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0 64MB video card
Disc Space: 6.5 GB
Operating System: Windows XP or Windows Vista
Video Cards: Nvidia: GeForce 3 or better / ATI: ATI Radeon 9500 or better

Gameplay: 9.3
There’s no better RTS this year so far. It borrows a lot of the mechanics from Warhammer: 40,000 but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Graphics: 9.1
Relic delivered on all bases with the graphics: animations, cutscenes, art direction, and soldier models.

Sound: 9.3
No recognizable voices? That’s fine by me since Relic did a better job without a cast full of ‘D’ list celebrities.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
Please start out on the easy difficulty. You’ll save your keyboard the pain of being bashed after being abused by the computer AI.

Concept: 9.0
Usually I bash on WWII-themed video games, but to deliver such a smart and sly video game such as Company of Heroes, I am proud of Relic. It’s a job well done.

Multiplayer: 8.5
Nothing that will stand out above the FPS genre in terms of diversity, but comparing to other RTS games, Company of Heroes is no slouch.

Overall: 9.3
I recommend picking this up immediately. There will be expansion packs to keep your interest, I assure you! Company of Heroes couldn’t be any safer of a purchase than investing all of your money into your child’s bank account for college. Wait, take out $50 to buy this game and then invest the rest. There you have it, buy this game and you’ll be connected to this game as much as I am.