Company of Heroes: Gold

Face Off pits two gladiators against each other as they tackle gaming's most perplexing conundrums. This New Year's Eve edition is a chronological throw-down: which decade gave PC gaming the most? Podcast Producer Erik Belsaas says it was the '90s—the origin of modern PC gaming. Executive Editor Evan Lahti insists it was the '00s, with its speedy internet, better PCs, and shinier graphics engines.

Evan: The 1990s had the CD-ROM and the McRib sandwich. The ‘00s had Windows XP and two terrible Star Wars movies. I think the latter birthed better games: the Battlefield series, Crysis, Company of Heroes, BioShock, Dragon Age: Origins, Guild Wars, The Sims, Rome: Total War, Star Wars: KOTOR, and the best Civilization games happened then. What've you got, Erik?

Erik: Lucasarts, id, Ion Storm, Interplay, Blizzard: the iconic names that created franchises that we still discuss today. “RTS,” “FPS,” and “MMO” had no meaning before the pioneers of the '90s came along with some-thing other than sequels and rehashes: Baldur's Gate, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, MechWarrior, Unreal Tournament and every LucasArts adventure game from Sam & Max to Grim Fandango.

Evan: This is going to devolve into who can name-drop more game titles, isn't it?

Erik: Pretty much.

Evan: Cool. In that case, let’s put the best we've got on the page. What are the top three games from your decade? Mine: WoW, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life 2.

Erik: Just three? How about X-COM, Fallout, and The Secret of Monkey Island. Timeless classics that we still play today.

Evan: Is that the best that the decade that gave us the Spice Girls has got, grandpa? The innovations of the '00s will last far longer. Half-Life 2 wasn't just the basis for the way modern action games tell stories, it’s the technological foundation for the most ambitious mods we have today and the preferred canvas for machinima creators. World of Warcraft’s meteoric rise brought PC gaming into popular culture, ruined innumerable marriages, and earned its own South Park episode. Top that.

Erik:Your great games are all parts of established franchises that began in the '90s. For that matter, the original Counter-Strike mod came out in 1999, before Valve turned it into a retail product! Take away the names that began in the '90s, the '00s would've created very little of their own.

Evan: Megabyte for megabyte, I’d rather replay Half-Life 2 than its predecessor. Likewise for Diablo II, Warcraft III, Fallout 3 and other major franchises that began in the '90s but matured in the '00s. I really think that the tech of the '00s (better operating systems, fast internet, faster PCs) produced better gaming experiences. EVE Online couldn't exist in the '90s. Team Fortress 2's dozens of free content updates couldn't have streamed down our wimpy modems—the same goes for 25-man WoW raids or a heavily modded playthrough of Oblivion or Morrowind.

Erik: You've got a short memory. EverQuest allowed 72-man raids. And before Oblivion and Morrowind came Daggerfall, which was amazing and heavily modded. Doom, the father of modding, came out in '93.

Evan: I’ll play your game, Belsaas. Here's my ace: Deus Ex, our most favorite game ever, happened in 2000.

Erik: Deus Ex is a good game...but how about StarCraft? Has any other game absolutely defined its genre or rallied an entire nation behind it like a sport?



Evan: I was worried you’d play the Korea card. What can I counter that with? The 100-million-selling main-stream success of The Sims? The booming popularity of independent gaming? ...Peggle?

Erik: Peggle? Well I’ve got...you know...uh...Carmen Sandiego. Fine. Peggle wins.

This article originally appeared in issue 247 of PC Gamer UK. Written by Craig Lager.

War on the Russian steppe is very different to the Normandy landings. You can’t learn about it simply by watching Saving Private Ryan over and over again, for one thing.

“We do an obsessive amount of research about the setting, about our feeling of what the intensity should be, and how to deliver that in a game,” says Relic’s Quinn Duffy. “We could never get close to the real feeling, but we try. Our approach to authenticity is not about getting every bolt in the right place, it’s about making sure that a T-34 feels like a T-34.”

The mission I played was split into two parts: first, raid a small German encampment, then repair and reclaim a broken light tank. Starting out, Company of Heroes 2 feels very familiar – the same view, control scheme and general mechanics as Relic’s last few games welcome you in. But, as you progress, what initially seem like small changes start to make a big difference.

Play CoH2 for long enough and you will get a grounding in unpronounceable tank names.

Weather and the cold play an important role, for example. Just outside that first encampment I split my force up so that half could push straight on, as the other half vaulted a fence and went through a field to flank. I found out too late that the field was covered in deep snow, reducing my units to a crawl. When the Germans spotted them, exposed and trudging through snow drifts, they invented the word ‘schadenfreude’.

Without fire support, my central force was in serious trouble. But this is not Company of Retreaters. They held on, they pushed, and eventually they managed to get close enough to the objective for me to be granted a special ability: air support. Machine guns from a circling plane ripped through the base, slaughtering everyone.

The next job was to traverse the countryside to reclaim a tank on the other side of a frozen lake. The environment in CoH2 can be as deadly as German bullets – without shelter or a fire to keep warm, soldiers will die off, silently falling into the snow one by one as the harsh weather sets in. It’s grim, sombre, and pushes the game more into the moral and ethical reflections of war rather than only blowing stuff up.

Quinn offers another example: “If the enemy leaves a casualty on the battlefield and they’re crawling away, those casualties are still providing line of sight. My decision as a player is ‘do I shoot that guy?’ because he’s giving an advantage to the enemy. It’s just a little thing, but it adds some of that choice and consequence to the battlefield.”

The cold and extreme weather conditions play a big part in CoH2.

‘Run across this frozen lake towards the Germans’ is not the most strategically sound order to have ever been given in a pretend war. However, Russian troops know better than to question orders from The Motherland, so bravely they ran across, and bravely they got pinned down by machinegun fire, and bravely mostly bled to death in the cushioning snow.

Those few survivors didn’t last much longer. The barrage of gunfire had weakened the ice, so when a grenade landed amongst the troops, the outcome was unavoidable. The ice collapsed, plunging them into the frozen depths. A restart and a new strategy of ‘go around the lake’ let me attack the tank’s position. I pushed the Germans back enough for my engineers to reach the tank, get it fixed, and then jump some guys in. The enemy force brought in a tank as well, and we exchanged a couple of shells before that exploded too. I smile and admire the carnage, but then Quinn speaks and I don’t want to smile any more.

“You see one of these tanks blow up? You can draw a lot of inspiration from the experience and horror, because you know it’s not just a tank exploding. There are four or five guys in there burning to death. There’s a pressure to make it feel right.”

Company of Heroes 2 does feel right. What I’ve played perfectly captures the grim tone of war while still being an exciting and tactical RTS. Hopefully you won’t be too depressed to play it.

In a statement released today, THQ announced it filed bankruptcy as part of a sale to equity firm Clearlake Capital. Though financial issues troubled the publisher in the past, the announcement stressed everything will continue as normal while THQ seeks a new owner.

"THQ will continue operating its business without interruption during the sale period," read the statement. "All of the company’s studios remain open, and all development teams continue. Consumers and retailers should see no changes while the company completes a sale. The new financing will support business operations throughout the period. THQ does not intend to reduce its workforce as a result of the filing."

THQ's filing specifically fell under Chapter 11 of the government's Bankruptcy Code, which allows a company to reorganize and essentially get its bearings without disappearing entirely. Which is a good thing, with upcoming games such as Metro: Last Light, Company of Heroes 2, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and Saints Row 4 hanging in the balance.

On a positive note, THQ's substantial success generating over $5 million through its recent Humble Bundle deal boosted its stock nearly 40 percent!

The Company of Heroes 2 singleplayer campaign will focus on the Soviets, but in multiplayer we'll also get to command the Wermacht, who have received some significant updates since Company of Heroes 1. The multiplayer alpha is imminent, which means lucky invitees will get more time to figure out some of the quirks of the new asymmetrical multiplayer set-up. In Company of Heroes 1, the US had a slight advantage in the early game, which gradually tilted as both armies built up their bases. Relic say they want to keep both sides even at all phases of battle to encourage closer contests. Whatever happens, millions of tanks will die gloriously.

World War II's massive fronts and costly campaigns are the gunpowder-flavored butter to Company of Heroes' bread, but future entries in the RTS franchise beyond Company of Heroes 2's snowdrifts and drifting tanks might not necessarily keep the same setting. Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Relic Game Director Quinn Duffy said the series could go "anywhere" and deal with other military conflicts. It's called Company of Heroes, after all, not Company of Russian, American, or German 1940s Heroes.

"We could look at setting this game anywhere," Duffy said. “We know what we want to deliver in a Company of Heroes game. We know what we want it to feel like. So the setting becomes another piece of military history to tell, or another set of stories. But the game should feel like a Company of Heroes product.”

Company of Heroes 2's chilly Eastern Front likes reminding us how flamethrowers were apparently standard-issue weapons for every soldier, but it's also entering a closed beta "shortly after the New Year" before releasing early 2013. Anything goes after that—including a potential reentry into free-to-play territory after the short-lived Company of Heroes Online.

"It’s an interesting new market and there’s a lot of potential for strategy-type games in ," Duffy explained. "It’s definitely part of THQ’s vision going forward and ours in the studio as well. You know, making sure we’ve got good coverage going into these new models.”

Clear your schedule and make room on your hard drive: there are over 9000 mods up for consideration as ModDB's 2012 Mod of the Year award nominees, and only a little over five days to nominate them. A big green button on each mod's page makes it hard to miss the opportunity to give your favorites a bump.

There isn't much time, so we'll get straight to it after this obligatory acknowledgement that we said "over 9000" on the internet: tee hee, references. Moving on, DayZ and Black Mesa are tough to ignore, and The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod was a valiant community effort. Those might be the most talked about and praised mods this year, and we expect they'll secure nominations, but there are so many more that deserve recognition. Which are you voting for?

If you need a refresher, you might want to browse our recent mod coverage to see if you've missed any driving elephants or My Little Pony conversions.

So... It turns out there's a Company of Heroes movie. And this isn't one of those "there's a World of Warcraft movie" situations, where it's been announced and, years later, there's no director, no real hope of it ever being filmed and no-one that particularly cares either way. This movie has actors and everything. It's also got a trailer, courtesy of IGN - one that raises more than a few questions as to why this even exists. You should probably watch it, if only for the overwhelming sense of bewilderment it invokes.



Right...

1) What?!

2) Isn't World War 2 already public domain? Why would you go to the trouble and expense of buying the Company of Heroes licence to make... that?

3) Unless they expect Company of Heroes fans to buy it. Do they really expect Company of Heroes fans to buy it?!

4) Here are a selection of things I don't think about when I play Company of Heroes:

Mawkish sentimentality
Jumping between train carriages
Harrowing scenes of slow-motion camaraderie set to swelling orchestral music
Vinnie Jones


5) Here are a selection of things that appear in the trailer for Company of Heroes:

Mawkish sentimentality
Jumping between train carriages
Harrowing scenes of slow-motion camaraderie set to swelling orchestral music
Vinnie Jones


6) What?!

The film is set to release straight-to-DVD (ah, that explains a lot) next Spring. You may now commence your accusations that it's a slow news day.

Thanks, RPS.