Nobody tells me anything any more.

Seems back in March a Company of Heroes movie was quietly announced by Sony. That movie, a direct-to-DVD thing that is actually tied to the famous PC strategy title (somehow), will be out on March 19.

It's got Tom Sizemore in it. And Neal "I was in Band of Brothers too you know" McDonough. And Jürgen Prochnow. Oh, and Vinnie Jones.

The plot's got something to do with Nazi scientists, and really, being a World War Two flick has nothing in common except the setting (what are they going to share, voice actors? Control schemes?), but it's got the Company of Heroes name and publishers THQ get a credit, so this goes in the books as an adaptation.

One that, by the looks of this trailer, I'm going to enjoy. In an "oh no it's so awful it's amazing" kind of way.

Company of Heroes Hits Blu-ray [IGN]

PC strategy gods Relic Entertainment look to be moving deeper into the world of free-to-play games, if a number of job descriptions on the company's site are anything to go by.

(They usually are).

They're looking for a Creative Director, Executive Producer and Senior Designer, all of which are specifically tagged as "Free-to-Play" roles.

It's of course not the first time Relic has dabbled in the field; the doomed Company of Heroes Online title was free-to-play before it closed down in 2011.

But that was a conversion of an existing product. Hiring new staff specifically to work in the field implies something a little more serious.

Wouldn't it be a cruel stab in the guts to, after years of asking for a Homeworld sequel, get one only for it to be free-to-play? I...wow, sorry for that. That was a dark place we all just went. I'm actually a little upset now, and am going to go sit down and convince myself it'd surely be something else.

Seems Relic's Expanding Its Free-to-Play Plans [Giant Bomb]

The harsh Soviet winter of 1941 saw temperatures drop as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which human skin freezes in minutes. Axis and Allied forces alike suffered tremendous casualties due to the extreme cold. Relic Entertainment harnesses this deadly force of nature with Company of Heroes 2's ColdTech system.

We've seen how fire and ice can affect the environments of Company of Heroes 2, dynamically shifting, reacting to troop movements, vehicles and direct interaction. What we haven't seen is how it affects the troops. Bundled in threadbare clothing and the odd furry hat, it'll take a smart commander to keep his forces from becoming frozen meat beneath a snow drift.

On cold maps players will have to situate their infantry near fire or garrison them in buildings while not fighting in order to avoid death's icy grip. As can be seen in the screenshot above, just standing near the fire won't cut it.

The wise general can also use the ice and snow to his or her advantage. For example, see those tanks slowly creeping across the ice?

Now you don't. And what about those snipers? What snipers?

This amount of interaction between the player and environment isn't something you see often in a strategy title. It's as if every battle will feature an additional faction, one that does not care who lives and who dies.

Company of Heroes 2 is heading to the PC in early 2013. I'd bundle up.

They thought they were doing the right thing. They figured at least one adult in my household would have a normal-sized head. They thought wrong, and a child suffered.

Well, Archer slept through the whole thing, but one day, years from now, I'll pull up this post and then he'll suffer. Until then he'll remain blissfully ignorant that he was a cog in the relentless wheels of THQ's Company of Heroes 2 PR machine. He'll say "But father, I don't want to join the Red Army!" to which I will reply, "Not a lot of people did, son."

Then we'll laugh and laugh.

Along with the tiny fuzzy hat came a card that read: "операция красный снег готовиться к холодному фронту, товарищ". Fifteen minutes in Google Translate later and I deciphered the message: "Operation Red Snow — Prepare for a cold front, comrade."

Well at least someone in this house is prepared for a cold front.

A new teaser trailer for next year's strategy title Company of Heroes 2 has just arrived. And while it doesn't feature any gameplay or show off its fancy features, the trailer does show one thing incredibly effectively:

It gets cold in Russia, y'all.

A narrator rather effectively intones the dire history of World War II, and sets up the conditions of the less-covered Eastern front in which the game takes place. And all the snow and ice and Stalin (especially the Stalin) add up into one chilling effect indeed.

Company of Heroes is a franchise that prides itself on several things. For one, it's a well-regarded real-time strategy game. For another, historical accuracy is paramount to developers Relic.

This means weapons and vehicles are true to history, and the snowy weather has an actual impact on your game. But it's more than just that.

In 1941 Stalin issued Order No. "Not A Step Back" 227, forbidding retreat on penalty of death. Though brutal, it did manage to push Germans off of the Soviet Union's lands.

Keeping in line with the history of Russians versus Germans, then, means that retreating from battle on the Eastern front will get you shot by your own army men.

After showing off a few new features that Stephen saw during his demonstration—like a new line-of-sight feature, and being able to have your men vault over cover—our Russian soldiers were trapped, pinned down by heavy German fire. What could they do?

An order was called for the men to retreat. A second line of Russian defense, witnessing this retreat, shouted at the infantrymen to stand strong and pursue the fight. The scared men kept running, and a cut scene showed them being gunned down.

It was an uncomfortable cut scene to watch. But this is exactly why Relic chose the Eastern front setting in the first place: because it's the bloodiest conflict in history, seeing 20 million Russian deaths.

The physical feature that most impressed players of the first great Company of Heroes real-time strategy game was the earth. In combat, under the impact of a grenade or tank shell, it cratered.

There were many other things to like in the first CoH, which is one of the best-reviewed video games of all time. It was a smarter, smaller-scale game of real-time World War II battles, one that humanized its few player-controlled units and unfurled a dynamic array of combat opportunities.

The earth in Company of Heroes 2 is impressive. What's more notable now is its fire and snow. Those two features that will decide life and death in the early 2013 PC game's setting, the cold hell of World War II's Eastern Front.

In Santa Monica last week, I played a small portion of Relic's new Company of Heroes during a showcase by game publisher THQ. I played as the Russians, as all players of the game's campaign will. Our mission was near the town of Polunino, my small squad set up, for demo purposes, with infinite troop resupplies—for experimentation, of course. We had to walk a road, clear a house, engage a German tank across an icy lake.

The snow is everywhere in this game. That's expected. We're in Russia, after all. What Relic will do with the snow might impress you. It will accumulate. It will pile onto disabled tanks and it will cover the tracks of your enemies, tracks that may differ across unit types. Heavy snow will slow the infantry who wade through it. The snow will scatter when pounded with an explosion. It will melt away when it is met with flame.

Fire. It's the other stand-out. Russian engineers in your squad bring flamethrowers to the fight against Germans who have occupied so many wooden Russian buildings. The core tactic here is challenging but obvious: approach a house full of Germans; suppress the ones firing from the windows; bring the flamethrower closer; burn it all down. The spread and control of fire will be a key to victory.

The pre-E3 demo of Company of Heroes 2 that I played highlighted a few other features in the sequel: 1) smarter troop intelligence that sends men to the proper side of cover; 2) a vaulting mechanic that lets soldiers hurdle cover (if commanded )instead of only ever running around it; 3) enemy armor, mainly tanks, that can be disabled and then commandeered mid-battle, introducing the new option to try to leave enemy armor intact enough to use; 4) a new line-of-sight system that looks less like the radial clearing of most games' fog of war and more like the spreading of an amoeba of clarity, unfogging only the parts of the map that the troops on the ground can see (In real-time, that amoeba shape changes as smoke drifts past a previously open line of sight, blocking it for the moment; the game screen fully unfogs, briefly, during an aerial strike.

My own experience with Company of Heroes is limited. I know it mostly vicariously from the friends and colleagues who have fallen hard for the game. It was a game that rewarded tactics, not just rapid clicking. I see no changed direction with the new one. This sequel appears to be for the existing fans, a game made to convert those who will come to it. It's not budging, except to head east to the bloodiest side of a brutal war.

Rumors have been hot and heavy that THQ would be announcing a sequel to hit PC strategy title, Company of Heroes and, today, the beleaguered publisher has done exactly that. As hinted by the vintage newspaper page we showed last week, the sequel to the 2006 game will focus on the WWII battles between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, with players commanding the Red Army. Developed by Relic Entertainment, Company of Heroes 2 is scheduled for release in early 2013.

Early this morning a delivery person showed up at my door with shocking news: HITLER BEGINS WAR ON RUSSIA. Either that was the world's most delinquent paper boy, or THQ really wants us to get excited about Company of Heroes 2.

Not only did THQ send me a FedEx wake-up call at 7AM, they also got me to translate Russian. The card accompanying this poster-sized piece of World War II nostalgia reads "Briefings begin May 7", indicating we're just three days away from the big reveal of the sequel to one of the greatest real-time strategy games of all time.

Well, aside from what's already been revealed via magazine scans.

I just wish THQ hadn't gone the newspaper route (*rimshot*) with this initial tease. It's not that I don't appreciate the significance of June 22, 1941. It's not that I hate history. It's the fact that the obsessive compulsive collector in me now feels I need to collect the entire set of 1941 cover sheets from The New York Times.

Note to insane PR people: That was not a request.

Relic's popular Company of Heroes will be out next year, according to scans of PC Gamer magazine posted at Polygon. This confirms rumors of its development and will make Mr. Luke Plunkett one happy camper.