Company of Heroes 2 is coming along marvelously, but let’s be honest here: it’s not exactly the departure one might expect from the company of game developers that made the brilliantly daring leap from Dawn of War 1 to Dawn of War 2. Instead, we’re getting more of what we loved, but with small tweaks, a heaping mountain of snow, and the sobering realization that it’s apparently not> a good idea to joyride multi-ton tanks across nearly opaque films of ice. During an interview with RPS, however, game director Quinn Duffy said that Company of Heroes definitely isn’t stuck in a tiny, World-War-II-shaped box. In the future, he excitedly explained, the series could potentially go “anywhere.”

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Last week I got to sit down and make my hands do things in Relic’s next strategy game, the Eastern Front-set World War II war of men that is Company of Heroes 2. While previously we’ve been shown frozen landscapes with dramatic new snow effects, this time I got thrown into the mud.>

I was in a war, you know. A big war, with explosions and tanks and dug-outs and men with flamethrowers and men with mortars and men with machine guns and men with rocket-propelled grenades. It was awful. So I’m only too happy to go back to it.

In my couple of hours with Company of Heroes 2, I swiftly established that it is very much the sequel to Company of Heroes. Perhaps more so than I’d been expecting, given the action-RPG stylings of Dawn of War 2 was a sharp turn to the left from Dawn of War 1′s tried and tested real-time strategising. Company of Heroes is Real War though, so a careful sticking to strategic roots is to be expected.

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Once, I thought there was at least some cold, profit-maximizing business precision that guided whatever awfulness-seeking missile explodes games into not-great movies, but now I’m not even sure of that anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong: Company of Heroes is a work of absolute RTS brilliance, but it’s not exactly a household name. And yeah, much as I think my> most brilliant tactical masterpieces – for instance, a nuanced little number I like to call TANKS EVERYWHERE – are worth their own movie adaptations, the game’s brand of top-down contemplaction doesn’t exactly make for the best big screen material. Then again, this one’s direct-to-DVD, so I guess that solves that. But obviously, making the leap to a new medium required Company of Heroes to take some liberties. For instance, when I say “making the leap,” I mean that literally. Across the top of a train. Like Indiana Jones. See for yourself after the break.

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Update: I got in touch with the Humble Bundle folks to find out more about how this out-of-nowhere partnership came about. See what they had to say after the break.

Original: I was incredibly tempted to begin this post with a joke about how the charity slider on this Humble Bundle is redundant, because THQ is already basically a charity. That would be mean, though, so I opted to– oops, I already did it. Hm. Shame backspace was never invented. Anyway, the latest bundle of densely packaged humility puts the spotlight on a decidedly non-indie THQ, but oh well. Indie’s a pretty terrible word when it’s used to write off great games because they weren’t coded by a half-person team in a garage-bedroom constantly beset by subarctic winds and ravenous wolverines. So, right then, let’s take a look inside.

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Could it really be that Relic are at last working on some manner of follow-up to their very well-received and very well-realised World War II RTS Company of Heroes? It could, claims PC Gamer’s print edition, claims Kotaku, claims VG247. I cannot verify this, but on this slowest of slow news days I shall report it nonetheless. There are no details because this is mere rumour, but though PCG are in the habit of eating live babies they aren’t generally in the habit of being scurrilous, so let’s hope they’re on the money here. (more…)

Oh, old man Company of Heroes, so good to see you again. Pull a comfy chair up to the fire and tell us another war story. It must hurt, having seen your younger, free to pay brother pass away so unexpectedly last year, but at least we’ve still got you. And what’s that? You’re not ready to go gently into that good night yourself yet? You have a healthy new patch laden with six extra maps and a bewildering array of balance changes? Excellent.
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