While the last trailer was a sombre exploration of the psychological and physical toll of the Eastern Front, Company of Heroes 2's latest video preview is a more celebratory look at the variety and flexibility of the World War 2 strategy. It's cocky, too. Confidently rolling its tanks over that other genre's battlefield; big block letters proudly instructing you to take command "before you try the next big FPS".

Luckily, it seems, the RTS sequel has the fire-power to match its assured taunting. You can see what Relic have in store with our hands-on beta impressions and huge preview.

Company of Heroes 2 is due out June 25th.

Well thanks, morose Russian soldier man. Here I was thinking about Company of Heroes 2, and getting all excited for another slice of deep RTS action, when suddenly you decide to bring the mood down. Yes, technically war might be a little bit rubbish. But when it's restricted to my computer, it's great. Although, even then, I guess I could understand his lack of enthusiasm. I did get a lot of people killed in the first game.

Company of Heroes 2 is due out June 25th. Tom Senior has been our point-man on Relic's winter wargame, providing multiplayer beta impressions here.

Rejoice, fans of freezing to death in the harsh and unforgiving coldness, surrounded only by the pained screams of troops locked in a bitter battle between two unstoppable war machines! If you're worried that Company of Heroes 2's campaign won't keep a chill in your bones throughout the summer months, Relic have announced a second mode. It's called Theatre of War and, from what they say, it sounds like an automated delivery system for human misery (and tactically satisfying RTS missions).

Taking the form of new single player and co-op challenges, the mode will provide a series of scenarios against unique AI commanders and "overwhelming odds". COH2 game director Quinn Duffy has this to say on the matter: "Theatre of War acts as a perfect bridge between the game’s single and multiplayer content providing a high level of re-playability and helping to introduce traditionally solo players to the online elements of the game."

At the game's launch, Theatre of War will contain nine unique missions per faction, set around key battles of 1941. More missions will be added after release - including the already announced pre-order mini-campaign.

Company of Heroes 2 is due out June 25th.

After nearly seven years of being bombed and battered, Company of Heroes' online infrastructure is in need of a break. Servers located at the game's old hosting company - the now Ubisoft-owned Quazal - are due to be shut down on May 7th. Is this the end of the war? Not quite. Replacement Steamworks servers have already been parachuted in, giving fans the chance to migrate over before the original host's honourable discharge.

If you own the game on Steam, you'll already have the new version, the aptly titled "Company of Heroes (New Steam Version)", in your Library. It's a single launch option - so any expansions have been rolled into the DLC tab of the listing's properties menu.

Owners of other versions will need to transfer their games, by adding their CD Keys into the "Activate a Product on Steam" option.

It's a bit of an odd situation. Some players may feel justifiably aggrieved by this service switch. But while the sudden requirement of the Steam client might not be universally welcomed, it's surely a preferable option to a complete shutdown of the old servers.

Plus, it could be worse - the original Dawn of War 2 is still tied to Games for Windows Live.

Thanks, Strategy Informer.

Charge!

Update: All 20,000 keys have been distributed. Thanks to everyone who grabbed one—look for more thrilling giveaways from us in the future.

For seven years, the original Company of Heroes has stood as our highest-rated RTS of all time. As its successor marches toward a late June release, we're happy to be able to exclusively offer about a division's worth of Company of Heroes 2 beta keys to you all.

To grab a key, click here to head over to our Facebook page. Once you receive a key, redeem it on Steam. The closed beta is live now, and it includes both multiplayer and skirmish mode against the AI on six maps.

There's a limited supply of keys available. I'll update this post once they've all been drafted (away from their loving parents, you monster). If you miss out on our giveaway, a nuclear option is available: pre-ordering Company of Heroes 2 on Steam grants closed beta access.

After the controlled implosion of THQ, you may have been wondering what would happen to the original Company of Heroes, now that Relic and COH2 have been safely gobbled up by Sega, and its chilli-dog scoffing CEO Mr Hedgehog. The imminent shutdown of Quazal, who handled the game's online, hardly helped matters - but thankfully, Relic have come to a solution. Rather than leaving their six-year-old game to die, they're thoughtfully transferring the original Company of Heroes to Steamworks - you'll be able to 'opt-in' to the new service from April 8th.

Relic have teamed up with Smoking Gun Interactive - a studio made up of former Relic staff who worked on the original game - to bring COH to Steam "with as many of the original online features working on the new platform as possible." That means that the full suite of online options likely won't be available right at the start, but in the blog post Relic talk of a "roadmap" for COH1, so hopefully the game will be back to full strength in the coming months. Heroes' old, Quazal servers are set to close on May 7th.

Sadly, the years of accumulated online data won't carry across to the Steamworks version, but Relic are "investigating the possibility of creating an online archive of all the final data from the leaderboards, statistics, etc, to honor the gamers who have played so much for the last 6 years."

As for the sequel, well that's heading for Steamworks too. Company of Heroes 2 is out June 25th, while the date of its closed beta will be announced early next week.

Company of Heroes 2 was due to come out around about now, but then THQ folded and developers, Relic, were auctioned off to Sega. This has pushed back the World War 2 RTS by a few months. It'll now arrive on JUNE 25, long before Russian winter sets in.

“We hate to disappoint our fans with a later than expected date as we know they are eager to play but we feel that the additional time will help the team deliver the high quality sequel fans deserve” - thus spake producer Greg Williams into the press release robot's listening hole.

“However, the wait won’t be long as players will soon be able to help us test and balance multiplayer in the upcoming Closed Beta.

"Details will follow shortly," he adds.

Exciting news, no? I liked what I played of Company of Heroes 2 very much, because I like Company of Heroes 1 very much, and the sequel seems to be clinging very close to the ideas that made the original great.

This week, Chris and Toms Senior and Francis talk Teleglitch, SimCity, Crysis 3 multiplayer and more. Includes our thoughts on the troubles at Gas Powered Games, Jon Blow's next game, and your
questions from Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or download the MP3 directly. The YouTube version will be going up early next week as I've, er, got a train to catch.

Follow PC Gamer UK on Twitter to be informed when we're putting the call out for questions. Here are our individual accounts:

Chris - @cthursten
Tom F - @pentadact
Tom S - @pcgludo

Show notes

Gas Powered Games' Wildman Kickstarter and Matt Barton's interview with Chris Taylor.
Our collected thoughts on Crysis 3 multiplayer, plus The Hidden: Source mod.
/r/GuildWarsDyeJob, the Guild Wars 2 dress-up subreddit that Chris is weirdly excited about.
The Dota 2 character art guide.
The nascent Twitter feed for the Absolute Bedlam Dota 2 tournament.
Try a round or two of Cheese or Font.

Farewell then, THQ. Yesterday saw the publisher’s final assets sold off to a variety of buyers, and while many good people (and franchises) managed to find a new home, our thoughts and well-wishes are with those that didn’t. As we’re in a reflective mood, we thought it only appropriate to commemorate the loss of this fine company with a look back at ten of the best games it’s delighted us with over the years.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (September 2004)

Tempting though it is to bang on about Relic Entertainment’s wonderful sci-fi RTS Homeworld, it wasn’t until 2004 that THQ took the Vancouver-based studio under its wing. Dawn of War represented the first fruits of that union, and it remains one of the most successful digital adaptations of the tabletop favourite, capturing the appeal of the series in a smart, refined package.

Full Spectrum Warrior (October 2004)

The most satisfying triumphs come from conquering the greatest adversity. Pandemic’s squad-based military shooter was an incredibly demanding game in its day, its punishing authenticity a result of its origins as a US Army-affiliated training simulation. Persistently tense and claustrophobic, it may not have been the dictionary definition of ‘fun’, but it was a sweaty-palmed experience we’ll never forget.

Titan Quest (June 2006)

Time for a lesson in ancient history - well, 2006 does seem a fair while ago these days. THQ managed to temporarily sate appetites for a new Diablo by releasing this gloriously entertaining action-RPG that proves you don’t need an awful lot more than an enormous world and hordes of colossal monsters to biff for a good time. Titan Quest may not have been anything particularly new, but there’s an art to making hacking and slashing as fun as this.

Company of Heroes (September 2006)

Just as the world and his dog was heartily sick of WWII settings, Relic’s blistering RTS managed to make us all care again. ‘Visceral’ may be horribly overused in games criticism, but rarely has the word been applied more accurately than to CoH’s shudderingly intense combat. Tough, gritty and oddly beautiful, it elevated its creator among the giants of the strategy genre.

Supreme Commander (February 2007)

Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games might be in the headlines for very different reasons at the moment, but back in 2007 this talented studio was making waves with a truly brilliant RTS. Supreme Commander was grand-scale warfare at its most exhaustive and exhausting – with some of the best AI in the business putting up a heck of a fight, every hard-earned victory was worthy of a triumphant air-punch.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R (March 2007)

Frightening, surprising, intense and ambitious? Or scrappy, buggy, overwhelming and confusing? S.T.A.L.K.E.R was all of the above and more, a sandbox-survival horror-RPG-FPS-adventure that cast you as a scavenger around the ruins of Chernobyl. Everyone’s experience was different: ours involved a lot of nervy creeping around in the dark, punctuated by terrified shrieks whenever a mutant spotted us. And we loved (almost) every minute of it.

Red Faction: Guerrilla (September 2009)

God bless Geo-Mod 2.0. It’s rare we’re minded to salute a physics engine, but the unparalleled destruction it enabled is what made Volition’s game such a giddy joy to play. After all, why just shoot an enemy when you can topple a multi-storey building onto him? Expertly paced, with a campaign that escalated into hysterical carnage, Guerrilla may have been unrefined at times but boy was it fun.

Metro 2033 (March 2010)

A rare thing: a great shooter with shooting that isn’t that great. Metro’s gunplay is lacking in feedback, but it’s hard to care too much in a world this rich and enveloping. Every inch of 4A Games’ subterranean nightmare is permeated with an atmosphere so thick you could slice it. This is the FPS as survival horror, and as appropriately brutal and hard-edged as that suggests.

Darksiders (September 2010)

A tilt of the hat to its sequel, too, but we’ve got rather a soft spot for Vigil’s original, even if ‘original’ is hardly a word you’d use to describe Darksiders’ unholy blend of Zelda and God of War. If you’re going to steal, though, then be sure to pinch from the best, and this post-apocalyptic tale did just that, marrying puzzly exploration with thrillingly weighty scraps, topped off nicely by some fine Joe Mad artwork.

Saints Row: The Third (November 2011)

What started out as a poor man’s GTA began to find its own identity in the follow-up, but it wasn’t until the third game that Saints Row realised its true potential. It was a monument to excess, a crude, coarse, tawdry descent into debauchery that was almost operatic in its tastelessness. Some remained immune to its charms (if that’s the right word) but there was genuine sophistication behind the silliness. Dumb, then, but artfully so.

 
 

THQ
1989-2013
RIP
This is no place for a horse.

 
 
 

THQ is no more: the bankrupt publisher and developer auctioned off its assets in U.S. Bankruptcy Court today. Though the court must still approve the sales, a letter from THQ's CEO (which was passed to Kotaku by an employee) reveals the bidders, which include Sega, Ubisoft, Deep Silver, Crytek, and Take-Two, and the THQ franchises and studios they'll acquire. Below is a breakdown of who's getting what, and what led to today's sale.

Who's getting what? Based on what we know right now...

Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40,000 developer Relic Entertainment is going to Sega.

Saints Row developer Volition, Inc. and the Metro series are going to Koch Media (Deep Silver).

The Homefront franchise is going to Crytek.

THQ Montreal and the South Park license are going to Ubisoft.

Evolve, a game in development by Turtle Rock Studios (which worked on Left 4 Dead), is going to Take-Two Interactive.
THQ will "make every effort to find appropriate buyers" for its remaining assets, such as Darksiders developer Vigil Games.


What happened?

On November 13, 2012, THQ announced that it had defaulted on a $50 million loan. Its subsequent Humble THQ Bundle raised about $5 million for THQ, charities, and the Humble Bundle organizers, but it wasn't enough: the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 19th.

Bankruptcy isn't necessarily the end—Chapter 11 allows the debtor to stay in control of the company under court oversight—but things didn't go as planned. THQ expected to sell itself in whole to a private equity firm called Clearlake Capital Group, but THQ's creditors and the bankruptcy court rejected that proposal earlier this month, which led to today's piece by piece auction.