Braden Chan is an Associate Game Designer at Relic Entertainment working on Company of Heroes—specifically Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces, which comes out this Thursday. While his graphics card may be old, the piano, sound mixer, and giant speakers give me the feeling Braden is more focused on an a high quality audio experience than a cutting edge visual one. He was kind enough to show us how he works and plays, and tell us about why he loves Warcraft 3 more than any other game. 

What's in your PC?

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9650 @ 3.00GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
• Motherboard: Maximus II Formula
• Memory: 8192MB RAM
• Drives: 3 x 500GB HDD
• Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
• Case: Antec Twelve Hundred V3 Black Steel ATX Full Tower
• Mouse: Logitech MX518
• Keyboard: Logitech Deluxe 250
• Mixer: Pioneer DJM 800
• Speakers: KRK Rokit 8

What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?

Instead of using an audio box to run my inputs through my studio monitor, I am actually using a DJ mixer which provides the same effect. It also gives me the flexibility to hook up my laptop into the mixer and run audio through my monitors that way as well. It's great as I can still control the levels of each device I have plugged in. The Pioneer DJM-800 mixer also has the flexibility to host multiple inputs like RCA, XLR, etc.

What are you playing right now?

I'm currently engaged in a lot of Counter-Strike Global Offensive, Company of Heroes 2, and I occasionally play Starcraft 2.

Whats always within arm's reach on your desk?

My phone or a glass of water.

What's your favorite game and why?

Warcraft III will always hold a special place in my heart as my favorite game. It was one of the first of its kind as an RTS/RPG hybrid. Many of the mechanics that were created laid the path for other games such as DOTA, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft. I took that game really seriously and I qualified for WCG Canada in 2007. I just really enjoyed the emphasis on combat and micro that it had. As a player, you really had to create a strategy based on the heroes you were going to use. On top of that, you would build an army that would support your hero. Unlike Starcraft, you didn't really have to focus too much on your economy and macro. I think that is what I enjoyed the most about it; focusing on my units rather than my workers collecting gold.

If you've been reluctant to splash cash on Ark: Survival Evolved, then good news: it's free on Steam this weekend. The dinosaur age survival sandbox is ludicrously popular, and it's easy to see why. When Chris Livingston played he "chopped some wood, punched some birds, [and] pooped out several large, round turds," which sounds pretty great.

Other games are free too: Company of Heroes and its sequel, Company of Heroes 2, are both free for the weekend, and come with a 75% discount if you want to purchase. Mount & Blade: Warband is the fourth game to go free, with 66% taken off the usual price if you like what you play.

In case it's not obvious, these games are free for the weekend only: come Monday you'll need to pay up if you wish to continue playing.

The grim beauty of Company of Heroes is that it gives aspirant World War II strategists a bird s eye view of battlefield and takes them down into the brutal detail of the foxhole. It s a war sim experienced from above and below, where the general sees all his decisions—good and bad—played out in realtime.

Relic s original 2006 RTS game was a hit partly because of the delicate way it walked a line that felt satisfying and authentic. With the WWII experience already so well-executed in other genres—shooters and grand strategy sims—COH found a middle ground where it could show the conflict from a new angle. From its squad-based point of view, the tide of battle in COH could be turned by the presence of a single soldier or unit. This perspective also nodded to the intensely personal stories in films like Saving Private Ryan and the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, both of which had appeared in the previous decade and enjoyed near-universal acclaim.

In this edition of If you like, I ve picked media that takes a similar, soldier s-eye-view approach to WWII. They aren t stories of far-removed commanders or politicians, but rather the men who had to carry out their orders in the various theaters of the 20th century s most brutal war. Given the scope of WWII, any list of recommendations could be almost endless. So with that in mind, be sure to include your own favorites in the comment section below.

Stalingrad, directed by Joseph Vilsmaier

With Company of Heroes 2, the series took its successful squad-based approach to the Eastern Front of the war. And in a way that reflected the much bloodier reality of the conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union in the east, the game adopted a darker tone as well. In the 1993 German film Stalingrad, we witness the full arc of the famous battle played out through the eyes of a group of tight-knit German soldiers.

Stalingrad traces the story of an elite German unit as it takes part in what would turn out to be one of the turning points of the entire war. The Battle of Stalingrad played out in the city s bombed out streets, sewer tunnels, and eventually its frozen countryside as the German army became surrounded. The film is ultimately a story of failure, but also one of friendship as resistance to the horrors of war.

COH 2 s turn to the east can also be seen as part of an increased focus in recent years on the cost borne by Eastern Europe during and after WWII. For a historical account of these developments, I d recommend taking a look at author Timothy Snyder s recent contribution to our understanding of the Eastern Front—Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

War Stories, written by Garth Ennis with various artists

In War Stories, comics writer Garth Ennis turns his pen towards a variety of true-to-life experiences during WWII. Noted for his work on comics like Preacher and Punisher, in War Stories Ennis attempts to ground the larger conflict in discrete tales of individuals caught up in unpredictable circumstances.

The eight-issue series, now collected in two volumes, has a scope that takes in battles all over the European theater, from North Africa to the Battle of Britain to the final days on the Eastern Front before Germany s surrender. In reviewing Ennis s work, Colin Smith notes that his writing isn t a tale of events which feel as if they re nothing but ancient history, long since settled and entirely predictable in hindsight. In taking us away from the commonplace and focusing on the lives of his small cast of touchingly-depicted individuals, Ennis constantly compels us to remember how chaotic and unpredictable his character s lives are.

If you see COH as I do, as somehow tipping its hat to warfare as carefully-managed chaos, it s worth checking out Ennis s War Stories.

Kelly s Heroes, directed by Brian G. Hutton

If the dirty, impressionistic violence of Saving Private Ryan changed how a new generation of filmgoers saw WWII, then Kelly s Heroes serves as a reminder of an earlier approach to depicting the war. In the 1970 film starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, and Donald Sutherland, war is hell, but it s also a hell of an adventure. If you were to reverse engineer Saving Private Ryan as a kind of twisted, 1960s WWII Western, it might look something like Kelly s Heroes.

The basic story deals with a group of disillusioned American soldiers who go AWOL in order to rip off a bank behind enemy lines. Sick of feeling like pawns in the ambitious games of crazy generals, the soldiers set out to win a piece of the war that they can take home with them—gold. It s pure Hollywood but also hugely entertaining. The combat set pieces in the film range over the French countryside and could be ripped right out of the COH campaign. And as with so many older films that deploy practical effects well, the tank battles and infantry skirmishes have aged quite nicely.

Kelly s Heroes doesn t shy away from showing the costs of warfare, but rather confronts it with a kind of sarcastic humor and fantasy that s also become an important artifact in dealing with the legacy of WWII.

The Young Lions, by Irwin Shaw

Of all the American combat novels to appear after the conclusion of World War II, three proved to be definitive: James Jones s The Thin Red Line, Norman Mailer s The Naked and the Dead, and Irwin Shaw s The Young Lions. And of those, only Shaw s 1948 work deals with the war in Europe rather than the Pacific.

Epic in its ambition, Shaw weaves together the story of three soldiers fighting on different sides of the war. Direct and suitably unadorned, his style is excellent at bringing the reader into the moment-by-moment experience of combat: The firing stopped and it was quiet again, except for shouts from the wounded out in the field. When a man raised his head carefully to look over the embankment to see what could be done, the guns started again, and the grass on the edge of the embankment snapped and slashed through the air as the bullets cut through it. The remnants of the Company lay exhausted, then, along the ditch.

What The Young Lions captures so vividly is the psychological dimension of combat and the way it changes the people caught up in it. The novel also highlights the almost absurd disconnect that exists between the fighting men on the ground and the commanders giving orders from eighty miles away. Just as COH closes this distance with its realtime approach, Shaw s writing excels at telling stories of the war as it was fought in the ditch rather than the war room. 

For more installments of If you like... , check out Patrick s recommendations for Dead Space, The Witcher, Dishonored, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Deus Ex fans. 

While this week's main Humble Bundle is chumming about with region locked Nintendo games, the Weekly Bundle is well worth your attention. It is an awful lot of video game war for not a lot of money. Specifically, it is Relic video game war.

Here's what paying what you want will get you:

• Company of Heroes: Complete Edition
• Dawn of War: Game of the Year Edition
• Dawn of War 2
• Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West

Yes, it's a bit odd to include Company of Heroes 2's standalone multiplayer expansion without the game it's based on. But if you pay above the average, you'll also get:

• Company of Heroes 2
• Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: US Forces
• Dawn of War 2: Retribution
• Warhammer 40K: Space Marine

Should you extend your payment to $15 you'll also get Company of Heroes 2's most recent expandalone, Ardennes Assault.

There are some RTS classics nestled in there. It's worth dipping in just for Dawn of War: Retribution's excellent Last Stand multiplayer mode.

The bundle will run until Thursday, June 4.

Company of Heroes 2 is returning to the setting of Company of Heroes 1 with The Western Front Armies, a standalone expansion that's coming out in June for $20. It includes two armies: the US forces and the German Oberkommando and eight new multiplayer maps set in the green, unfrozen lands of the Western Front. There are no single player missions or Theater of war Scenarios mentioned, so it looks like an expansion designed to feed the multiplayer scene, which has been quietly warring away since launch last year.

Though Western Front Armies is standalone, it'll share a multiplayer pool with Company of Heroes 2, which means whatever combination of the two you own, you can be automatched onto any of the 31 maps alongside any army. Buying the original game or the expansion will make their included armies playable, and let you create custom games with the included maps. Sega also note that the armies will be available separately for $12.99 each.

There's also mention of a "new progression system" that will let you unlock "unique content" that'll let players "dive deeper into the tactical and strategic aspects of the game". I don't know what that means, but it might have something to do with the tiny unit upgrades and skins you can unlock with the current experience system.

Here are a few shots from the Xpack. Shermans! Paratroopers! I'm having happy flashbacks to the first game.

Sega used to spend their time faffing about with console boxes and a blue hedgehog. Now they spend their time more productively: publishing cool PC games (and occasionally trying to resurrect the blue hedgehog). Sometimes these many projects collide into a single, gloriously incomprehensible mess of different games and styles. It happened with the bizarrely compelling Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed - a game in which an anthropomorphic fox could lose a kart race to the football manager from Football Manager. It's also now happened with this week's Humble Weekly Sale.

The pack collects some of the publisher's more celebrated series, along side smaller projects and a collection of classic console games.

At the lowest pay-what-you-want tier, you'll get Alpha Protocol, Company of Heroes, Rome: Total War and Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit. Pay more than $5.99 and you'll also receive The Typing of the Dead: Overkill, Binary Domain, Renegade Ops, Medieval 2: Total War, and a collection of 10 old "Genesis" games. The Genesis, in case you're unaware, is what incorrect people call the Mega Drive.

The deal also includes Total War: Shogun 2, available for purchases over $14.99. In addition to supporting Sega, the money will also go towards the following charities: Make-A-Wish, Whale & Dolphin Conservation, Willow, Special Effect and GamesAid. As always, the bundle's sliders will let you choose exactly where your money will go.

It's probably one of the best Weekly Sales that Humble have run in some time. Company of Heroes, Rome: Total War, and Medieval 2: Total War are often considered among the best entries of their respective series. In addition, Alpha Protocol and Renegade Ops are definitely worth checking out for the sort of price you can grab them for here. Also, there are a few Mega Drive games - including the Golden Axes. Weirdly, there's no Sonic anywhere in sight, although at this point, maybe it's for the best.

The Sega Humble Weekly Sale will run until March 20th.

Video games produced in Russia and Eastern Europe are nothing new, what with the Stalker series and Metro: Last Light. For the first time, though, we could start seeing video games produced in part by the Russian government to teach players specifically about the glorious history of the Russian military.

“The main thing we expect from the producers of video games is the realistic and historically truthful representation of events,” said Arseny Mironov, aid to Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, according to Hollywood Reporter. Company of Heroes 2 has taken a lot of flak from angry Russians for its fictional-but-not-totally-made-up depiction of the Red Army fighting and dying on the Eastern Front. Despite the controversy, the game is popular among Russian gamers.

"A video game has to have not only an entertainment value, but it also has to teach and be conducive to patriotic education," Mironov continued. The Russian Military History Society is in currently developing the first government-funded game, which will follow the beginnings of Russian air power during World War 1. The government has not announced which local developer might be taking on that project.

Government-funded games are not a new concept, of course. Here in the United States we’ve got everything from Moonbase Alpha to America’s Army funded by the government to get young people interested in the kinds of adventures they could theoretically possibly probably never have if they decide to take a job with the government.

Things got decidedly more dystopian, however, when the culture ministry talked about their options for banning video games that “discredit the Russian soldier” and "distort historic facts." For Mironov, a "negative image of the Russian warrior" should not be allowed. At least for right now, though, all they’re doing is talking.

Thanks, Hollywood Reporter.

Company of Heroes 2 has been hitting some bumps recently. Though we really enjoyed the game, many of the themes and tropes of the game’s depiction of World War II’s Eastern Front have come under fire from Russian fans. Now, CoH 2’s distributor for Russia and Eastern Europe is halting sales while they check out the situation.

1C-SoftClub stopped sales of CoH 2 on July 26 after a petition, alleging that the game’s depiction of Soviet soldiers did not promote patriotism among adolescents, received more than 5,000 signatures. “In connection with appeals of people who consider unacceptable number of episodes of the game,” 1C-SoftClub wrote on its website, “ stopped selling PC game Company of Heroes...in the territory of the Russian Federation and .”

In Company of Heroes 2, some of the most notorious abuses of the World War II-era Soviet Army are depicted as part of the gameplay. Though episodes where soldiers are sent into battle without weapons are based on historical reality, Russian critics claim that focusing on these isolated incidents as if they were part of daily life for Soviet soldiers exaggerates the stereotype to a parody.

When you make a game that tangles with national mythology, things tend to get political very quickly.

Speaking to Polygon, a representative from Sega didn’t offer much except that they were taking the situation “seriously” and couldn’t comment further. We’ll keep you up to date as the situation develops.

There's no escape. You'd have thought that Company of Heroes 2's release would have meant the end of its non-stop trailer bombardment. But no, Relic are refusing to surrender. Today's incoming media air-drop marks a free update, which brings a reworked version of the classic Company of Heroes map Langres - one of the most popular small-scale maps from the original. Remade for the Eastern Front setting, this new Langreskaya has been introduced with summer and winter variations.

Langreskaya is available in-game right now.

"Look folks," the latest Company of Heroes 2 trailer may well be saying, "we really love tanks." "Sure," it continues, "our game does have units that aren't tanks, but they're just there to make it even more special when you do finally see a tank." Basically, if you're a huge fan of planes, there are really only a few seconds here designed to appeal to you.

If you do enjoy the sight of a massive, armoured, gun-mounted, metal mammoths, there's plenty here to appreciate. Relic's RTS sequel is promising new and more varied tank on tank action come the game's release on June 25th.

And yes, I'm sure there will be other vehicle types too.

For more on CoH2, check out our impressions from the mulitplayer beta.