Extensive preview of Company of Heroes

[Shakermaker]

Gamespot has a big preview of Company of Heroes, the new RTS by Relic. It looks amazing; there's a free vid that's a must see. It is yet another WWII RTS, but it looks pretty awesome.

If the enemy is hiding within a walled city, forget the front gate; just use the tank to smash right through the wall. "You would expect a tank to be able to ignore small-arms fire and smash through walls," explains Mosquiera, "and in Company of Heroes, that's what will happen." And even though a bombing run will leave nearly any landscape permanently devastated by smashing objects to bits (thus scattering the bits) and leaving huge craters in the landscape, this won't be the end of the battle. Craters left by bombing runs can actually be used as makeshift trenches to provide cover for infantry units. We saw this in action in a demonstration between two infantry squads in the field. The larger squad overwhelmed the smaller one out in the open; but after a bombing run that left several craters in the field, the smaller squad immediately gravitated toward the area (leaping into the craters for cover) and put up a much better fight.

 

[StardogChampion]

Looks nice, but I hope it's not one of those annoying games where your guys have a health bar that goes down unrealistically slowly. Hopefully it's a 1 hit kill kinda thing.

 

[CommunistPenguin]

Normally i'd be excited but there are too many other big RTS games being developed right now. Age of Empires III and Rise of Legends looks more fun to me.

 

[Pesmerga]

Wow, a release date of 2006.

If it's as good as DoW had been, I'm sure this is going to be a great WWII RTS.

 

[Vegeta897]

Screw this, wait for 'Soldiers Heroes of World War II' 2

Much better choice, it can't be beat if you are looking for a good WW2 strategy game. Except it isn't like your usual game, you can take direct control of your units... And well, I don't care to explain all the innovations, because you can simply look up the first game. Basically, it is the most realistic one out there, not realistic damage or authentic wise, but realistic in what you are able to do in the game. Every soldiers has an inventory. Give any soldier any weapon. Although, some soldiers are better and some weapons.

But, this Company of Heroes game looks pretty good. I can't tell yet how the gameplay is, or how involved the player will be with combat. They say the game looks like HL2, and I just laugh. Try again.

 

[Cole]

but I hope it's not one of those annoying games where your guys have a health bar that goes down unrealistically slowly. Hopefully it's a 1 hit kill kinda thing.

If your guy hits a guy in the head, there will be a headshot on him.
In the Pc:G Article I believe it said that there was locational damage.

Medics can save lives,
and I will quote the Pc:G Article:
"The physical punishment extends to individual bullets wounds, as infantrymen can take location-specific damage. One guy gets it in the leg and goes down, rolling around in a growing pool of his own blood, while another guy is shot in the head and drops like a rock. Medics will be able to save the lives of wounded soliders if they can reach them in time"

Also,
"Relic is taking great effort to animate the game's troops and vehicles to a degree never before imaginable. These grunts don't just amble or sprint in robotic formations: They move at diffrent paces, creating the lifelike look of a team of individuals in there movement. Their advance is context-sensitive aswell -- if bullets are whizzing over their heads, they'll duck, and if the fire gets to intense, they may simply break and take cover.

Also there will be many diffrent faces for each unit.
Units will have thousands of animations(Pc:G said more and any rts to date)
Pc:G
"As a result, solidrers move very realistically, without any animation "popping"(Units never pop or warp from a prone position to a standing position due to a lack of intermediate animations). You'll see your little rts dues leaning around corners and peeking out from behinds obstacles and so on."

Lets's just say Pc:G us shows a "Before War" and "After War" picture. Lets just say... how couldn't you want this game after seeing them.

AI is aware of the physics . Even a houses that got blown to hell, they will be aware of it.

They say the game looks like HL2, and I just laugh. Try again.

No that is entirley wrong. Please direct me to where they said that, because they said this:

As Johnson puts it, the game will have "every advanced graphical effect you'd expect from a game like Half-Life 2, and more."

Advanced Graphical Effects. Not Graphics. These are things like shadows, lighting, bump mapping, normal mapping, shiny helmets.....

Also!!!

Thomson demonstrated, the level of detail shown on each soldier isn't just limited to facial expressions (and even lip synching, a rare feature indeed for real-time strategy games) and mud on uniforms. The game's advanced lighting engine will also allow for "localized lighting," which is environmental light and shadow mapping (such as the shadows of trees and buildings that pass across soldiers as they walk under them, for example). Thomson then showed off the same soldier under, of all things, a disco ball. While this demonstration might have seemed amusing, this actually showed the soldier with more than 40 distinct colored and animated lights shifting along his body. You'll see this in the game as multiple animated lights from incidental sources on soldiers, such as muzzle flashes from a soldier's gun (and from his nearby buddies' guns and from nearby explosions) during night missions.

The game's powerful engine will feature physics powered by the Havok 3.0 physics engine,

This would allow people to get shot in a leg, start rolling around with 0 clipping issues, crying for there life only to be saved be a medic and get up and start fighting with no clipping issues .


I will get this game.

 

[Shakermaker]

I will get this game.

I will too prolly, but a demo would be nice (not that that will happen anytime soon).

 

[Shakermaker]

*bump*

Gamespot has a new preview. They also have the almost 11 minute E3 demo movie.

 

[jimbo118]

OMG that looked awesome, this is a totally seperate game to heroes of ww2 right or is it the sequel? does this game have direct control too? i played the demo for heroes of ww2 and it was fun, the physics were awesome...

 

[Shakermaker]

OMG that looked awesome, this is a totally seperate game to heroes of ww2 right or is it the sequel? does this game have direct control too? i played the demo for heroes of ww2 and it was fun, the physics were awesome...

No, it's not the sequel to Soldiers: Heroes of World War II and CoH doesn't have direct control afaik.

 

[Llyranor]

The sequel to Soldiers is Faces of War http://www.facesofwargame.com