Official Website: www.companyofheroesgame.com

Minimum System Requirements
* Some of these will be lower for the final release
Windows(R) XP
DirectX(R) 9.0c
3.0 GHz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon XP processor
1 GB RAM
3 GB free hard drive space for installation
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 and above with 128 MB Video Memory, or ATI x800 and above with 128 MB Video Memory
DirectX(R) 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card

Recommended System Requirements
3.0 GHz+ Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent
2 GB System RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 with 256 MB or more Video Memory.

Multiplayer Requirements
Internet: Broadband, or 56k connection for online multiplayer play
Network: TCP/IP compliant network


Company of Heroes is a World War II-based RTS (Real Time Strategy) game from Relic, the makers of Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. After signing up for a Fileplanet account, I was able to download the open beta for the game. What follows is my take on the game.

This is your typical RTS game. There are different armies to pick from, you need to gather resources to produce new units, and your goal is to destroy your enemy. There are only two armies in Company of Heroes: Allied and Axis. Each side plays differently, having their own strengths and weaknesses. The information I was given told me that Allied players tend to be dependent on infantry, and Axis players tend to rely more on Tanks. There are of course resources to gather: Manpower, Munitions, and Fuel. You can obtain these resources by capturing areas in the game specific to that resource.

The Open Beta has three different options at its main menu: Tutorial, Online Play, and Recorded Games. The Tutorial will take you through the various aspects of the game (deploying infantry, and vehicles), Online Play allows you to play Online Matches against various other people in the Open Beta, and Recorded Games allows you to watch replays of games that you have saved.

The tutorial is very newbie friendly. It starts you off on how to command a squad of infantry, and teaches you how to capture objective points and basic combat skills. It then moves on to unit-production, and vehicle combat.

Online Play was a problem when I first started playing. There was a bug which prevented people from connecting to games, giving them connection errors, and sometimes even crashing the game. This has since been patched, and the game runs a lot better now.

On my first match, I opted to play as the Allied army. What followed was a very one-sided slaughter-fest. I was torn apart by German Tanks, utterly defeated. This was not due to a balance issue, but rather my lack of skill and familiarity with the game. Later on, I played a few games with a friend of mine, who was much closer to my skill level, and had a great time.

My experience with the Allied Army was pretty good. They were indeed infantry-centric. They do have tanks, but their Infantry ability is where they really shine. Infantry squads can be upgraded to use Grenades and “Stick Bombs”, which can destroy enemy armor with ease.

After playing a few matches as Allied Army, I decided to switch over to the Axis, and check out their play style. As it turns out, the Axis is in fact very underpowered when it comes to Infantry. Their default Infantry Unit lacks the fancy abilities of the Allies’, but they do still hit hard. After a few upgrades to your HQ, you’re ready to start pumping out tanks. The Axis Tanks will totally decimate enemy infantry if used correctly, and will even best Allied Tanks most of the time.

There are two game-types in the open beta: Annihilation and Victory Point Control. Annihilation is your basic “Destroy everything in sight” mode, whereas Victory Point Control is similar to Battlefield. You have a certain amount of points, and they slowly count down if you are not in control of key areas. It can be assumed that more game-types will be added in the final release.

Anyone wondering if the game will run on their system can check the minimum requirements above. The game ran beautifully on my machine (nVidia Geforce 6800XT, and AMD Athlon 64 3800+ with 1 gig of RAM) at 1024x768 with most of the settings on high. Although, the game’s performance will vary from system to system.

That’s pretty much all there is to say. Relic has created yet another masterpiece in the RTS genre. Any fan of RTS games will undoubtedly enjoy this new franchise.