Review: "Company of Heroes"

PC Gamer 96%
Best of E3 2005
Best of E3 2004
Best presentation of E3 2005
Eurogamer 10/10

Some call it "A Legend".
Some say that it is the best RTS since StarCraft.
Some say that it is next-generation RTS.


All the hype made me desperate for this game. 3 days of it on my com, however, and I'm already getting really bored of this game. I can see why some think that it is a revolution for the RTS genre, but to me, it is waaay too far to be considered 'Revolutionary'.

Company of Heroes is an RTS based on WW2. Like all World War 2 games, we start of at Osaka Beach. The single player campaign of this game is very well planned and very cinematic. In fact, CoH has probably one of the best single player mode compared to other RTS's. But I don't play RTS for the campaign. I play RTS for the multiplayer, the competitiveness and anything else regarding that line of stuff. If I wanted single player games, I would look for RPGs.

The Essence Engine created by Relic is top-notch. By far the best RTS engine ever. Mechanics of the game is more or less copied from its predecessor: Dawn of War. Things like heavy cover and exposed are in. Supression and Pinned Down is just some other form of morale. Some of the unit's ability to deploy and only being able to see things at around 120 degrees axis is also something new.

Okay let's stop the mechanics and head straight to gameplay. CoH IS the ULTIMATE take-and-hold game. Imagine Dawn of War with 5 times more control points, and resources generated by the control points itself (no generators for Power, you sort of like capture points to generate power). Not to mention there are 3 resources.

The strategy of a player replies heavily on the map chosen. Some think that this idea is great and 'revolutionary'. Me? I feel that a strategy relies too heavily on the map chosen. I think it is a con more than a pro.

More cons: 50% of the units from each side is the same. The variety of things for each side is already incredibly few. Sniper, MGs, standard infantry...all the same. The only difference is that some can do what others can, but as far as combat and overall use, it's very hard to tell the difference. Oh sure, riflemen can build observation posts. Oh sure grenadiers can shoot AV stuff. Oh sure, riflemen can do supression firing. The abilities is what makes units different, but other than that, that's all. Both races have the same starting crap, used to do the same boring crap.

Look at Starcraft: zealot, zergling and marine is 3 completely different stuff. You send a marine to squad to look for stuff, well, watch the zealot rape your squad within seconds. Look at WC3 : ghouls and footman. Look at DoW: Scouts and Guardians. CoH just cap cap cap and ninja decaps. It's utterly boring. Boring. Heck even Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends has more than just that crap.

If that's not bad enough, in multiplayer, there are NO mirror matches. I dunno what the hell is Relic thinking. The whole game only have 2 friggin comparatively boring sides and NO mirror matches. I downloaded the interview from Buggo who asked why isn't there mirror matches in CoH to the lead designer. The reason is not worth remembering at all. The reasoning has something to do with adding realism into it. Kinda dumb seriously. It just simply don't make sense why wouldn't they want mirror matches.

Overall, the game introduced a nice new way of playing, but the gameplay, the sides, and all that crap is just bad. Tiering is very shallow. Practically everything in this game is about teching and right now, the game is a race to the first tank.

I give Company of Heroes my utmost humble opinion: 6/10

Where the 6 comes from great engine, great single player, nice sounds and music, and awesome graphics. Multiplayer is below average meh.

A Story In Everquest #1

Hello Kids! Today I'm going to tell you all about a story called "The KS'er and the Giant". Once upon a time, in the great plains of West Commonlands, a party of people were grouping together near an orc camp to slayer all orcs for the good of all mankind (or ogre/trollkind). After many failures in their crusade to Befallen, the party decided to hunt a simple foe: Orcs.


After killing a few orcs, a KS'er by the name of "Raradornn" came to 'steal' our kills, imploding and exploding them to crisps while we were fighting them and claiming that the kills are his own and giving no credit to us. (In game terms, that faggot stole our exp by outnuking us. We are lacking in dps but exp is flowing well).

So, our brave leader of the troupe, a hearty Ogre by the name of "Bubbah" got so mad that he came out with a plan: He's going to lure Hill Giants to kill the mage. (see the little human with white hair? That's Rara)


Hill Giants were a feared being in the West Commonlands. They roam and every place possible and despite their size, they are able to sneak up behind groups without the members noticing and destroy them. We had our share of angry hill giants before we came and we developed a phobia for them (I'm serious here, a REAL phobia). But Bubbah be brave and decided to sacrafice himself to destroy the mage:


And he was successful in eliminating the mage, but he died in the process;

Everyone cheered as the giant walked away:


As you can see here, the mage was obviously not happy and decide to do the same to us.


A closer look at his corpse ^_^ ->

I thought this was Rara's first attempt at destroying us, but it so happens to be a spawn of HG that was scripted to move across the orc camp. You should know why we are scared of them now.



Rara's first attempt at destroying us; the giant chased the shaman who had "Spirit of Wolf" on so the shaman manage to escape due to his speed and everyone wasn't affected.

From this screenshot to the next, Rara decided to log off and everything was fine for awhile. Babbuh left and we invited and kicked a few more members as they come and go. An hour later (in real life) Raradornn came back and started to KS us again. This happened for 30 mins and several /tells to him to "get the f* off" which was replied with "stfu". I took the best screenshot in my life after that 30 mins:


In case you didn't know, in the bottom screenshot, Rara was not aware of the Hill Giant yet. He wasn't running away as this screenshot looked like he was doing. See that' orc in front of him? He's gonna loot it.


If you noticed the last emote from last screenshot, our troll shaman waved at him, supposedly to distract him. He was looking and I was disappointed that I didn't manage to take a screenshot when he was in looting position, because he died way too fast:
We cheered. Again. YAY!


And yep, the KS'er didn't return.
End of story.
I would like to thank Rara for being an idiot,
my guild mates,
my group mates,
my playlist,
and of course, the Hill Giants

for making this group fun, happening and...yeah just pure fun.

Bonus screenshot for reading all this crap: The Befallen Fallens;

Story by:
--- Ellune ---
12th Order of the Tunarean Clerics

--- Faylar Ubertune ---
65th Troubadour of the Tunarean Tranquilsong Bards (deceased)

Have a nice night everyone!

Woot! 6 more games! Bah... =/

6 new PS2 games, I've hardly continued on any. Let's go through them:

1) Resident Evil 4 --> It's a damn nice game I admit, but I'm kinda stuck at the start because you run out of bullets so easily that I end up knifing everything to death lol. I might play it in future though, it looks interesting.


2) Kingdom Hearts 2 ---> Unfortunately, the cover page lied to me saying that it is the english version. No, it's the jap version. Voice acting is fine, I can understand but I don't understand hiragana so, meh, kinda pointless to play on. The opening is VERY VERY nice. So nice it makes me wanna play Kingdom Hearts 1 again, which is exactly what I'm doing right now. Release date for the US version is around Spring 2006 (March) , so I think I'm gonna get KH: Chains of Memories. Heard it's a card-game thingy...wonder if it's nice.

3) Need for Speed: Most Wanted ---> Nice game, fast paced, but I'm not into driving games I guess. I totally SUCK at this game lol.

4) Suikoden Tactics ---> I was anticipating this since I first saw it 2 months back in gamespot.com. I mean, you see suikoden 1,2,3 and...well maybe 4 and their strategy battles. Not so bad. That why I'm going to try it.

The results are...subpar. The game is pretty slipshod compared to great tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance, Tactic Ogre, Hundred Swords, the digisonline.com game, and of course not forgetting La Pucelle: Tactics.

Suikoden Tactics has a very pathetic story revolving around Rune Canons. Yep, that's right, Rune Canons. Rune Canons = Suikoden 4 = Worst Suikoden in history. Nevermind, SRPGs are not about storylines mainly...so...him, gameplay? Let's see what new things they have for the SRPG genre. Oh yeah, the good ole Suikoden abilities and their ranks. What else...? What's this? Terrain element? Sounds good. No actually it's bad.

Maybe it's because Konami thought "oh noes, what if this terrain element thing don't appeal to gamers because they are too insignificent? Let's make them significent and make it useful in battle!" A bit too useful if you ask me, for either side of the fight. Every character has an element. If that character steps into a terrain that is the same as his, he'll get this uber crazy regen per round, uber leet defense and uber powerful attacks. For those standing in elemental terrains against his elemental type, he'll get crap defense, crap attacks and worst of all...DEGENERATION. wtf?! That's crazy, one get's super powerful and the opposite gets super sucky. So the only strategy to this game is to stretegically place your terrain elements...meh it's easy. Other than that, it is basically the same as any other SRPGs.

Sound is good. Animation is pretty nicely done. Unfortunately, the animation is wasted on their suckly models. It's terrible, it's made of fucking blocks or as john said 'Legos'. There is no cell shading, no outlines...or any lines for that matter. When you place the legs together it looks like one lump of...Lego. Snowe looks fucking hilarious. It's like he's Lion King now rofl, only with grey hair. Hell, I think the gummi ship sequences in Kingdom Hearts looked better.

5) Soul Caliber 3 ---> So far I've explored, nothing change in this game compared to SC2...

6) NeoGeo Battle Coliseum ---> Meh, just another SNK game =/

BF2 screens!!! C4 fun =D

Today I had tons of fun playing BF2 as a special forces unit. God I'm becoming the next Andy -.-


Well, this screen was kinda stupid. I planted the bombs and for some reason it didn't went off. I got killed instead T_T



I was hiding at their base running around until I heard some helicopter's engine starting. I was out of breath and moved slowly towards the helicopter...seemed that I over estimated helicopter's take off speed...


And yeah, that's what happened.
This happened like 100 times. I tried to get the best screenshot but everything happened too fast lol.
This was a helicopter explosion just like the one above. Same thing happened, I heard the helicopter, I ran, I planted and I blew it off. The helicopter had two guys I think, there was one guy who wasn't inside the helicopter but got killed by the explosion anyways. I thought I had the screenshot somewhere of the helicopter exploding to bits and that one guy flying in the air. oh well =/

ivsxzty9pg

Contact Us!

MSN/Email: gerald1988@hotmail.com

I also frequent Hongfire.com and Round1.sg under the username: Faylar.
PM me if you wish.

ABOUT

Hello, and welcome to NeetGeek! where NEET meets geek, a blog about my best interests which are namely Video Games, Games Programming, Animes, and various fanboy stuffs which catch my eyes.

About myself
My real name is Gerald, although I frequently use the online handle "Faylar" in various places. Around 10 years ago, I go by the handle "Edgar" and spent my early teens surfing gaming forums, mostly Eyes on FF, if it still exists. I enjoy watching animes, though I tend to be slow on them; I don't really use my free time to browse animes.

I love playing video games and usually take them seriously to the point it might be considered an obsession. I enjoy playing competitively, espacially in fighting games and RTS. This includes Starcraft, Dawn of War, Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom, Blazblue, Guilty Gear and possible many more. I (used to) frequent arcades and mindlessly spend tokens after tokens just playing them fighting games.

I'm also a programmer (not progammer), mostly specialized in the field of game development. I'm currently studying in Digipen Singapore for a Bachelor of Science in Game Design. I enjoy making physics engines, some possibly other engines once I learn how to do them, and I really do enjoy making games despite the rigorousness. I also love playing all kinds of board games.

Before I forget, I'm from Singapore. Any Singaporean viewing this may feel free to contact me :)

Can you draw?
Not really. No. I'm still saddened by that fact and hope to change that because there are a ton of stuff you can do (rather, I want to do) if you are just able to draw. Hopefully this will change soon.

Sports? Do you play/watch soccer?
I'm not a soccer fan, but if I were, I would support Juventus. I used to play basketball and used to support Indiana Pacers because of Reggie Miller. And I love badminton.

Any plans in the future?
As of this update, I'm beginning my studies as a DigiPen Bsc. in Game Design student. As far as this blog is concerned, I'll try my best to update as much as I can (that's what every blogger says), and I've come this far already, so it's unlikely that I will stop. Except to see certain posts targeting towards DigiPen itself from today onwards.

What is a "Faylar"?
I was just getting started playing Everquest and I had to pick a name. I opened up the Forgotten Realms Campaign Settings book (the 3.0e one) and search for elven names and found "Faelar". Game didn't approve the name so I change to "Faylar".

...what are you disappointed?

What about "Edgar"?
My favorite FFVI character. Nuff said.

Hobbies and interests? Aside from playing games?
I can play the piano quite well, although I'm currently out of touch. I'm still trying to get back the skills at the moment.

I can also recognize Japanese. Though it's nowhere near the level of fluency, I still know enough to identify details in trading card games and also translate some simple sentences.

Outside that, I spend most of the rest of my free time programming games and doing research on such related topics.

What consoles do you own?
Up to this date, I own the following:
- PlayStation 2
- PlayStation 3
- PlayStation Portable
- Xbox 360
- Nintendo Wii
- Nintendo DS

What game genres do you REALLY like?
I enjoy all genres of gaming, but I'm slightly biased towards RTS and Fighting games, and to a lesser extent, simulation games and city building games.

List your top 10 best games of all time.
I'm just going to list out what's on my head, in no particular order, as of this update:
- Everquest (the first one)
- Baldur's Gate series
- Starcraft series
- Metal Gear Solid series
- Portal (soon to be series)
- Mount and Blade
- Civilization 4
- Kingdom Hearts series (all of them)
- Final Fantasy 6
- Fallout 1/2/Brotherhood (basically, those not made by Bethesda)

Last words?
Thanks for everyone who followed the blog or subscribed to the feed. It gives me all the motivation to update the blog. Do drop comments when you can and I'll try my best to reply them (they are forwarded to my email, thanks to Disqus).

-updated 1st May 2011-