Company of Heroes 2

The full game is currently available for free this weekend on Steam. I have the game in my wish list and it is currently marked down to $13.59 (66% off). The game was developed through a fractured process, going through the THQ bankruptcy in December 2012. The Relic Entertainment division was carved out and sold to Sega as part of the court ordered auction of assets.

Truth be told I never completed the original COH game, although I still play it from time to time and do some AI bot stomp scenarios for quick and dirty blog filler material. I do have a desire to ultimately complete that game as it was well designed and challenging to a degree. After playing through the first single player mission as the Soviets during the Battle of Stalingrad, I cannot say the same here.

Company of Heroes

I bought this game when it first came out back in 2006. I remember how much fun it was to download gigabytes of patches just to keep the game up to date. Two expansion packs came out that I never picked up, although I found them here and there marked down, always wanting to complete the original game first however.

This is a staple of my approach to video gaming: I purchase a game, get hooked on it and then move into creating user made content for it or joining multiplayer groups that play the game to death until every is burned out on it and moves on. For my part, I rarely go back to work on a single player campaign (SPC) and that is much to my own loss.

Company of Heroes - Egletons - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Egletons, a map that seemed as if it was cobbled together from Semois and some other stock map to produce a community made map, of which this one won a Gamereplays.org mapping contest.

This skirmish was testing my resolve early on as things were not going my way. I cranked out some Engineer units to take the +16 Munition and the +5 Fuel Resource Points outside the enemy base only to have them pushed back and decimated. The only Jeep I churned out of the Barracks was ripped to shreds.

Company of Heroes - Duclair - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Duclair, an interesting map that contains several different terrain features and approaches that could affect the outcome of an advance towards the enemy base.

Having the previous skirmishes at Best (cakewalk) and Carpiquet (challenging) being so different from each other, I was unsure what to expect from the AI. Would they sit back like at Best and make some quilts, or be like Carpiquet where they attacked and attacked, and then seemingly quit to make quilts?

Company of Heroes - Carpiquet - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Carpiquet, a user made that was evenly balanced and featured a wide center road that ran from the Allied base to the Axis base.

For the second week in a row, the transition from Dawn to Dusk was sudden and severe, suggesting that the map designers did not fully understand how to implement the simulated day night cycle that is featured in the game.

Company of Heroes - Best - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Best, a balanced tactical map that featured a center island connected by six bridges where controlling only two would win the map.

The match could also have been called "Hitler’s Holiday" as I did not see a lick of German units until the very end when I pushed into their base and destroyed everything in sight for the win. They did not make a single attempt to cross either bridgehead into the center island.

Company of Heroes - Bernieres-Sur-Mer - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Bernieres-Sur-Mer, a dank corner of the war where the mission started in a torrential pre-dawn downpour and ended in dry mid-morning sun.

Airborne Infantry and M10 Wolverines have worked so far, so why not another healthy dose of both? The standard strategy was also put forth - deny the enemy their resource points while hording my own, but to be honest I lost focus early on when I saw the first StuG IV (Sturmgeschutz IV).

Company of Heroes - Beaux Lowlands - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Beaux Lowlands, a dingy little quagmire with a bridge in the middle of the map that was of absolutely no tactical value.

The center of the map is cut in two by a river running across, with the bridge essentially in the middle which could have staged a significant back-and-forth battle for the crossing had the map designer not made almost all of the water passable by armor and infantry.

Company of Heroes - Beach Assault Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht on a generic beach map. The map is nicely laid out, however it is somewhat the overwhelming majority of the resource points (and thus the action) were above the beach line.

I concentrated my first sweep of engineers south to the +10 munitions point on the beach, and after having locked that down with an OP and an MG Nest, I proceeded to capture the +10 fuel locations on both sides of the beach to cap them with OP's and start building some much needed resources.

Company of Heroes - Angoville Victory

I played the Americans vs. the Germans on this 2 player map and went in with an obvious strategy of denying the enemy the resources they needed to fight the war effort. I did succeed in that, but at the same time the enemy was able to collect enough fuel to crank out at least two StuG IV assault guns that I saw in their base at the very end of the skirmish.

I tend to prefer either the Infantry Company or the Airborne Company and this time I went with the paratroopers. I have little patience to wait for the Armor Company to come up to speed late game, as I am usually dead by that point having selected them in the first place. My tried and true approach with the Airborne Company is to obtain enough Command Points to fly a recon mission, and then drop in a Ranger squad and two AT guns to wreak havoc on their base.

Opposing Fronts

Oppressive Fronts might be a more accurate title for this expansion pack. I participated in the open beta and was thrilled at what was coming out for the game. I put off purchasing it due to its high price point at release - $39.99 – and continued playing COH.

Then one day I get a patch notification of 1.8 gigs, so I download it only to discover that my stock COH has been morphed into a neutered version of OF. I have the complete OF game – maps, equipment and soldiers from both new factions, but I cannot use them (except for the maps).