Review: Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault (PC)

Ardennes Assaults shakes up Company of Heroes. The gameplay was already a deep well of strategy, tactics, and being able to quickly refocus attention elsewhere on the battlefield without completely abandoning anything, unless it served some larger purpose, but Ardennes Assault layers additional strategy and long-term planning on top of that with a Risk-like map of the area between Germany and France as borders ebbed under the push of the Allies against German forces.

Review: Company of Heroes 2 (PC)

Company of Heroes 2 had a huge hurdle to clear: the original Company of Heroes.

Developer Relic Entertainment would have to leap out of the long shadow cast by the critically acclaimed original released back in 2006. As far as problems go, it's actually a good one to have. Players of the original (and the expansions) that have been playing the title since its release were geared up for the sequel. That's good! The other side of the coin, of course, is the danger of wiping out that enthusiasm and anticipation and replacing it with regret and bitterness because there's an expectation that the game will rock the core of the series with a dramatic overhaul of unit and resource management and wrap the whole package in a shiny wrapper.

It Came From the Backlog: Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II - Retribution (Part I)

Bunkers are handy for taking a defensive position when lots of enemies
are incoming

I started "It Came From the Backlog" focusing mostly on Geneforge, but I have a tendency to play multiple games together, bouncing back and forth between them, so I'm going to be mixing it up a bit, adding a couple of other games to the fray. Variety is the spice of life and all that, so why not? The best part is that I don't even need to worry about losing track of where I am in a given game because, hey, I've written it all down!

The other game I plan to talk about here for the time being is Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution (sometimes game titles can be so wordy these days). I've had next to no exposure to the Warhammer universe outside of some very limited futzing around in Space Marines. After seeing all sorts of screenshots and discussion for the Dawn of War games over the years, though, I've been really curious about the series. The way it focuses on combat, and does away with much of the resource management of an RTS looked neat. So now I'm finally going to take the time to try out one of these games. I chose to start with Retribution because it is one entry in the series that doesn't have GFWL, something that I'm not at all a fan of.

Preview: Company of Heroes 2 (PC)

A long time coming, Company of Heroes 2 looks to outdo its preprocessor in all respects and claim the throne (again) of real-time tactical strategy games. Careful advancement, and planning are required for success. Looping a swathe of units and throwing them at the enemy will merely kill them all. The original game and it's expansions showcased a much more deliberate and chance-driven strategy game, where the tides could be turned if players were smart enough (and maybe a little lucky) rather than simply having more armour than their opponent.