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Sometimes a tank falls through the ice on a frozen river. Sometimes there’s a blizzard and you can’t see very far.

Sometimes the snow slows down your dudes unless you manually path them along a road. You know the micromanagement you save by not having to actively capture flags? So much for that. On those maps, your guys will take damage if you don’t put them in houses or near fires.

Snow is apparently the fundamental gameplay fact of the Eastern Front. But in terms of new gameplay, Company of Heroes 2 doesn’t have much to say beyond, “Look, snow!” You can capture vehicles in addition to guns. They just stand in a radius around the flag and the associated resource converts. To capture a point, your soldiers don’t have to actively “capture” the flag. The maps aren’t divided so obviously into discrete territories. It’s not entirely identical, of course, since this is a sequel set on the Eastern Front. The same resource model, the same victory condition, the same faction concepts (Germany is still Germany, of course, but Russia is basically the US), the same types of maps, the same unit dynamics, and even the same graphics, but with inexplicably stratospheric system requirements (why does this need Windows 7?). In terms of the gameplay, this is Company of Heroes 1 all over again. For starters, there’s basically nothing new here.

You loved Company of Heroes no matter how badly you were burned out on World War II! It did so many things right: the interplay of infantry and armor, the destructible terrain, the commander abilities, the four factions, the victory conditions, the various game modes, the voice acting, the interface, the fancy graphics, the gratifyingly tactical fiddliness.Īfter the jump, what would possibly go wrong with the sequel?Ĭompany of Heroes 2 might be the steepest tumble from game design genius to crassly missing the point that I’ve ever seen. It brought design innovation and Hollywood kick to the genre, and it did it with a stultifyingly familiar setting. Company of Heroes is a classic real time strategy game for a reason.