My latest gaming obsession is the new real-time strategy game, Company of Heroes. It's easily one of the best games of the year for the PC. And it's quite possibly one of the best real-time strategy games ever made. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the game currently has a 95% review average on GameRankings with 13 reviews, which puts it squarely on track to be one of the top 10 best reviewed PC games of all time.
I can’t recommend AMD CPUs at the moment because the price/perf of the Core 2 Duo CPUs is so outstanding. You’ll save at best $75 and give up 15-25% performance.
I find it interesting this is from developers Relic Entertainment, famous for the 3d RTS first, Homeworld. I don’t enjoy RTS, but I do enjoy beautiful Space.
You may also want to download the demo via BitTorrent from http://reliccommunity.com/tracker/
if GameSpot (feat link), FilePlanet, or 3D Gamers don’t do it fast enough for you.
I built this machine which has almost exactly those specs, and I’m very happy with it.
Nvidia 7900gt 256ram
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus P5B deluxe mobo
2 GB DDR2 ram
Runs games, multiple instances of VS, rediculous numbers of browser windows without breaking a sweat.
Regarding the game, I personally think that playing /any/ game just because the graphics are good is stupid. Graphics get old really fast if the gameplay doesn’t match.
I play 50% for the gameplay and 45% for the interaction of multiplayer games and 5% for the graphics.
Which is why my favorite online Action/FPS/RTS is an outdated, 10-year-old game called Wulfram 2. http://www.wulfram.com
I rarely play singleplayer games anymore because, well, there doesn’t seem to be much point. So boring.
Company of Heroes is definitely one of the best PC games I’ve ever played. Quite possibly one of the best games in general.
It’s a good take on RTS that isn’t necessarily focused with tedious resource management (I guess in a way capturing resource points COULD be construed as this). But, essentially it’s concerned with tactical combat management.
Thanks for the recommendation Jeff. I picked up a copy and am looking forward to trying it out. I’m a sucker for WW2 games though. I still love the Call of Duty games and am one of the few that liked Battlefield 1942.
You may have covered this in a previous article, but could you list your hardware specs on the PC that runs Company of Heroes?
I’m in need of a new machine and thinking it will be a Xmas present to myself this year. But I need something that will run the games I want, like COH, AOE3, and other recent hits.
I don’t need a full PC. I have the disc drives, hard drives, case. I’ve tried to read up on some video cards but there are so many and I’ve been out of the hardware loop for so long that I usually talk myself out of it. Video card is the biggest thing I suppose. I’m a fan of AMD processors…I need the board+chip+ram too.
COH looks awesome but as of yet my PC doesn’t have the guns to even play the demo.
I just discovered COH yesterday and I wholeheartedly agree that its one of the best games to come to the PC in years. I’m still waiting on my DVD copy to come from gamestop next week. Once that happens I plan to play online (while the level competition is still lower).
I downloaded the demo. It took almost 12 hours using the torrent method. Getting it directly from the download sites wouldn’t have been much better though. What happened to game companies getting the demo out there for everyone to easily try?
I’ve only completed 2 portions of the basic training and can already tell it’s a sweet game.
I am/was a huge AOE and AOE II player (spent several hours on the weekends playing). The interface is similar, and I love the theme. While everyone is pointing out that “WWII games are done to death”, not everyone has played them so another trip across that bridge isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
This is an excellent game! Probably the best RTS I have ever played.
I have been playing the demo for over a week. I still have not figured out how to beat the computer (set to normal) in skirmish mode.
My only complaint is the amount of cursing in the game. They really went overboard, in my opinion. If I can’t turn it off the cursing in the full game without turning off all chatter, I will probably not purchase the game.
I’ve been playing this game and am mighty impressed. I’m going to have to upgrade my system as a result but it’s games like these that make it worthwhile.
Did you have any problems with flicker, or missing directx files on Vista? I just installed Vista RC2 and then the COH demo, and I had to install directx as well, seperately, to get the game to run. And now, while it runs, there is horrible flicker, especially in the menus. I’m on a Geforce 7800GT… Any ideas?