Last year’s Company Of Heroes was probably the best new real-time strategy game on the PC for ages but it didn’t quite do as well as it deserved – probably because the whole World War II setting is starting to look a bit overdone nowadays. This standalone expansion provides a second chance to experience not only the best strategy game for ages but also one of the few games to do anything original with the WWII theme. For a start you don’t actually control American troops in the game but either the British 2nd Army or the German Panzer Elite. (You can play though the missions as the U.S. Army and Wehrmacht if you have a copy of the first game to hand though.)
The Allied single player campaign revolves around the Battle for Caen, shortly after D-Day, and features the three primary regiments from the campaign: the Royal Canadian Artillery, the Royal Commandos and the Royal Scottish Engineers. The unique way the 2nd Army’s technology tree works allows access to all manner of new weapons and tactics including creeping barrages, Horsa gliders and three variations of the Churchill tank.
Meanwhile, the Panzer Elite campaign centres around the German opposition to Operation Market Garden. Here you can control the 2nd SS Panzer Corps and Luftwaffe paratroops. Ironically while the British are focused on defence the Germans specialise in speed and mobility with many varieties of tanks of and halftracks. With the same stunning graphics as before it invigorates both the real-time strategy game and the WWII game all at once.
Harrison Dent