First (?) CoH2 review by PC Gamer

http://www.pcgamer.com/review/company-of-heroes-2-review/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=emp

Company of Heroes 2 is the USSR of real-time strategy games: huge, powerful and just a little bit broken.

80/100

Id agree with what is written.

Mostly an SP review but still holds true for MP. Wouldn't give it above 80 for sure.
So many features missing or broken or sub par for multiplayer which have been discussed a zillion times on this forum.

9.4/10
http://www.ausgamers.com/games/company-of-heroes-2/review/

I've played all the campaign and all TOW and I am going to give it around 9.5/9.6 on my Italian review (the SP and coop are both almost perfect). After I read the PCGamer review I'll tell you how much they fucked up.

This PC Gamer reviewer should fired. He clearly can't write a good review of game. I mean, he bashes game for 3 pages, then mention multiplayer mode in one paragraph (with I would think it's crucial for an RTS game) and then give game 80%. Score should be much lower based on his review.

Not saying about few of his "examamples". He didn't have ammunitions to spam flares and on-map arties, rolf.

Still, this review made me more sceptical about final game. Strongly considering if I should buy CoH2. I guess I'm just waiting for somekind of glorious revelation. I mean, I play mostly multiplayer but campaign in CoH was very entertaining. And current multi is just, meh. Soviet faction deseign with gimmick abilities like ram, buttoning and units like scout cars with snipers or "instant flank" flamers. On top of that not so great UI, lack of interesting 1v1 maps and almost zero support for competetive play. Have to wait and see where Relic is going with CoH2.I wish you the best though!

EDIT:

I've played all the campaign and all TOW and I am going to give it around 9.5/9.6 on my Italian review (the SP and coop are both almost perfect). After I read the PCGamer review I'll tell you how much they fucked up.

And hope is slowly rising

Guys, seriously this guy from PCGamer has:

a) Not finished the campaign
b) Not understood anything of the game
c) Said tons of wrong things that will make people not buying the game


I will post here some screenshots in a few minutes, in the meanwhile I want to say only these:

a) Single player missions: they are a lot, they are very long (some of them are huge) and there is A LOT of variety in enviroments/illuminations/units you can use/conditions to victory/abilities. You never feel like you are repeating twice the same mission, they are very interesting and unique.

b) The story: the story is awesome, you see the heroism of your soldiers from the first mission, when you can choose to save or not some civilians. And the story is a lot more mature, in a lot of occasions you see the brutality of war and the atrocities made by soldiers (I don't want to spoil anything but REALLY, in a lot of occasions I was like OMFG what just happened!?!).

AND the story ends in an unexpected and awesome way.

c) The narration videos, they don't aim to look realistic, they aim to follow a specific "comic novel" style which is a mix of COH1 style and a CGI, facial expressions are very well made and you really feel the emotions of the characters when they speak

d) Special/Unique structures: the game, especially in the later missions, has so many huge and imposing structures, like fortified medieval citadels, castles, German Festung that look so well made and so..HUGE . And the Reichtstag, is SO FUCKING OP, that last mission was epic!

e) The gameplay in the campaign: Yes, in few missions you can control potentially tons of units (like those that have huge maps), but the free to call units from offmap are so bad fighters, they die ultra-fast and when you call each one of them the "order 227" appplies: if you retreat ANY squad to the HQ it gets killed by a commissar that spawns right near the HQ. In most of the missions you have few resources and you have to spend them wisely for certain vehicles/units, using these conscripts as meat for the Germans.

e) Theater of War has interesting challenges both for solo and coop and nice missions that make you understand a lot of mechanics and units (and that you can accomplish following different approaches), the only thing that I found only "ok" are the skirmishes part of the Theater of War, they are basically normal skirmishes where you have weapons/soldiers/tanks limited by the year when you are playing. Some units lack some abilities and have other abilities (for example, grens don't have the panzerfaust but an AT grenade launcher that shoots from long range but doesn't damage engine, Germans have PIV and StuG III both short barreled).

In conclusion, from me it's a 9.4-9.5 for the campaign/theater of war. The final judgement will ofc change since the MP experience is still incomplete We are way above 9 tho, that's sure guys. Now screenshots, give me just a minute.



In the meanwhile enjoy the full introduction video of COH2 (It contains an introduction you have never seen before so ensure to watch it )

Its difficult to base an opinion on that review since it relies solely (well 98%) on the single player campaign.

That's like reviewing Battlefield 3 and only playing the single player (yes there is a single player campaign!!).

It'd be interesting to see a seasoned multiplayer reviewer get into it - but I think the size of that can of worms might be unsettling..lol

Personally I think COH2 will be in the $10 bin by Xmas.

@Marcus: You'd REALLY give this 9.5/10????? Really? You sir are far too generous.

And now the fanboys come out of the woodwork to beat up the guy who dared to give CoH 2 a really, really good score instead of a great score even though it's worse than CoH in basically every way.

Marcus, how much did they pay you? Seriously...

Nothing, but the campaign really stunned me, especially compared to the vCOH one, and I hope you have preordered the game to find it out yourself.

Multiplayer is another aspect, and be sure that, in a final review, the lack of so many features and a competitive ladder will count a lot (I know about all the plans Relic wants to do behind the game, but honestly when you do a game review you judge what's in your hand, not all the stuff they promise you )

And please remember that the 93% score came mostly for the single player experience, the multipler of COH was quite acerbous back in 2006 and it got only marginally considered in the final score. (even if in this community, as well as in any other community of COH, it's what really matters).

This is the right way to review an RTS game: review the single player first, and then once the game has been out a bit, review the multiplayer, because nobody can really know how MP is until they've played it a bit.

The actual campaign must be vastly different than the teaser sample they gave in beta then. That was truly terrible.

Select blob, A-Move, win.

The actual campaign must be vastly different than the teaser sample they gave in beta then. That was truly terrible.

Select blob, A-Move, win.

That was their E3 level, designed so that anyone could beat it even if they had never played an RTS before, because you don't want people losing on the show floor.

This guy from Euro gamer clearly didnt play this crap online to give it 0.5 out of 100

For the campaign I'd give 9.4-9.5, for the multiplayer I'd give 7 right now, despite all the stuff they promised us. (We have multiple scores to assign in the press I work to and MP and SP are some of them)

But, since the majority of players are single player lovers/comp stompers these modes are those that count the most and when you judge a game like COH2 you cannot make the MP part count more than SP one, at least not in a general review.

I expressed my personal opinion describing what I noticed when I played the campaign, which is pretty much what the PCGamer guy did. His judgement was mostly result of his SP experience and I disagree with him on various points. So, after reading the analysis the PCGamer guy did I'd say that he was quite incorrect and superficial on various points (it's understandable,we've got 1 day and half to play the game before the embargo ended)

To me an 80/100 for the SP review is too low, if he would have talked in detail about the MP I would have maybe understood that score, but he didn't.

Anyways, everyone is free to judge the game in 4 days, when the first COH2 gameplays of the campaign will appear on Youtube, and decide if it's worth to spend the money on the game

Marcus, how much did they pay you? Seriously...

+1
I can't say anything about SP cause Marcus knows it better than i do but this game is gonna fail big time in MP no matter how many doctrins they gonna add or remove or modify the soviet faction design is so broken

The actual campaign must be vastly different than the teaser sample they gave in beta then. That was truly terrible.

Select blob, A-Move, win.

That mission was a sample made for E3.

The full mission 7 is a quite bigger and harder to accomplish, enemy arty rapes you and soldiers do a lot more damage, especially on hard

The missions I enjoyed the most were those where you got only few squads, no way to reinforce them and no way call more of them. There's a good variation among missions, both in single player and tow.

I have my doubts if I ever take the time to play SP

Honestly, that review felt pretty decent. New reviewers will come out with better scores, but an 80 seems to be a very fair score for CoH 2.