Before Bioware's role-playing game
arrived, anybody who didn't sleep in Yoda pajamas was thoroughly sick
with all things Star Wars.
Between a string of uninspiring-at-best games and a couple of dreadful films, the galaxy that was a long, long way away wasn't long enough away for most. Then KOTOR appeared with a lot of style and even more vision and made everyone like all this lightsabre nonsense again, unreservedly. The universe had its romance renewed.
For the last half-decade, World War 2 has been similarly run into the ground. The grand conflict between the allied and axis powers is, in videogame terms, the biggest single licence that isn't actually a real licence. Make a WW2 game, and you've got an inbuilt audience, background, world-class character designs, interesting situations and probably the best villains the world has ever seen. But because anyone can make a game set in WW2... everybody did. It's got to the point where we feel as if we've done it all before. How many times have we crawled up the shingles of Omaha beach? If you added up all my virtual deaths in those bloody shallows, it's entirely possible that I've lost more lives than were lost in the real assault. Turn to the comments thread in any World War 2 game preview, and you'll see a string of people shrugging. Bored now! Bored now! Seen this before! What's next?
To make a WW2 game that matters, you need to make something special enough to cut through that armour of cynicism.
Company of Heroes: something special.
At first glance it's a standard RTS... actually, scratch that. "At first glance" Company of Heroes is immediately special. It's more that on paper Company of Heroes sounds like a standard RTS. A string of single-player missions. Skirmish mode against the computer (with co-op partners too). Online multiplayer. Opposing sides with differentiated forces. The usual. In fact, since Company of Heroes only has two separate sides instead of the genre-standard three, on paper it could be taken even as inferior.
click here to download company of heros
Between a string of uninspiring-at-best games and a couple of dreadful films, the galaxy that was a long, long way away wasn't long enough away for most. Then KOTOR appeared with a lot of style and even more vision and made everyone like all this lightsabre nonsense again, unreservedly. The universe had its romance renewed.
For the last half-decade, World War 2 has been similarly run into the ground. The grand conflict between the allied and axis powers is, in videogame terms, the biggest single licence that isn't actually a real licence. Make a WW2 game, and you've got an inbuilt audience, background, world-class character designs, interesting situations and probably the best villains the world has ever seen. But because anyone can make a game set in WW2... everybody did. It's got to the point where we feel as if we've done it all before. How many times have we crawled up the shingles of Omaha beach? If you added up all my virtual deaths in those bloody shallows, it's entirely possible that I've lost more lives than were lost in the real assault. Turn to the comments thread in any World War 2 game preview, and you'll see a string of people shrugging. Bored now! Bored now! Seen this before! What's next?
To make a WW2 game that matters, you need to make something special enough to cut through that armour of cynicism.
Company of Heroes: something special.
At first glance it's a standard RTS... actually, scratch that. "At first glance" Company of Heroes is immediately special. It's more that on paper Company of Heroes sounds like a standard RTS. A string of single-player missions. Skirmish mode against the computer (with co-op partners too). Online multiplayer. Opposing sides with differentiated forces. The usual. In fact, since Company of Heroes only has two separate sides instead of the genre-standard three, on paper it could be taken even as inferior.
click here to download company of heros
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