Company of Heroes 2 closed Beta

[Monte Carlo]

Indira, maybe you want to just set up some hotkey groups instead.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Thanks for the tip, Monte Carlo!  

I googled hotkey groups and found a nice bunch of key combinations for COH1, which all work just fine in COH2 as well. Also, I found what I craved for, namely CTRL+number 1-10 on a selected group makes a number shortcut for them. Very handy!

 

Sidenote: Taking the German high points in Schisselburg at the end of in Mission 7 was quite a feat for a beginner. Phew!

[Calax]

Just did mission...11? and JESUS that was a slug fest. Although I did self impose challenge by deciding I was going to use Conscripts for basically everything. So I had five troops at 3 stars by the time of the final assaults. 

[Agiel]

Indira, maybe you want to just set up some hotkey groups instead.

Helpinghans somehow manages without em, though I definitely do in the beginning to mid-game. 

 

Generally you'll only have enough units that a single unit per key will suffice (always use "0" for artillery for on call fire support).

[Monte Carlo]

^ I'd like to know how many APM Hans achieves. When he streams on Twitch you can see people going "no hotkeys? WTF?" and still he beats the snot out of everyone (you can see a tiny avatar in my Steam sig for his group I think).

[Drowsy Emperor]

No surprise there, most CoH units manage themselves as long as they're in cover and you're never going to work with as many of them as in SCII. And they don't die by the hundred in a second because you moved them an inch too close to something on the map.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

Helpinghans somehow manages without em, though I definitely do in the beginning to mid-game. 

 

 

 

 

Interesting, so you can do well even without the shortcuts being second nature to you.

 

I wonder if it is this HelpingHans:

"This game has got to be game of the year. Honestly nearly everything about this game makes me want to squeal with delight. The graphics looks incredible especially on those snow maps, the gameplay is just as good as the original with intense battles, mircoing and management. The sound and the atmosphere make you feel like you are there, seriously it is that incredible. There are a ton of new features like cold tech and true sight which add so much more depth and strategy to the game.

 

Take for instance true sight where units vision radius is now blocked by objects such as tall wall as and hedges. This now enables players to set up sick ambushes which can decide the fate of the game,

 

This game does have a few problems with crashing searching for a game and a few balance issues. Furthermore there are some features that are not currently implemented. However all these issues will be resolved with time as with every game on start up has it's issues. You have got to remember that coh2 has had a crazy development cycle having to deal with the demise of THQ and with the limited resources they had. It's unbelievable with what the team at Relic have achieved.

 

On another note Relic knows how to listen to it's community and treat them well. Many of the new features and balance changes have been the result of Relic discussing with the community. I have had the pleasure of touring the relic studios this past weekend and let me tell you when they say they have "stuff in the pipe line after launch" let me tell you they HAVE FRICKEN AMAZING STUFF. This game has got the potential to rival SC2 if it is given the break that it desperately needs.

 

Finally I would just like to say that the community behind this game is like no other. Everyone is there for each other (apart from a few trolls) and willing to help you out if your having trouble or if you would like to engage in some serious strategy.… "

 

He gave the game 10 out of 10 on Metacritic (not that I pay much attention to that, but Steam links to it).

[Monte Carlo]

Ha ha James (HelpingHans) was VIP'd out to Relic in Vancouver the week before launch.

[Monte Carlo]

Mission 11 (a stealth mission with Ania, a Polish partisan chick who also happens to be the CoH2 version of Tanya from C&C) is actually quite difficult even on regular difficulty and loads of fun. You can build a sniper hide, put down demo charges, fire flares and sprint away from enemy troops. There are also pesky Nazi snipers to deal with. It's the resistance meets Enemy at the Gates. Luring panzer grens into demolition charge traps is never old.

 

Hopefully, given that there are resistance / partisan art assets we might see a Partisan / Irregular faction in future.

[Calax]

I've beaten the campaign. Over all I'd say it's MUCH better than the original, mostly because there are far more "slugging matches" where you're not given a strict time limit and instead are just duking it out with the Germans. You know, like the original Cherbourg.

 

I do miss the fact that there aren't many defensive missions anymore. Understandable overall, but I still think that they're more fun and are more chaotic than offensives in this game.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Yeah I finished the final Berlin mission today. It felt pretty epic, I burnt through three Stalin tanks assaulting the Reichstag (achtung minen!). I put the CoH2 campaign on a par with the first game, although the final mission in CoH2 trumps the final Normandy mission easily.

 

Man I love those urban maps, digging out the enemy with nades, SMGs and flamethrowers.

[Drowsy Emperor]

The game is getting terrible reviews. I haven't read so much garbage in years.

 

Let me list some of the claims:

 

Complaints that the game isn't brutal enough?

Where are the human wave tactics of the Red Army (!?)

Why are there no commissars shooting conscripts in the back (??)

The game has a weak story (and CoH, or for that matter any Relic game post HW had a good story???) 

 

Where the **** did these people learn history, from WH40K?

 

SEGA apparently didn't cough up the dough this time around.

Edited June 28, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[Calax]

Probably yes.

 

the reviews I've seen have been generally favorable, but people still expect to be playing the stereotype with Commissars screaming and shooting deserters, and "one man gets the rifle, the other gets the ammunition!"

 

Basically "Enemy at the Gates"

[Nepenthe]

The game is getting terrible reviews. I haven't read so much garbage in years.

 

Let me list some of the claims:

 

Complaints that the game isn't brutal enough?

Where are the human wave tactics of the Red Army (!?)

Why are there no commissars shooting conscripts in the back (??)

The game has a weak story (and CoH, or for that matter any Relic game post HW had a good story???) 

 

Where the **** did these people learn history, from WH40K?

 

SEGA apparently didn't cough up the dough this time around.

Remember another SEGA game, Alpha Protocol?

[Monte Carlo]

* shrugs *

 

It's selling well.

 

And there are NKVD officers in the game (the campaign). If you recruit penal troops or conscripts you trigger him, he sits at base and executes troops if you order them to retreat.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

The game is getting terrible reviews. I haven't read so much garbage in years.

 

Let me list some of the claims:

 

Complaints that the game isn't brutal enough?

Where are the human wave tactics of the Red Army (!?)

Why are there no commissars shooting conscripts in the back (??)

The game has a weak story (and CoH, or for that matter any Relic game post HW had a good story???) 

 

Where the **** did these people learn history, from WH40K?

 

SEGA apparently didn't cough up the dough this time around.

Remember another SEGA game, Alpha Protocol?

 

 

I've yet to play AP but at the time the complaints about the game seemed to cover quantifiable flaws. The stuff I'm reading about CoH2 is just nonsense. Didn't see critics giving Starcraft II 7/10 because its too much like the original Starcraft.

 

Not that it matters though, I don't think anyone trusts professional reviews today except (perhaps) in aggregate, and even then they're dubious.

[Monte Carlo]

Alpha Protocol's reviews were, IMO, based on (a) anger at stability issues and (b) some genuine confusion in the gaming media as to what the game was.

 

If it had looked more FPS-polished then I think it would have done well.

 

Drowsy's SC and SC2 comparison is very-well made. I guess if CoH had the competitive / pro scene around it like SC does then it might have been different. CoH's comp scene is very vibrant, but still niche as the game is primarily designed for more casual players. I'm in the middle: I play competitively (but have neither the time nor skill to be really good) but enjoy the casual pick-up-and-play aspects too. I really like the Theatre of War mode where you get AI-based scenarios and challenges, for example.

[Serrano]

* shrugs *

 

It's selling well.

 

And there are NKVD officers in the game (the campaign). If you recruit penal troops or conscripts you trigger him, he sits at base and executes troops if you order them to retreat.

 

That seems kind of mean seeing as they were only following orders

[Drowsy Emperor]

No one said Relic had done its historical work either. In fact, the trailers suggest that its portrayal of the eastern front is straight out of western pop history, with the whole army commander "from the gulag" getting all weepy over the things he "had to do" to the germans.  Instead we get the usual exaggerations and hollywood treatment and the ultimate irony is that reviewers think its not realistic enough, which in their minds means :"hollywood enough".

 

I've yet to see a western made historical strategy that shows accurately the mind boggling scale of german crimes and disregard for civilian life on the eastern front, that provoked in fact - everything that followed. 

[pmp10]

I've yet to see a western made historical strategy that shows accurately the mind boggling scale of german crimes and disregard for civilian life on the eastern front, that provoked in fact - everything that followed.

Maybe because that's not the usual subject of a strategy game.

At least not without making it much more "hollywood".

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

I've yet to see a western made historical strategy that shows accurately the mind boggling scale of german crimes and disregard for civilian life on the eastern front, that provoked in fact - everything that followed.

Maybe because that's not the usual subject of a strategy game.

At least not without making it much more "hollywood".

 

 

Sure, but in every game I've played that was more cinematic in its content, Russian war crimes featured very prominently. I recall similar nonsense in CoD World at War, but then there's more likelihood of intelligent life on Mars than seeing a self conscious, historically grounded CoD game.

[Monte Carlo]

Drowsy, I can only offer a Western POV, but the Nazi war crimes are on the record. We all know about the barbarity of the Nazis in the East. But, because the Soviets were our allies, we tended to ignore the inconvenient truth that we'd joined forces with a regime arguably as repugnant as the Nazis in order to win the war. The Soviet Union's activities in Poland, against it's own people and indeed in Eastern Europe from 1917-1989 were disgraceful.

 

So I think the resurgence in highlighting Russian (Soviet) war crimes isn't revisionism, more of an unveiling of a truth the West chose to obfuscate for a very long time. 'Uncle Joe' so beloved of the Western Left, was dripping in blood.

 

As for the conduct of the Red Army in 1945 in Germany, well that too is on the record. Personally, I see it as a barbaric but not completely unsurprising quid pro quo for German conduct in the East. And the Soviet regime tried to reign in the excesses of their troops (eventually), unlike the Nazis.

 

This isn't an excuse, but you have to see that in Western Europe the evil of the Nazis is simply a given in a way that the excesses of the Soviets was not.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Are the wartime policies of Nazi germany in the east really common knowledge in the west? The holocaust is a topic brought up on a daily basis, but its not often that you can hear that soviet citizens effectively suffered a holocaust of their own, and its rarely openly called a policy of extermination (which is what it was). Towards the end of the war there probably wasn't a single family in the USSR that didn't have one or more of its members killed or otherwise affected by that war.

 

I didn't say it was revisionism, it would be pointless to claim that a force as large as the red army didn't commit war crimes while fighting so many years of war.

 

But war crimes were an exception in that fight. Even the Soviet treatment of Germany was comparatively mild when you take into consideration that no one could or would oppose anything they did there in 1945. If they really did commit war crimes on a quid pro quo basis (in real proportion, for every Soviet citizen killed), there probably wouldn't have been a single German left alive in the occupied territories. 

 

Now I don't really mind war crimes as a topic. Its wrong to turn a blind eye to it. But the way its done in films and games shows a disregard for context for the sake of bombastic moments, much like tabloid journalism. There's nothing wrong with recreating the operational history of the war in a strategy game. However I think its too serious a topic to gloss over and casually pass judgment on the nature of the conflict.

[Drowsy Emperor]

And this applies to the German army as well. Turning the Nazis into pop villains is a disservice to those who weren't members of the Nazi party but were just swept into the war, fought because they had to and didn't participate in the crimes. (I'm thinking Wolfenstein level of nonsense here). But I'm drifting off topic and I'm sure you understand what I'm trying to say.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[Calax]

Everything I've seen involving Russians in the US media makes damn sure that the audience knows that the Russian population suffered. Although it isn't always clear that it's also their own government who hurts them. 

 

Me and Monte tried out the Theatre of War. Basically it's a scenario fight against the AI where you have to hold out against them for X amount of time. We almost beat it (we'd just started day 4 of 4), but I think I've figured out how to beat that particular one just via post action analysis.