Bullets tear at the ground in front of my charging Red Army soldiers like the claws of invisible beasts. The capture point ahead will yield some much-needed fuel, meaning more tanks for the Soviet war machine, in turn pushing my forces one step closer towards victory.
Things don’t go well. My men find themselves crawling under fields of barbed wire, braving MG-42 fire and watching their comrades turn into pulp as a German mortar rains down death. It’s over as soon as it started – the few survivors sprint back to base in full retreat. Many more lie dying or in pieces, but the real blow is to my ego.
Commanding the tide of war in Company of Heroes 2 is not easy.
Company of Heroes 2 requires real-time strategy commanders to think about both what’s happening in the moment and how those events will shape the subsequent minutes of gameplay. You might move out with a machinegun team to hold down an important point only to discover your opponent wisely sacrificed that option to build a sniper. Unless you’re quick to react those men will die, leaving your costly weaponry open for enemy soldiers to steal. Your whole battle plan must repeatedly adapt based off of the appearance of a single unit, otherwise you’ll find yourself consistently countered by a savvy opponent. If they rush to roll out light armor, then you present anti-tank weapons. They bring in infantry to take those weapons, you counter with your own infantry, or mortars, and so on. Every skirmish becomes a duel of wills, where you and your opponent are testing one another’s playstyles and tactics; how brave they are and at what point they’ll retreat.
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Source: IGN Video Games