ON company of heros 2....

[Flashburn]

Why do I feel like relic made the main stream game version of GTOS?  Anyone going to take this for a spin?  Something tells me the fact that it is not GTOS would piss me off. 

[Fracchione]

Are you high on drugs?

[Flashburn]

Clearly....vague response.

[Flanker15]

I played the open and closed beta a bunch and don't think I'll get it, I like Coh 1 but this one seems to lack the fine balance and thoughtfulness the first had ( not counting the expansions which is where they went wrong first).  Hardly any of the original relic staff still work there anyway.

[wodin]

Why do I feel like relic made the main stream game version of GTOS?  Anyone going to take this for a spin?  Something tells me the fact that it is not GTOS would piss me off. 

Really?? It looks pure arcade awful..nothing at all like GTOS..two games doing the same subject but in very different ways..

[Flashburn]

OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH relic....  i will always have fond memorys of homeworld. 

[lavish]

OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH relic....  i will always have fond memorys of homeworld. 

Homeworld 2 with Tactical Fleet Simulator (TFS) mod is still fun to play with friends! 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/tactical-fleet-simulator

TFS is what homeworld 2 should have been... with much more dynamical and "realistic" weaponry, ship movement and gameplay. One thing that makes Homeworld 2 special traditional RTS is the battlegroup system with "tactical AI" - units automatically do their role in that group, for example interceptors intercept enemy bombers. This function was further emphasized in TFS. I wonder why this is not included in other RTSs - reduces unnecessary mouse clicking tremendously.

[Tanker]

Homeworld 2 work on win 7x64?

[chashka17]

I got to play for an hour on CoH2.  A friend who is a WoT'er has it & in the ongoing drive to get him into GTOS a play-test was called for.

You can still see it is CoH, mechanics & style etc
Played 1st level of the campaign, quite nice, good gfx & sfx & 'amusing' commentary.
'..grenade up their zhopa!' was amusing the first 27 times I heard it, but became a bit 'Meh' after the 326 mark.
Lots of RuGlish, 1/2 & 1/2 language sentences, it's Ok but I actually like the Russian even if I don't understand it all.   
Storyline seems to owe quite a lot to the 'Enemy at the Gates' movie in the way the opening level is shown.  Maybe that is because it is an 'authentic' view?

As far as gameplay goes it is still definitely CoH, & the reviews I've seen saying how realistic it now is, have left me wondering what they use as a benchmark for realism.

I like CoH, I have #1 & enjoyed it a lot, but by the time later iterations appeared, it left me wondering why I felt 'forced' by the game to sacrifice units in order to 'win'.
OK I could reference books like Battle Of Hurtgen Forest by Charles Whiting,
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_battle_of_Hurtgen_Forest.html?id=mVkfIfEx0YYC&redir_esc=y
& say 'well that is how it went', but it goes against the grain to simply throw troops away in what feels like an intentional function of gameplay.
I have grown to prefer the ToW & APOS/GTOS approach that requires more than colourful resource manipulation.  Troops are individuals that develop & realistic decision making is req'd....

Bottom-Line -
It's fun, it looks & sounds good, but it's a game & not a grogs pastime.  Maps & ballistics are so far removed from GTOS it hurts.
I was left with only one real question - When's Mius?! 

[rostov]

COH series is just a RTS game, it is not a simulation. Every unit have a HP bar, and Relic does not set their property by following historical accuracy.

The story of campaign is very ridiculous, Relic said those are following a veteran‘s memories, I think it is not true. Relic is slandering USSR and the Great Patriotic War.

[Dane49]

It's a childrens' game.
I like the graphics but the game play looks silly.
Screenshots look good but videos of the gameplay just looked wrong on so many levels.
You would think with the type of budget that the game has that Relic could of turned the game into something more than a childs version of war.

I guess they decided to cater to their core audience for ideas.

[Fracchione]

It's a childrens' game.
I like the graphics but the game play looks silly.
Screenshots look good but videos of the gameplay just looked wrong on so many levels.
You would think with the type of budget that the game has that Relic could of turned the game into something more than a childs version of war.

I guess they decided to cater to their core audience for ideas.

Lol Dane, that's the very reason they got the money in the first place...
Sad truth is gaming world is ruled by momma's wallet...

[andrey12345]

The Cold War is long over, but the ugly propaganda is still alive in the minds of some writers. And apparently it is considered that it helps make money. May be.

[Flashburn]

HAy Relic is just over the border from me about 95 minutes from where I sit up in Vancover BC.  I should go bang on there door and tell them they are full of sheet.  muhahaha


They are really following what is expected to sell.  SAD but true.  I mean people had issues with 3d space maps in homeworld for gawd sakes. Like in star trek 2 the wrath of Khan.  Capitan he is brilliant but he shows 2d thinking...  Well something like that.  MUHAHAHA.

And game guys follow movie plots not history........we see that all over the place.  Enemy at the Gates is all mid and big budget games follow for east front.  and saving private ryan is all they follow for France..........

[chashka17]

The Game vs Sim situation hadn't escaped me, but the fact that it has been called realistic has made me wonder. 
The comments on the 'real-feel' environment likewise caused some head-scratching.  I think you could make a 'realistic' environment & yet keep arcade play.  If you really had to. 

The snowy scenery in APK43 may not have been so super-charged & hi-res etc from a programming point of view but it really made me recall a Russian climate.  & APOS really brought the Russian weather home to me in a way yet to be achieved in the arcade world.

I have been left thinking about why you'd make some expensive but effective choices for gfx/sfx & then make the events & game mechanics a farce.  Money from muppets does seem to be the mainstream business model tho.
Hopefully people who play CoH2 will become more deeply interested in the conflict & seek out GTOS for greater attention to reality, maybe it could help GT in the long run.  There must be some arcade players out there with attention spans longer than 20 seconds after all.   


I find the comments about the lack of historical accuracy/propaganda most interesting.  What particularly stands out?
I don't personally know anyone who fought in Stalingrad, so if you guys have any good local insights I'd like to hear about them.  I can see how misrepresentation devalues the reality of the times. 
& a bit further OT:-
You know that TV show Shtraf-bat (штрафбат)?  Didn't they show NKVD MGs placed to prevent any 'retreat'?  Been a while since I saw that show, but I can imagine that would be useful to control a penal battalion.
Was Brest Fortress (Брестская Крепость (2010)) way off?   Just wondering how far Russian film goes towards realism compared to Western productions.

[andrey12345]

I find the comments about the lack of historical accuracy/propaganda most interesting.  What particularly stands out?
I don't personally know anyone who fought in Stalingrad, so if you guys have any good local insights I'd like to hear about them.  I can see how misrepresentation devalues the reality of the times. 
& a bit further OT:-
You know that TV show Shtraf-bat (штрафбат)?  Didn't they show NKVD MGs placed to prevent any 'retreat'?  Been a while since I saw that show, but I can imagine that would be useful to control a penal battalion.
Was Brest Fortress (Брестская Крепость (2010)) way off?   Just wondering how far Russian film goes towards realism compared to Western productions.

Here's what frustrating. Punishment battalions (shtraf bats) were in all armies of the world. Defensive (barrage) squads in the same way in the Wehrmacht appeared in 1941 (during Moscow battle), and in the Red Army only in mid-1942 (and first came up with them in the days of the Roman Empire). The prison camps were in all the countries of the world, the largest in the world created by the United Kingdom for example. But what the heck, there is no game or movie about the prisoners in the camps of the UK, there is no game about German or US barrage and punishment battalions. But damn the same things about the Soviet Union and strive to stick in every hole. WTF
NKVD iss analogous to the military police in the U.S. Army + border guards in the same department. But where I can see games about evil US MP what murder US Army soldiers?

[Rod]

Andrey US punishment battalions are well documented. 

Haven't you seen the Dirty Dozen

[Txema]

..............The prison camps were in all the countries of the world, the largest in the world created by the United Kingdom for example. But what the heck, there is no game or movie about the prisoners in the camps of the UK, there is no game about German or US barrage and punishment battalions.................

Here you have a film about the POW camps in Britain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_That_Got_Away_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_One.jpg

:-)


Txema

[chashka17]

I can sympathize Andrey.  The Western media does still like to portray Russians as bad-guys, I've lost count of the recent movies & TV shows where it turns out the evil Russians are behind everything.
It makes me laugh as it is ridiculous but unfortunately many people will just believe it & learn prejudice. 
Unfortunately a central function of Western Democracy is a need for scape-goats & witch-hunts.  How else do you 'learn' who is 'best'?

As regards penal battalions, my first knowledge of them was WW2 Germany via the Sven Hassel books that I read as a kid. Thanks to the Dirty Dozen & now CoH2 I now know it was a more popular system than I'd originally thought.

IIRC the WW2 British use of criminals etc ran into problems as it was found that murderers aren't killers in the soldiering sense.  Obviously discipline & combat effectiveness was limited, & the project wasn't 'successful'.

It was the Brits who invented the concentration camp, during the Boer War. 
Hearing that heroes of the Great Patriotic War were guaranteed things like heating in the winter - for free -really shows things aren't at all as they seem.  Plenty of Western veterans have died of hypothermia because they couldn't afford to pay fuel bills...

[andrey12345]

..............The prison camps were in all the countries of the world, the largest in the world created by the United Kingdom for example. But what the heck, there is no game or movie about the prisoners in the camps of the UK, there is no game about German or US barrage and punishment battalions.................

Here you have a film about the POW camps in Britain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_That_Got_Away_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_One.jpg

:-)


Txema

Its a low budget rare films - his shot about his. We also do "good" is. This is normal. But this not AAA game/cinema in "realistic" manner.
But in films/games "about evil russians in WWII" this ugly things in each, w/o exceptions.