izigame.me

As someone who has been a long time fan of the series since the first original release of Company Of Heroes. Its safe to say that I cannot recommend this title for anyone at this current price. To have the audacity to even ask £70 for a few awful cosmetics that makes Activision look generous with what their offering is practically outrageous! Not to mention including the upcoming expansion that we no idea about, already setting a bad look for the product before we've even initialised the game yet. That being said, I do feel that this title has been unfairly judged by fellow critics - an overreaction by the audience to the bad pricing that is, of course, understandable. As it happens, I've had and will still have a lot of fun playing this recent addition, only I don't feel great about the amount I paid for this due to how it mostly feels like a beta test. Without a doubt, no surprise given you can tell it was clearly released too early. It's worth noting that I had neutral to almost low expectations and it still managed to disappoint. If your a hardcore fan then you'll probably have a blast with this but for the rest, either wait for the price to drop, a sale or if you haven't already, purchase any of the previous instalments like the first one with its superbly made extra content that only costs you £20 in total.
How has this game released too early you might ask? Ignoring the hilariously, still closed store or the re-used icons for a few of the units and abilities, some of which are just placeholders with no relevance whatsoever. Lets start with the skirmish map selection, the very first I noticed when loading up which I personally find to be "okay" but nothing more than that. Now, I don't know what the main issues are in terms of the technicalities however, I will say that there's nothing really iconic about the selection. In the past, we've had memorable maps like Lyon, Villers-Bocage, Steppes as well as Sittard Summer which was originally a community map put into rotation but in spite of that, you see my point. At the same time, I do feel that there is a lack of maps this time though this something I'm unsure of, albeit made worse with them being used in the Italian Campaign. Also, would you like to guess on what modes we have now? If you were thinking of anything innovative then you would be wrong in that regard so instead the correct answer is same ones we've had since this genre began. This is the third game in the series and the options presented are still victory control plus annihilation, an embarrassingly lost opportunity for something fresh like a paradrop invasion mode or a convoy, attack and defence preset. Nope, guess its left up to the modding community to do the rest I'm afraid that do a grand job with the ideas they have as shown in throughout the online world. Another thing that irritates me is how little customisation there is for our matches with features such as controlling the weather behaviour has been completely absent since the original release of the first game. Not even having a replacement for the blizzard effects from the second installation with a sandstorm variant for the Northern African themed locations.
Gameplay is pretty much what you would expect as a Company Of Heroes title, perhaps a lot less epic for lack of a better term with a few tweaks and features such as troops riding tanks and towing. Nothing really of any remarkable note other than the quality of life improvements such as the auto-reinforce. The introduction of four factions this time is immeasurably nice to have but the issue is that most of them feel underwhelming - their is a significant lack of unique units that would of helped change things up a bit. Not just that but we've already played the likes of the British, the Americans, the Wehrmacht for the past few games now with the only exception being the Afrika Corps. Sure, their a lot of fun to play as well as difficult to replace given the historical events, of course. It just would be nice to have down the line more factions like the Canadians being a separate entity with their own strategic formula or even Axis Italy with a few German technology thrown in there for balance. Same can be said towards a number of different things like how this could been the perfect opportunity to add in some light naval engagements through the use of riverboats or landing crafts. Another example would be the lack of an in-game map editor which wouldn't be nearly as sophisticated as the essence editor itself however it just gives that extra option to encourage any newcomers to hop into this game.
On towards the technical aspects, it's generally a mixed bag or inconsistent under most avenues of this title. Visually it's nothing impressive, more of a slight upgrade to Company Of Heroes 2 however there is the odd, inadequate thing that pops through like the effects, the textures and how "cartoony" it looks nowadays. It only gets worse as the heavily discussed topic here is the audio which, yes, is pretty weak, especially for stuff like artillery that fails to have that intense impact it once had in our ears. Also happens to be quite buggy at times as well which this game has plenty of. To name a few, there are a fantastic, funny, fair amount of physics bugs revolving around vehicles in particular, as evident in an hilarious early mission cutscene sequence on the Italian Campaign. Speaking of the campaign, out of nowhere, I had what appeared to be an interesting paradrop unit that spawned in the middle of ocean called "missing entity name" which eventually suffered from attrition, unsurprisingly. By the way, is it me or does there appear to be a trend nowadays with who can make the worst user interface? It's a joke! Granted, it could be worse but that's no excuse with how awful the layout is as well as the fact that its so awkward with what information it'll give you - you'll find yourself being received tons to barely any information whatsoever. Thankfully there have been patches since release that have gone over what I've just said only that's an action we would contemplate, not congratulate.
The big question, that I've delayed long enough now, is that does the freshly introduced turn based Italian Campaign be this shining jewel in the middle of this desert that I've written so far? No, unfortunately not at all. A damn shame to say given that you can tell that Relic really wanted this to be a heavy hitter towards this particular entry in series so far. Above that, it's a great concept with a couple of really fun mechanics in place like the addicting way battalions level up. Unfortunately, the majority of it is just a boring, early access feeling mode that, to my surprise as a fan of total war themes, is hurting the game more than it's actually helping it. To confess, I haven't finished the main Campaign so there maybe a decent number of things I'm unaware of however I have indeed completed the traditionally familiar North African selection. While it may have its problems, its by miles more fun to take part in seen as that gives us the historical events that transpired as well as it's entertaining mission structure for each scenario. Sure, you get plenty of those sections in Italy's depiction but, as mentioned, a whole chunk of the time I felt I was playing skirmish matches that have repetitively, basic, objectives for "variation". This gets especially worse when your up against an increasing number of enemy battalions of which you can auto-resolve, weaken them with whatever you have at your disposal however, you will end up confronting them on recurring maps. If anything, this has lead me to believe that they should of focused further on the war stories as well as manifesting it to be the biggest world war 2 sandbox to date. Allowing us enthusiasts to muck around with all the distinct cool gimmicks for our pleasure and have the turn based part delayed brought later.