r/gaming 3h ago

Company of Heroes turns 20 years old today

Post image
414 Upvotes

54 comments sorted by

96

u/MrCallum17 3h ago

Back in the day, I remember being stunned by how good it looked.

It still holds up, I never did play the 2nd one though

40

u/MountainMuffin1980 3h ago

The real time building destruction still feels unrivalled.

25

u/AssaultLemming_ 3h ago

The second one was even better. The third one sucked unfortunately

11

u/MysticalFred 3h ago

I spent 100s of hours on the multiplayer for COH2. Never enjoyed an RTS like it

8

u/warbastard 2h ago

It was a sweatlord of an RTS. So intense when playing.

2v2s or 3v3 than came down to one last push to secure a VP felt awesome. One squad on the flag while arty rains down and you just hope that last guy in the squad lives long enough to cap it.

11

u/DirtyKen 2h ago

I think both were a step down gradually

3

u/ejennings87 58m ago

Kind of how I feel about Relic in general. Between Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, they released two of the seminal RTS games outside of a company that rhymes with Lizard Entertainment.

Then every subsequent release in the franchise just felt a little bit less fun for me.

1

u/Rafke21 43m ago

I checked out a lot of reviews of CoH3 when it launched and thought the same. I've been playing it a lot over this past year though and it seems that a lot of that feedback was addressed. It's a pretty darn good game. Better than CoH1 imo

4

u/Mackerdaymia 1h ago

My best friend and CoH buddy played a lot of 2 but I could never get into it the same. Something about the high level of detail and HUD made it feel too busy. Still an awesome game, but the first one was a 10/10 and the second a 8.5-9 IMO

4

u/DarkFett 59m ago

Something about 2 felt like the units didn't matter as much when you lost them as in 1

54

u/warbastard 2h ago

This game made me realise just how important sound design is in a game. The sound of tank engines, artillery, the voice lines for the units and the announcer.

Fun fact, the American announcer is the same voice actor who did the voice of Spike Spiegel in the English dub of Cowboy Bepop.

Another fun fact that I didn’t realise until someone pointed it out to me. When you click on a unit on screen and then click to move the camera away from that unit their voice will switch from sounding like they are talking normally to sounding like they are speaking over the radio to you.

Volksgrenadier voice actor crushed it.

4

u/MRPolo13 1h ago

I have some of the voice lines in my head still, and the Volksgrenadiers are absolutely up there. What an excellent game

3

u/illbedeadbydawn 39m ago

"She may be French but the Cannon Packs more punch than your Pistol"

"Their Armor are like Toys!"

"Crack em open! Their Armor are like paper!"

"I could be a Luftwaffe Ace you know? Just sneaking around."

"You fool, what's the matter with your finger!?"

"This is an Inappropriate Tactic!!!"

"MP40 issued, tried not to shoot each other"

"How much walking we do, I should've joined the Navy."

"We're Airborne! We're meant to be surrounded!!!"

"STAY WITH ME I'LL KEEP YOU ALIVE!!!"

"Just give me a rifle, one round and point it to Berlin."

"Shooting, Welding, Sleeping... It's all the same to me."

"Joining the Army they said, It'll going to be fun they said."

"Hi."

"Give em some Gas Tiny"

"Burn Motherfucker, burn!"

"Hellcat, Yup!"

"Hey Daffy, What's a hurry? You're looking to get dropped."

3

u/MRPolo13 39m ago

Croc, movin' out!

3

u/illbedeadbydawn 27m ago

I always use the "give em some gas tiny" when my wife is driving slow or I want someone to drive faster or move

28

u/JackasaurusRetro 3h ago

Impeccable game, really enjoyed the DLC that let you play with some of the German "wunderwaffen"

3

u/Haarwichs 2h ago

What dlc is that? Or are you talking about a mod? I don't recall any prototype weaponry or vehicles being included in the official dlcs.

6

u/JackasaurusRetro 2h ago

Might have been opposing fronts. Germans had a big field gun you could play with. Think V2s were involved as well

6

u/Haarwichs 1h ago

Nah doesn't exist. The V1 is an off map artillery ability from the vanilla game and apart from a V2 launch site map in the vanilla campaign I can't think of any other mentions.

And the only field guns I could think of are the regular 88 guns as well as self propelled howitzers from the opposing fronts dlc. Nothing experimental or Wunderwaffe esque about that though.

30

u/WyomingWeirdo 2h ago

Truly one of the greatest strategy games of all time and easily one of the best games set during the second world war, which is a crowded genre.

8

u/cooliosteve 1h ago

As ww2 campaigns go, pretty cinematic as well.

9

u/snekasan 3h ago

My favorite PC exclusive game of all time and I’ve put countless hours into this. Mush have played it 2006-2016.

I was there for the CoH2 alpha/beta/full release but never liked it as much.

The fun thing is that it was always a pretty small community so I’ve had the opportunity to play most of the top top top players online.

I’m nowhere near their level and it was usually a stomp but nearly every experience was fun and laid back.

5

u/InfinitePossibility8 3h ago

Really love this game and its expansions.

5

u/Mysterious_Airport29 3h ago

Damn ... with all the remaster around why has this one not had a remake

4

u/TerrorFirmerIRL 2h ago

Still play online with friends. We couldn't get into coh2 for whatever reason.

4

u/alaattincagil 1h ago

Company of Heroes was honestly one of the first RTS games where cover actually mattered instead of just being decoration. Relic built the whole tactical layer around using terrain and destructible buildings for suppression, which most RTS games still don't really do properly 20 years later 😄 also that soundtrack still goes hard, the string section during a big tank push hits different.

3

u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 2h ago

Impeccable game.

3

u/Tomero 1h ago

I was never an RTS guy but I recently downloaded a demo as I am intrigued. Now I don’t know if I should hold off buying since apparently a remaster is in the works.

3

u/Pixel_Strange 1h ago

Twenty years later and modern RTS games still struggle to replicate how peak the destruction and cover mechanics were in this masterpiece

2

u/ReturnOfSuperman 2h ago

Can’t wait to check out the remaster when it drops! One of my favourite games.

2

u/Deep-Worldliness-427 2h ago

Goddamn this was such a quality game

2

u/CheckSixMustang 1h ago

My laptop could barely keep up, what a great game it was. I also enjoyed CoH2. CoH3 doesn't quite click, maybe I'm just getting old.

2

u/itx89 1h ago

One of those game where you just knew you were playing a something special. I remember this being THE game I had to upgrade my PC for. 

2

u/PatSantosJoga 1h ago

20 years already… that’s honestly insane. Company of Heroes still feels like one of those games that completely changed the way I looked at RTS games. The atmosphere, destruction, sound design and tactical gameplay were incredible for its time, and it’s still a damn good game today.

Not many RTS games manage to stay this memorable two decades later. Happy 20th anniversary to a classic! 🎉

2

u/nitram20 1h ago edited 1h ago

Blitzkrieg mod > everything else.

I still have the original copy, which back then included two disks, with one being a DirectX 10 patch disk which i believe was exclusive to Windows Vista at the time.

DirectX 10 was big back then.

3

u/sup3rrn0va 1h ago

I loved using the German snipers in Multiplayer.

4

u/Bagz402 3h ago edited 3h ago

Ah yes, the series ive been trying to get into for all 20 of those fucking years. It's got everything I SHOULD love but I always get bored after like 3 missions :(

3

u/SoyMurcielago 3h ago

I know exactly how you feel i just recently reinstalled this to try to give it a go but honestly i think I’ll enjoying sudden strike more

But sudden strike isn’t an rts it’s a real time tactics game so its not 1:1

1

u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 2h ago

Blitzkrieg is good!

3

u/S0B3RR3PUBLiCIRA 3h ago

Awh thanks for sharing :( I might still have the hardcopy back in Ireland ❤️

1

u/kucingputih 3h ago

Man, I had a dream thinking of how to finish one of the mission in this game.

1

u/Dogarc123 2h ago

Remember getting this game and loving it.

1

u/MultiGodSlayer 2h ago

Had my mind blown as a kid playing this. And recently I was playing it on my phone. Technology is crazy.

1

u/CyberKiller40 Xbox 1h ago

And it still doesn't run good on my PC 🤪

I wish the console port was not only on Switch.

1

u/Luitpold PC 1h ago

Campaign wise only the first game is worth playing. The other two are straight shit.

1

u/reviewwworld 1h ago

Loved this game.

1

u/LEboueur 1h ago

Dude. I was already feeling old enough before reading this post!

Good memories tho

1

u/Grady_Shady 57m ago

I don’t know why they didn’t capitalize on this more. The first one was golden and the rest where mid

1

u/Dixonusmc 55m ago

Man the amount of hours I spent on this game back in the day with my friends.

1

u/5xad0w 52m ago

Immaculate balance.

1

u/Catty_C PC 3h ago

When I was playing Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Dawn of War II the cover system in particular from DoW II was lifted straight from Company of Heroes.

As for CoH 1 I never finished it I was playing way too slow by turtling and got bogged in the campaign when the enemies have tanks but I do want to give it a chance sometime soon.

-1

u/Isilrond 3h ago

Had around 50 copies, since it was a bonus for all the nvidia cards we sold this time 😉