Company of Heroes iPad - Review

There are some genres that seem to be home on certain platforms and no matter what anyone states, that will always be the case, with the RTS or Real Time Strategy genre being at home on PC. Feral Interactive have proven themselves with ports of games to new homes before, but have taken the iPad by storm, or was this mission best left alone.

For those not in the know, Company of Heroes was release back in 2006, so it is a number of years old now, the game has plenty of fans and even had a sequel. While it was released in the middle of the naughts, the game clearly takes a lot of inspiration from titles like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, as it tends to emphasis the brutality of World War 2, something few games were doing, even back then. The story that you are given to play through, is set in 1944 and focuses on the Allies invasion of Normandy, against the Germans who had claimed the land as theirs and while D-Day certainly plays a part in the story, it is the opening mission after all, it is more about the skirmishes after the beach was taken. Following Able Company, after taking the beach, you will move inland, taking towns back, capturing strategic points and taking the fight to the Germans as you find them, it is a similar story to what you have seen in almost every other WW2, but it still holds up today. Between the missions, there some cutscenes that help tie the story together, but there is nothing to demanding in them, they just help connect it all back to the main narrative. As this is a port of the original game, the same story limits are present, being that you can only play as the Allies, but it is not something that feels restrictive.

Of course, there is little you can say about Company of Heroes on a touch enabled device, that doesn’t start with the interface and the controls, there is a lot to learn here, especially if you are coming from a PC background. The interface on the iPad looks really similar to the PC release, in fact side by side, you would be hard pressed to notice any differences, the bulk of the changes comes down to squad selection really and even there, the changes don’t feel to out of place. Tapping on a single member of any squad, will select that entire squad, once they are active, on the command bar down the bottom, they will be highlighted, indicating they are the active squad, if you tap another group down there, you will create a larger group. On the right hand side of the screen is another way to control your squads, though this allows you to do a little more than the standard option, with squads active, you can actually group them, letting you quickly select multiples at once, a handy option for when the battles get intense.

Squad management is only one aspect of the game that is similar and yet different, managing your forces is done with the new command wheel, if you enable it, RTS alumni will likely want to stick with the old school panel. I found the wheel worked better for me, as it felt more inline with what I thought a touch screen would work, the only issue with the touch is there is a lot of double taps, holds, taps and holds, two finger taps and combinations of them, and sometimes, especially in the heat of battle, it is easy to get the combinations mixed up. During the moments of peace and calm, you can upgrade your squads, replenish lost soldiers and more, but doing that costs resources, but in order to earn resources, you need to control the map. Each map is broken up into sections and each section has a control point, that if you take over, you will earn the much-needed resources for your campaign to push forward with. The caveat to that is that all your resource points must remain in your control, there was a mission where I pushed past a point and captured the next one, which broke the line and thus my resources started to deplete quite fast, it was something I had not considered, but makes sense for the game. There are four main groups of resources and while some are used for vehicles and buildings, the ones you will use the most are the manpower and munitions pools. Manpower is exactly as it states in the name, it lets you resupply a squad with missing members, or upgrade some of them to a new type. Munitions is for your weapons, you can store them and upgrade weapons, making a squad more dangerous, or you can use them on one off instances, like throwing grenades or using satchel charges.

These mechanics all play up to the games core strength, tactics, which yes, given the genre it sits in should be clear, but there is a lot more to consider here. Should the squad you are directing, engage in combat, whilst standing in the open, they will succumb far more quickly to enemy fire, the quickest way to tell is a red shield appears above them, indicating no cover. Sending them into cover can results in one of two type, light shown with a yellow shield or heavy, indicated by the green one and with heavy that is your best protection, whereas yellow will still have you taking hits. When you direct squad to an area, the map will highlight the space around it, in shades of colours, to show you what you cover is going to look like. There are other options for you as well, if you have engineers you can have them build up defences like machine gun nests, barbed wire and more, some of these things can provide cover for you, but they are best used to defend your captured points.

The game also offers a skirmish mode, where you can compete against other players, if they are near by or against the AI and let me tell you, the AI is brutal at times. The matches are either about earning points or whipping out the enemy, the rest of the options come down to where you start, what time of day it is and such. The map selection though is massive, with over 50 maps to choose from and each can support multiple player configurations, 1v1, 2v2 and so on, while playing before the game was out to the world, there not a lot of people to test my lack of skills against, but the vast array of options means that going forward, there should never be a shortage of battles to wage.

One space where the game is mixed is down in the presentation, the game when you are in the middle of a battle looks amazing, you can zoom in, by pinching of course, letting you see the action a little closer, you will never be able to go down to ground level, but it is still nice. The amount of detail in each location is great, even as they start to get blown up and destroyed by the actions going on around them. The characters themselves are solid, you can’t see any significant detail on them, but they move and behave like you might imagine, they will drop to the ground if they feel exposed and will automatically duck into cover when close enough. The vehicles are a little clunky in their movements, but it is not enough to worry about, the only issue with the games lighting at times, in some of the in game cutscenes I noticed some odd lighting, which caused textures to look out of place. It is important to note that this was only in cutscenes, the gameplay never had this issue, still it can distract from the story, so it is a note of concern.

On the audio side, things are much cleaner and while you can play the game without headphones, using a set will help you hear everything much easier and you will want to do that. The sounds of the battlefields, from the machine guns raining down a hail of bullets, to explosion going off all around you, sound great. The music has a definite inspiration to it, feeling like it might have been taken from the cut pieces from Saving Private Ryan, though honestly, when the battles get intense and they will, the music tends to fall away, leaving you to the sounds of the battles. The other aspect to the audio is that of the soldiers, they chatter a bit, but mostly you will hear them when you give them some commands, the problem is each time you redirect them, they confirm it and if you happen to incorrectly send them somewhere, selecting a new location, will have them cancel out the in progress audio and start a new one, it is not a big issue, just something to be aware of.

Company of Heroes has been one of the more popular RTS series and for good reason, it makes a solid use of tactics, but also combines it with a simple gameplay hook. The touch screen controls work, though trying to remember when double tap with one finger, or two is required can take time to learn, but easily forgotten when the action gets going. The game looks and sounds a treat and offers up plenty of fun outside of the campaign, so it is an easy game to recommend if you are a RTS or WW2 aficionado.