Windows Vista Update

It's easy to want to dismiss Company of Heroes as yet another World War II-based real-time strategy game. Don't. With its incredible scenes of combat and destruction, the latest strategy game from Relic Entertainment and publisher THQ was easily one of the most promising games that we saw at last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo. This year, it's safe to say that Company of Heroes will blow people away.

We know because we recently had a chance to travel to Relic's offices for an exclusive hands-on play session of the game, and we came away impressed with what Company of Heroes has to offer.

In Company of Heroes, Relic wants to let you command infantry squads and vehicles on an incredibly realistic battlefield. As lead designer Josh Mosqueira tells us, the company's goals were: "real soldiers, real battlefields, and real war." To do this, Relic is introducing what it calls "environmental strategy," which promises to make you rethink real-time strategy altogether. In most real-time strategy games, you can go only where the level designers want you to go, because you can't really affect the environment.

But if you have a bazooka capable of blowing up a tank, why can't it blow a hole in the wall that's blocking your progress? Company of Heroes will let you knock down that wall, and pretty much everything else, since all objects in the game have physical properties and operate according to the laws of physics (or, as Relic likes to put it, Hollywood physics).

This isn't the same thing as buildings exploding if you knock their hit points down to zero, like in so many other games. The damage done in Company of Heroes is specific and scales depending on the weapon that inflicted it. Bullets will bounce off a brick wall, but a tank shell will blast a hole or tear a chunk out of that same wall. And this idea changes everything, because with a dynamic battlefield you have so many more options available to you. More importantly, your soldiers will recognize this, as well.

"We really want players to feel like they're commanding real soldiers," Mosqueira says. That means Relic is working to deliver artificial intelligence that will make it so that each soldier uses real-world tactics and that they react to the ever-changing nature of the battlefield. You can see this when a squad moves up a street, cautiously and in formation.

If the squad comes under fire, the individual soldiers find whatever cover is available on their own and begin to return fire, without your having to give them that order. Or if they come under artillery fire, they'll automatically scatter out of the barrage area. The idea is that you don't need to micromanage your troops, which lets you focus on the bigger picture of managing the battle.

If you put the destructible environments and smart AI together, it's clear why the designers at Relic are so excited. Mosqueira told us about an incident when he barricaded a squad of US Army Rangers in a building.

Though armed with a bazooka, the Rangers couldn't get a shot off at a German tank prowling about in the street outside because the building didn't have any windows on that side.

Never fear, because another Ranger squad shot at the tank with its bazooka, missed, and accidentally blew a hole in the side of the building. The Rangers inside then recognized that the environment had changed and lined up a shot at the tank with their bazooka.

It's this kind of behavior that can make it feel like you're leading real men in battle, and Mosqueira told us that Company of Heroes is the first real-time strategy game that let him use all the tactics he had learned while serving as an infantryman in the Canadian army.

That also includes the concept of retreating. Units in Company of Heroes can gain experience over time, so it'll be important to try to preserve your elite units so they can fight another day. There's even a handy fallback order you can issue to a squad, and it'll disengage and fall back to the base to heal up and restore any losses.

Like an earlier Relic game, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Company of Heroes is going to be focused more on the action and less on base building and resource gathering. You'll still create a rear base, which lets you summon reinforcements in the form of infantry squads and vehicles, as well as research various upgrades, such as sticky mines for infantry.

The resource system, on the other hand, will introduce a nice twist on the one found in Dawn of War. You won't chop wood or mine for ore in Company of Heroes.

Instead, you must capture strategic points on the map to generate resources. The twist is that the map is divided into sectors, and some sectors give you access to different resources. Seize a fuel sector, and you start accumulating fuel, which can be used to purchase tanks and other vehicles.

A munitions sector supplies munitions points, which are used whenever your units fire their weapons, but they're also used to purchase upgrades. Finally, a manpower sector will generate manpower points, which are used to summon infantry and other reinforcements. It doesn't take much to realize just how valuable these sectors can be, particularly fuel sectors.

In addition to sectors and supply points, there's a new concept of units being "in supply." If you switch the view to the tactical map, which is a high-level overview of the entire battlefield, you'll see where the front lines are, as well as whoever controls each sector.

If your units are fighting in a sector that has a clear connection to your other sectors, they're considered "in supply," which means that you can upgrade those units, and they also have the ability to use special abilities.

You can build only in sectors that are in supply, so if you want to construct an observation post or a machine-gun nest to secure a strategic point (this also has the added benefit of generating resources faster in that sector), then you need to make sure it's in supply--not to mention, any resource sectors that are cut off won't contribute to your economy.

This adds depth to the battlefield, as it'll be possible for a losing side to try to send units deep into an enemy's rear and seize its key resource sectors, as well as cut off its frontline units. And this also turns Company of Heroes into a deeper game. Maps will be large enough to give you room to maneuver, so it'll be up to you to decide where to attack, where to defend, and where to try to sneak up on the enemy.