Yes, I’ve played the game and I’m problably the only that isn’t buying into the hype that this is one of the greatest RTS’ of all time.
The AI, quoted on the game box as being “incredible” is let’s see, how to put this, incredibly fucking lame.
Where are the squad orders?
I mean, fuck, even Age of Empires II had the ability to tell your units to do things, like attack only when attacked, hold ground, ect.
Red Alert 2 had the ability to set patrol routes for units.
There are more, but these “features” are AWOL from Company of Heroes.
Example, I had a squad hiding behind some buildings, while I brought another squad up to hit a guard tower from 2 sides.
The next thing I hear is “WE’RE UNDER FIRE!!!”, I go check on squad 1 and here they’ve managed to wander in between Mr. guard tower and a machine gun nest.( this is like 50-60 feet from where they were hiding behind buildings waiting for reinforcements)
I kinda like it when my units do what they are told to, like stay put til I tell them to attack. Not to wander out in front of a machine gun then whine about being attacked. (intuitive behaviour?)
I’ve never had my units move without being told to in CoH. Sometimes individuals within a squad will move very short distances to better cover. Apart from that, they really don’t move, even when under devastating attack, without a direct order from the player.
You’re just incredibly fucking lame, because it’s right there on the unit buttons menu. It’s one button and you click to cycle through the options. Heh.
In all fairness, this is the kind of thing that is definitely possible to miss. Hell, I didn’t even know you could right-click on infantry to have armor follow them around. Fucking Relic and their piece of shit tissue paper manual. :-P
Wait you can do with that infantry? Dammit, that could have been really handy a few minutes ago. I did not see a follow command on the interface taskbar, do you need to enable it or something? Also can you set buildings rally points to groups like in Rise of Legends?
Man, you’re awesome! This guy doesn’t buy into the hype! He’s his own man! Check him out as he laughs uncontrollably at the very thought of anyone being stupid enough to think Company of Heroes is good. Aren’t we just the fools!
Damn dude, I wish I was as completely bad ass as you.
Actually, I don’t think you can. IIRC, right click on a friendly unit essentially tells the selected unit to go to the location of the right clickee. Once it catches up, I don’t think it will continue to follow it. :(
Nice try Tranj, love your support here, but if Relic wants there to be a better manual, then GET ON IT and put up a PDF on your web site or something. Sit one of your UI designers down with one of your playtesters, a screencap utility, and Photoshop, and MAKE A FREAKING MANUAL that explains the game properly. Then give it away over teh intarweb. Screw production values; all you need is the bare-bones information. Upkeep, weapon interactions, callouts for every command on every page.
Otherwise you’re just making like you don’t have anything to do with the crappiness of your game’s documentation, and you can’t get away with that.
Yeah, I’ll grant the UI in game is pretty good, but even it could be better (some widgets have no callouts, there’s no way to see how much your upkeep is)… and it’s still no substitute for good documentation.
They try to, but more often than not they stop for many unknown reasons. It seems like there is a very fragile rubber band attaching the repairing engineer unit to a tank, that breaks at the slightest shake.
Tranj works for THQ, not Relic. He includes himself with that possessive adjective. So he’s really the one to bitch at after all. Make the manual stop sucking, Tranj!
Quite frankly I can’t see CoH even winning Strategy Game of the Year… That’ll probably go to M:TW2 or GalCiv2, even if they’re also retreads. . GOTY, well, nothing quite hits me that way yet.
While the SP campaign is pretty good about teaching people how the Allies work, the game provide almost no guidance for Axis players. I mean, it’s great that that the build trees aren’t identical, but it means I have to scramble to figure out how to deploy grenadiers and armored cars.
Note to self: buy the Dominions 3 manual. As a special bonus, they throw in a free copy of the game.
We actually had three games last night over Hamachi without any problems. But we usually have to quit the game and restart between matches otherwise someone invariably will lock-up during the load…
