"Company of Heroes Online is a re-release of the award winning Company of Heroes which came out a few years ago and still is the best RTS game ever created. Why is it so great? It focuses almost exclusively on action between the units. Base building and resource collection are important but don't require constant adjustments or micro. Also, for a 4 year old RTS game the graphics are still unsurpassed, the explosions, the deformation of the battlefield, buildings collapsing, little dudes diving for cover, tanks running over walls and dudes, ect. The music and sound is also masterfully done, your units will scream and curse at you when they are in trouble in a way that really helps pull you down into the game. It is also one of the few RTS game where everything is intuitive to anyone, not just someone who knows all the secret mysteries of the game. If you want to kill a tank, use an AT gun. If you are sick of some fence/wall in the way, just run that ***** over. Machine gun in a nasty position? Bomb it with artillery. You don't need to learn which type of unit has a red laser which damages blue shield units. If you don't like RTS games because you think you have to be clicking at 200 mph and/or you are afriad, give the singleplayer a shot, then come play online with us because it owns and you want more."
Shamelessly stole that from Something Awful, but yeah, the game rules and its free.
They added some stuff:
"-Persistent leveling and progression
This is a big one, and influences almost every other addition to the game. Now when you make a new profile you are picking an army(axis or allied) and a doctrine.(terror, blitz, defensive) You level up from playing games which unlocks new command abilities, new heroes, and new equipment. You are limited to 4 total profiles and combined with leveling up keeps people from creating new accounts to kill lovely people in the matchmaker.
-Reworked Doctrine Abilities
As you level up by killing rats and dragons you unlock commander abilities much like in normal CoH, however these are now picked outside of the game rather than after the game begins. There are cool new doctrine powers like the King Tiger blocking enemy resource income, bombing run having 3 planes, gaining income when jeeps kill units, and V1 disabling resource points.
-Army Wide Equipment buffs
In addition to earning XP after each game, you also earn supply which you spend on equipment. You can use up to 8 of these per game and generally have effects like increasing sight range on units, increasing Hp, increasing speed, discounting unit prices or discounting special abilities. Each of these increases is slight so you won't be fighting +5 Nazi Supermen that you can't kill, most buff stats by 3-10%.
-The Titular Heroes
There are now special units you can use in a very limited fashion. They gain xp over multiple games and this will unlock new abilities for them. Some examples are motorbikes that trade the ability to spot snipers to instead throw grenades, volks grenadiers that are slower but much cheaper, grenadiers that cloak when retreating. Most of these seem surprisingly reasonable, they are easily accessible and ones with better stats have serious cost increases.
-The Entire Singleplayer Campaign
We don't know yet how all the cash shop poo poo will work exactly, but we do know that the entire singleplayer campaign will stay free. If you like RTS games but don't like to play online for whatever reason, you should run, not walk to get this. The campaign is excellent and really deserves a play-through from everyone. The music, sound, explosions, unit responses is really something special. It also gives you XP, supply, and equipment to help transition you online.
Party based matching system
Before it was loving impossible to play 4v4 with a team of friends. You would create a game and people would instantly leave when they saw all 4 people on one side. Now you create a party of up to 4 people and search for whatever you want. The old way of hosting games still exists if you want to do an arranged game with people on both axis and allied.
-Really ****ty tutorials for Axis!
They had a dude record some voiced tutorial with a microphone in a sock to teach you how to play axis. It is pretty ghetto but I guess it is better than the previous axis tutorial of nothing."
How to get it:
1. Create or have a fileplanet or IGN.com account. You don't need a subscription!
2. http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions...landing-a.aspx And enter your login details to get your key
3. Download from http://download.companyofheroes.com/launcher/setup.exe DON'T DOWNLOAD FROM FILEPLANET, IT GIVES PEOPLE ERRORS
4. On the launcher there will be a small button in the top right
It defaults to UNLIMITED upload, so limit it according to your connect that so your download speed isn't destroyed.
The download launcher is a peer to peer torrent, so make sure you have your ports open
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