Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor Updated Hands-On - Exclusive Multiplayer Impressions
We have the first hands-on details for the new multiplayer modes in this stand-alone follow-up to the explosive Company of Heroes.
The original Company of Heroes took the all-too-familiar theater of World War II and made it an exciting game backdrop all over again with its fast-paced, small-scale strategy and explosive special effects. Fans of Company of Heroes' brand of explosive action should mark their calendars for later this spring when Tales of Valor, the next stand-alone follow-up, is released. Aside from offering new single-player campaigns and a new "direct fire" control scheme for certain tank units, the expansion will offer three brand-new multiplayer modes that will take Company of Heroes in very different directions indeed.
The first of the three new multiplayer modes in Tales of Valor is Panzerkrieg (German for "tank war"), a team-based, tanks-only multiplayer mode that resembles a cross between the class-based, control-point-capture gameplay of Battlefield 1942 and a much more intimate version of the tactical gameplay of World in Conflict. The mode will pit a team of Axis tanks versus a team of Allied tanks on a handful of tightly structured maps as they struggle for control of a handful of minor reinforcement points and four major capture points at each corner of the map. Each of the four capture points unlocks different individual bonuses for the team that controls it; for instance, one capture point is an infantry deployment station that gives each player the ability to deploy a squad of computer-controlled infantry, and another is a spotting tower that lets you call in an air strike to lay a carpet of bombs on your enemies' heads.
Like in the Battlefield series, this mode has a ticking timer of depleting points for each team, and getting your tank blasted or losing a control point will accelerate your team's point loss; the first team to get down to zero loses. The game will default to 500 starting points for each team (which should boil down to a good, fast-paced match of 10-20 minutes in length for most players), though Relic recommends trying out a starting level of 1,000 points if you have the time to hunker down for closer to an hour. This larger point total should give most players enough time to fully develop their tanks by gaining enough experience levels to unlock all skills in their skill tree. Yes, your tanks gain levels in Panzerkrieg. We had a chance to see this advancement in action in two rounds of this new mode, first as the Allies, and then as the Axis. Both sides have three different playable tanks that roughly represent light, medium, and heavy tanks (the M18 Hellcat, M4 Sherman, and Churchill tanks for the Allies, and the Hotchkiss, Panzer IV, and Panther for the Axis).
Our experience was primarily with the light tanks, which seem fast enough to be good scouts (and sneaky control-point captors), and have enough miscellaneous abilities (such as the Hellcat's ability to drop hidden landmines) to cause plenty of trouble. Panzerkrieg's maps all have an individual spawn point for each team back behind the front, so getting blown up means having to hoof it back to the nearest flashpoint. However, the map that we played on was a fairly intimate three-on-three level, and given that Panzerkrieg clearly points out which territories are controlled by which team at any given time (both on the main map and on the mini-map in the lower-left corner), getting back into the action was easy. We didn't have quite as much success using direct-fire mode, which is a real-time aiming mode that lets you use your mouse to aim and fire your turret manually, also featured in the Tiger Ace campaign. However, our losses can probably be chalked up to the fact that we kept running into enemy heavy tanks, and that we were too busy fooling around with the alternate abilities that we'd unlocked for our tanks.
All tanks have different "commander trees," which are sets of abilities that can be unlocked with experience levels gained after capturing points and killing enemies. Some abilities, such as the light tanks' advance scouting (which lets them clear fog of war for their teammates) are cheap and cost only one skill point (you gain a new skill point with each level). Other abilities cost upward of four skill points but are absolutely worth it, such as the more-expensive rocket launchers for the Hotchkiss light tank, which can not only splatter enemy tanks with concussive damage, but also destroy in-game geometry. Our most memorable experience in our multiplayer session, bar none, was an assault on an enemy Allied tank that had taken the high ground on an overpass near a control point. We used our rocket launcher to try to pepper our foe and unwittingly took out the bridge under the already-damaged enemy tank, sending it plummeting to its demise.
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- Release: Apr 7, 2009 »
- ESRB: Mature
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