Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor Updated Hands-On - Exclusive Multiplayer Impressions

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.

Next up was Stonewall, a co-op-only mode that challenges players to defend territory against oncoming waves of computer-controlled enemies (otherwise known as a "comp stomp"). This mode seems to have some of the appeal of tower defense games, but will most likely not be suited for beginners, considering that the later waves of enemies that come charging at your gates become extremely tough and include especially powerful "boss" enemies, such as superpowered tanks that will sweep through lower-level infantry like they're chaff.

We played on a map for four players, and this particular map had four different individual base buildings; we and our three companions each snagged one as a base of operations to start churning out units using resources either for generating vehicles or infantry (such as snipers, who are lethal against infantry, and engineers, who can repair damaged vehicles and can build helpful structures such as machine-gun nests and first-aid tents to heal injured infantry). This map also had four focal buildings to capture at each corner, such as a garage that, when captured, strengthened friendly vehicles and can actually act as an alternate base to build units, though in our session, we and our teammates were thoroughly crushed by the merciless computer opponents on medium difficulty. (Over the voice chat that we had set up with Relic, we kept hearing something about how "the GameSpot guy keeps stinking things up," but we're thinking that might've just been a headphone error, because we hear that in a lot of our multiplayer sessions for some reason.) Cranking up the difficulty to "hard" will probably offer a really heavy-duty challenge.

Finally, we turned our attention to the Assault mode, which will be Tales of Valor's take on Defense of the Ancients, the small-scale, individual-character modification for Warcraft III. Like DOTA, Assault will put you in control of only a single character from one of seven different character classes--the well-rounded commando, the heavy-weapons specialist, the medic, the recon scout, the engineer (known as the "pioneer" on the Axis side), the sniper, and the officer. Each class will have its own individual abilities (the officer can use a morale-building effect to immediately break pinned allies out of the pinned state and increase their movement and firing speed; the medic can heal injured allies; the sniper deals huge damage to a single infantry target, and so on).

Like in DOTA, your character will gain experience levels by killing enemy soldiers (who will either appear as enemy hero characters controlled by individual players, or will spawn continuously as computer-controlled cannon fodder). With each level, you'll gain a skill point to apply to one of Assault's three attributes: weapon damage, armor, and grenade power. At the start of the game, you won't have much firepower, but as time goes on throughout the match and you gain more levels and put more points into your attributes, you'll start to notice your heroes come into their own. Even if your hero dies and you choose a different hero to play, you'll still keep the attributes that you've already purchased, so you can keep the progress that you've made in the match. This is a more arcade-style action experience, wherein a high-level heavy-weapons expert can bring down an enemy machine gun after whaling on it for a few moments, which earns your character extra experience points, as well as the satisfaction of seeing a pair of defeated enemy soldiers march out with their hands over their heads.

The ultimate goal of Assault is to press your way into the enemy team's base and destroy their central headquarters (which lies all the way behind enemy lines, and which goes up in a satisfyingly explosive cinematic sequence), but considering that the enemy base will be full of gun nests, forward spawn points for the enemy team's heroes, and a continuous spawn of computer-controlled enemy fodder, it seems best to press forward as a group and take down enemy emplacements one by one. Given that different heroes have such differing abilities (several possess additional mobility options, such as the recon scout, who drives a speedy motorcycle), there doesn't necessarily seem to be a clear-cut best character class, though some, such as the medic and the engineer, seem like they're best used in specific situations. Your progress will be recorded in various statistics (for instance, who had the longest uninterrupted kill streak) that will surface in Relic Online's rankings.

All three of Tales of Valor's multiplayer modes seem like they'll offer a great variety of very satisfying, slam-bang action on Company of Heroes' trademark small scale. The game is scheduled to ship in April.