We Just Played Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor

The 2006 real-time strategy game Company of Heroes for PC offered a fresh new approach to real-time strategy games that went way beyond chopping wood or building up a bunch of arbitrary buildings so you could get to create tanks, or magic ogres, or whatever. It was pretty much all tactical, and took place during real battles of World War II, gave you some mission objectives and a handful of soldiers to guide into battle, then basically let you get to it. You needed to make smart use of cover to not get mowed down by machine gun fire; and lay down covering fire to pin down your enemies to suppress them to either delay their advance or flank them with another squad. And a lot of cover was fully destructible, including buildings, which could be used garrison soldiers, but would also go up in spectacular explosions if satchel charged. 2007 brought with it Opposing Fronts, a standalone expansion that added two new campaigns and some new stuff to play with, and now, in 2009, we can look forward to the pending release of Tales of Valor , a brand-new standalone expansion with three new campaigns, new multiplayer vehicles, and a new firing control scheme. Matter of fact, we just played an early version of the game and messed with the new campaigns. Please note: These are our quickie impressions of the early missions in the new campaigns.

Scenes of explosions and carnage like this will be common in Tales of Valor, the second standalone expansion for Company of Heroes.

The expansion's three campaigns are Tiger Ace, which we've covered previously; Causeway, which covers the adventures of an American paratrooper squad around the La Fiere causeway in France; and Falaise Pocket, an Axis campaign that covers the adventures of a squad of German troops who must aid ground operations on the Western Front.

Both campaigns have a baptism-by-fire start with plenty of ground action. Causeway, in particular, starts with fierce anti-infantry action as you start the mission with one squad of paratroopers and attempt to rendezvous with a second in hostile territory, constantly coming under fire by entrenched Axis soldiers. One squad contains riflemen who can use the expansion's new "direct fire" control scheme to focus-fire on tougher enemy targets, such as small vehicles; the other is a commando squad with grenades and satchel charges, and the skills of both seem required to leapfrog from cover to cover while occasionally blasting the living daylights out of any garrisoned buildings or any Axis vehicles.

Achtung! The expansion has several Axis campaigns where you'll play as the Jerries, as well.

The Falaise Pocket campaign starts with a squad of Axis engineers who must first construct an anti-air MG-88 emplacement to counter Allied airstrikes; then alert a handful of dozing Axis soldiers about the encroaching assault of, what else, American paratroopers. The early missions in this campaign seem more focused on recon than out-and-out assaults and should provide a good amount of variety for players who can't get enough of Company of Heroes' toy-soldiers-like gameplay.

Tales of Valor seems very solid so far and should make a great addition to any Company of Heroes fan's game library when it ships out in April.