Quick Look: Company of Heroes 2

Where the hell is Drew and Vinny on this QL? Why'd they have to go with Brad "APM-is-all-I-know" Shoemaker?

whoa. sweet

@korolev: I think you need some clarification. There were about 500,000 women who served in the Russian military during the war. About 50,000 were assigned to combat units. Most serving in some sort of staff capacity. Almost none served in some front line infantry capacity(although I think some rare instances where they assigned women to fixed machine gunner postings).

The ones that did serve in a front line combat capacity typically served in either sniper teams of sorts, occasional tank units, artillery, or fighter squadrons .

It should be noted that Russian sniper units back then were deployed very differently to the modern counter part. Often times sniper teams were given autonomy. Meaning Snipers were not infantrymen when they weren't on sniping objectives. Sharpshooters were allowed their own mission/command usage. I think about 2,000 women served in this capacity. Not very many, but they were there.

A fairly good amount of women served in air fighter units

Brad isn't really showing this game in a positive light.

I really want Brad to get into this, would be great to see it on TNT sometime. A match between a couple of good players is way more exciting than anything in this quick look would have you believe, dare I say better than Starcraft? :)

Brad not putting in the effort on this one :(

This is BY FAR the worst quick look I have ever seen on this site.

It did not show off the game; it was just Brad not knowing what he was talking about for 40 minutes.

I really enjoy Brad quicklooks unironically, because I can see a lot of myself in him. Very literal and a thirst for knowledge. Yes he sometimes misses the 'obvious' but that is because he is trying to micromanage everything.

I also do the thing where people ask me if I like something and I jump three steps ahead and start explaining why I don't like it. Or recall odd facts about things.

I like Brad, and I think Vinnys very extrovert attitude and Brads Introvert attitude make for a great team.

@thedudeofgaming: How about the mass raping during the war?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/01/news.features11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#World_War_II

First quicklook in ages I had to leave early on because Brad was doing such a shit job playing, talking about, and presenting the game in such a horrible uninteresting manner. It was excessively painful and something easily alleviated by paying some damn attention to what's going on since most of what needed to be done was right there on the screenn. Sadly while the game looks interesting, and me being a big Relic fan, I will not be picking it up due to a lot of their choices for DLC. Removing entire doctrines to sell them day one? Screw that.

DIFFICULT TO WATCH

One important thing to remember about us "Westerners" was that through the Lend-Lease program we supplied the bulk of your Logistics equipment and supplies. Without the trucks, locomotives, food, cables, radios etc Russia would have never have lasted as long. An army marches on it's stomach after all.

This is a sequel to a classic game, for a gaming website that considers itself pretty nerdy and community oriented, (which I like), its weird how these guys aren't really familiar this type of game. Comparisons to Starcraft are definitely necessary to illustrate the differences, but the comparisons that Dave makes implies Starcraft is different in a better way. And I wish they knew more about history instead of making vague references. The guys don't look very good in this Quick Look, I am a Company of Heroes fan and I'm disappointed in this showing of the game.

Ouch at all the comments being merciless with Brad. I agree that given how big of a release this is, they needed someone who was willing to commit to learning the basics of the game before showing it off, but it's not their fault that no one on staff really seems to use the PC with any regularity. I'm guessing Brad was the pick because he plays DoTA and some SC2, it's not his fault everyone else is even less interested in the PC.

I think maybe Giantbomb needs to either snatch up some people dedicated to PC coverage or else stick to being a "console only" site. As it is their coverage is present enough to take away from console only people's enjoyment, but shallow enough to not really do anything for people who are primarily PC gamers.

@captainjudaism said:

Same here. Fucking painful. Had to skip most of it.

No Brad, it's not Starcraft but as a supposed fan of RTS games you should know the difference in play styles between just spamming units en masse and actually using strategy when employing units to the battlefield. Like you know, using cover or buildings, placing weapon systems in strategic locations and not just in the open, destroying the environment for advantage, reversing vehicles so front armor takes the beating, learning to read the UI screen messages etc.

CoH2 is nowhere near as good as CoH1 but it's a hell of a lot better then what was shown here. This is up there as one of the worst QL I've seen.

Professor Shoemaker is the best Shoemaker.

Overall enjoyable QL, I don't really see how Brad 'misrepresented' the game, he did a pretty poor job playing it, yes, but he was very upfront about that and Vinny and Brad did a good job describing the overall feel of the gameplay and missionstructure. The only part that baffled me was when he said this was slower than Starcraft... There was litterally shooting less than a 1 minute into that online match they played, how the fuck is that a "slow" RTS?

@brozik said:

Honestly when SC2 came out Brad used up all his goodwill back then by continuously going on about it and yet here we are again "Starcraft this ..." "When I was playing Starcraft ..."

Starcraft might be a faster game but that's about it. I'd hate to see Brad try and play Men of War if he thinks CoH is complex, but still couldn't be bothered to play the tutorials first based on this QL.

In CoH you can't rush out 20 units and just charge down the battlefield. Which is how Brad wants to play this game.

You could see him trying though. Just dropping as many units as he could select in the middle of a field and letting them take the hits. Even using Engineers as front line troops.

Welp... yeah this is one of those quick looks

Bradley is such a graphics whore.

Since we're giving history lessons, as a Finn I feel compelled to leave these here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland_war

@vinny should play this on the next TNT. Don't be shy, if you love the games there should be no problem!

And @thedudeofgaming, you should calm down. It would be equally false to say WWII was all about the Eastern Front. It's called a World War for a reason. The "Great Patriotic War" was only a part of it, and the Russians and Americans were allies.

To the point of differentiating between the troups: you really should bind them to keys or select them all and switch with Tab. It worked pretty well in the first one.

And calling the game "so slow" when you had like 4 fire fights in the first 5 minutes is ridiculous.

Take a shot every time Brad says "Hey I should start paying attention to the game."

Awful quick look.

One of those QLs where Brad is more interested in showing off his general knowledge, instead of playing the game or being entertaining.

I wanna say this to Giantbomb and anyone who was interested in buying this game as kinda a warning for your enjoyment.

1: The campaign sucks! It is absolutely by far the worst part of this game and I don't recommend that you play it ever!

2: Theatre of War is like a polar opposite and is basically the real campaign. Not in terms of story but the missions are very varied, well designed and a ton of fun.

But really the main reason to buy a COH game is for the awesome multiplayer and co-op versus AI. Which is really good and allows for far more entertaining matches both as player and as audience than SC2 even. :D

Oh my god, are they playing on a tv which makes it impossible to read the objectives?
what the hell is going on! :O

Interesting stuff about ww2 brad, but if that scatters you enough that you cant follow the big red arrow, you need to stop talking about it.

about CoH vs SC2, i bet SC2 is better as a competitive game, since all the hits etc are consistent.

the randomness of CoH will probably make it less popular in the competitive scene.
It's pretty fun to play online though.

tip for @brad hit backspace to reset the zoom and then backspace again to completely reset the camera angle to default, its the same hotkey in most strategy games that have a movable camera.

Did Brad forget how to read or something?

As someone who doesn't really have any interest in this game and watched this for the entertainment aspect of it. I really enjoyed the banter.

Now onto MP... it seems he has GUI blindness?

@thedudeofgaming: He said the winter was a huge factor. Which it was. It has been every time Russia has been invaded.

I would normally not say anything except that Brad himself has copped within the QL that yeah, he was having a hard time paying attention and so should probably not have been doing it the way he did at the time.

Shame considering it's a pretty solid to well reviewed game overall. Hard to tell if I would like it after not really liking the original but at this point I'm so much better at these games maybe the original is worth a revisit.

Either way I like what I see here and shows for a immersive game through its design (and less its story it seems). If anyone wants an RTS story worth a damn I though World in Conflict's was really well done character-wise. More than anything though, this has just made me wish there was a sequel to that game.

Units do move slowly and in evenly matched fights do not get killed very fast (without grenades and such), which is essential to why this game is so good. This results in you actually getting time to respond, something severely lacking in StarCraft, which is more of a 'I will build this as quickly as possible because that is what matters, and hope it will work' approach. The COH2 matches are way more dynamic, going back and forth, because both sides have changing priorities on map control, and try to respond in time and flank or surprise the enemy positions constantly.

I know not everyone loves the randomness but for competitive play that does not matter as the game revolves around a plentitude of skirmishes and the superior tactics do win the match.

Probably the Bradest QL ever.

@yeliwofthecorn: I've been thinking this for a while. Giantbomb has quickly become my favorite gaming site, but being primarily a PC Gamer, sometimes I'm frustrated by the seeming apathy towards both the platform and the very different types of games that tend to exist on it. GB does a nice job covering indie PC games in their Quick Looks, but sometimes the AAA exclusives---this game being a good example---aren't given as much or as loving attention as I'd like to see, with a few notable exceptions (DOTA being a big one).

I'm not nearly as upset at this QL as some others seem to be. Do I think Brad could have done a better, more conscientious job? Yes. But at least they tried. I really didn't expect a Quick Look for this at all.

Oh god. This was very difficult to watch....

You do let's play videos?

I feel like they should have 2 people commenting and let Brad just play the game. He really cannot focus when he's also trying to talk about the game.

I think you're mistaking apathy for dry historical RTS' for apathy towards the PC. I think I've heard 'I'm going to play this on the PC' more times in the last year than in a while.

If this was a PC exclusive FPS, TPS or puzzle platformer, it would get a lot more attention and fanfare.

Drew should have been piloting this QL. Brad doesn't have the "on camera" focus or interest necessary to really show off a game like this in the pilot chair. Their banter was interesting, but I was more interested in finding out about the actual game.

When games like this come up I really miss Dave. RIP Dave.

I like the game but man, fuck DLC and the horse it rode in on.

It's pretty crazy Stalin is actually viewed as a hero in Russia. lol.

Like, they love him. They have statues and shit in his honor.

The Americans entered the war at the end of 1941, and we were actually fighting the Germans in 1942. Also, most westerners don't attribute the victory to "General Winter." It was a combined effort between the USSR, UK, and US on all fronts that led to the end. It's extremely ignorant to say the USSR, or any nation, won WW2 by themselves.

Played a bit of the beta, seemed like the multiplayer was a little unbalanced...

I love you Brad! That said this is the first quicklook in a long time where I turned it off not because I was bored, but because I was frustrated. A lot of that seemed like bombcast talk with very little to do with the actual game. This is not the best game to play and talk about it at the same time clearly, but sometimes it seemed like you were just talking without paying attention to the game at all.

This looks really cool. But I think the pricing is a bit questionable; $60 for the main game and four gameplay altering DLC packs in a game you would think is played competitively. Watching this made me want to play CoH1 and, surprisingly, I don't already own it. Bummer.

Talking about duds left from the WW2.

This happened while I was away on vacation in my home town of Munich. I couldn´t believe it at the time in 2012.

Bomb exploded in Munich in 2012

Interesting talk, terrible quick look. Wish I stopped watching at some point. Maybe if there is an enough of a sink in metrics on a video Brad starts paying attention on quick looks. Love the guy, but he just doesn't fit the format...