It's quite rare for me to find a RTS game that i enjoy, normally i find it's just a case of camping it up in your base with lots of defence and then going out once you have a huge army and destroying the other guy.

Company Of Heroes is a refreshing change, your are forced out in to the map to get resources, you might be thinking how is that different from Warcraft 3 where you have to get a new gold mine or more trees. But Company of Heroes doesn't have you set up whole new bases by these resources, it has you capture a flag and only build defensive buildings, obstacles and a barracks.

If the above has reminded you of Warhammer :Dawn Of War then that is because they are created by the same people only COH is a more refined version and on a newer engine.

The main game sees you play as a American unit in World War 2, the whole game is based in France and all missions are based on actual Operations and Battles, although i can't confirm accuracy of the battles as i am pretty sure the Americans didn't just churn out rifle men to have them capture a flag in a field.

Resources come in the form of flag control points, Munitions, Manpower and Fuel. Taking a flag also gives you control of that area on the map. Often you will need to take all the areas to complete a mission, one because it will mean you have destroyed the German forces protecting that area and two because you will need the resources to build up a strong enough force to complete your objectives.

Graphically this is impressive for a RTS game, it includes HDR lighting and had brilliant physics on all objects. The level of detail on the models for each unit is almost as good as most FPS games, and the damaged that the surrounding terrain and objects can take is fantastic.

When your rifle squad is pinned down by an enemy machine gun in a building, having a tank roll up and blow the building to pieces is truly satisfying. The Building will not just explode or collapse like so many other RTS games would have but it will take damage, loosing parts of walls and often making the enemy more exposed, depending on where it is hit.

A major gameplay feature is Cover, all units in the game will search for cover from enemy fire. There are two types of cover, one is destructible and light so your units may take more damage or the cover will be destroyed and the other is heavy where your units are much safer and there is little risk of the object they are behind being destroyed. You might tell your units to move to a gateway, if they then spot the enemy your units will move on their own to hide behind the wall either side of the gate firing around it to hit the enemy.

Cover can make the world of difference to a small battle as if your units have cover and the enemy does not, it's quite likely that you will win the fight even if they have superior numbers.

The other good feature, that also makes this a much more tactical game than just a normal run of the mill RTS is the use of Flanking. Tanks in COH all have different armour ratings on different sides of them. The front of a tank is it's strongest armour and even another tank firing on it will do little to no damage. The sides will take more damage but can still withstand a few hits, and the back is the weakest part of the tank where two good shots from another tank will cause it to go out of control or explode.

With tank battles it's important to flank your opponents tanks with anything that can fire at them, before they destroy your tanks. You can control which direction your tanks face when you move them so you could send them to either side of an enemies tank and have them both facing it, this would mean if the enemy fires at them you will take little damage but both tanks will be able to hit the sides for more damage. Or in a best case scenario the enemy will turn to face one of your tanks, allowing the other to hit square in the back destroying it easily.

Company of Heroes is the RTS game that i would recommend to anyone that owns a PC that can run it. Even on it's lower settings it looks pretty good and runs fantastically. I am not really a big RTS fan but it is one of the best games i have played in a long time.