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FEATURE OF THE WEEK: Company of Heroes
The latest trends, tips and reviews

TOP PC GAMES

Top 10 PC games sold the week of Sept. 24-30 Title 1. World of Warcraft (T) 2. Company of Heroes (M) 3. The Sims 2: Glamour Life (T) 4. The Sims 2 (T) 5. Lego Star Wars II (T) 6. Sim City 4 Deluxe (E) 7. Cars: Radiator Springs (E) 8. The Sims 2: Business (T) 9. Star Wars: Empire at War (T) 10. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 (E)
Provided by NPD Group/NPD Funworld Electronic Software Rating Board (ESRB) guide: Early childhood (EC); Everyone (E); Everyone 10 and older (E10+); Teen (T); Mature (M); Adults Only (AO); Rating Pending (RP).
The sights, sounds of war
Company of Heroes THQ; Windows PC; $49.99 ESRB Rating: Mature (17+) (blood and gore, intense violence, strong language) Score: 4.5 out of 5 By SHAUN CONLIN and DAVID BOWRING Cox News Service hough you may not have high expectations for the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, that topdown, micromanagerial, point-click-drag-drop armyoverseer thing thats always compelling but rarely dazzling, THQs WWII-flavored Company of Heroes offers a pleasant surprise. First, its really good and really good looking. Its also really long, taking you from D-Day to, well, without spoiling it, that end bit youll probably recall from 10th-grade history classes. But within all that are some innovations that take RTS to the next level. Theres genuine emotion here, so your soldiers dont come across as mere units to be tossed around like grains of sand in your giant, exploding sandbox; theyre your boys. They scream amidst the mayhem, lament the loss of their fellows, even call them out by name sometimes. If your PC has the horsepower to run Company of Heroes at its highest level of detail, you can zoom right in and see their facial expressions amidst the buildings and terrain being blown to bits. Several scenes in the campaign convey the anger and berserker rage that the characters in this RTS cinema are feeling so well that its eerie. But its not all flash, bang and hand-me-a-tissue
Publisher Vivendi THQ Electronic Arts Electronic Arts LucasArts Electronic Arts THQ Electronic Arts LucasArts Electronic Arts

Nintendo

Clubhouse Games Nintendo; Nintendo DS; $34.99 ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) (simulated gambling) Score: 4 out of 5

THE 411

News and developments from the game industry
New service bypasses traditional channels
Valve Softwares digital content delivery and management service, Steam, continues to gather, uh, momentum with the recent addition of top-tier Activision games, including three Call of Duty titles and the Western shooter, Gun. Other recent additions to the Steam library include the critically acclaimed Psychonauts, Ubisofts Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Monte Cristo Games city-building sim, City Life. Earlier this year, Valve partnered with PopCap games, so casual titles like Bejeweled and Zuma sit in stark contrast to Valves hard-core offering of Half-Life 2, CounterStrike: Source and the like. Bypassing traditional retail channels altogether, Valves Steam service allows users to purchase and install games directly via the Internet (along with free demos and video clips) while the user account and the games associated with it can be accessed from any computer, anywhere. More info at www.steampowered.com.
fare; there is a lot of gameplay innovation here as well. The striking visuals are matched by an artificial intelligence (AI) system that makes units behave like, well, like they have intelligence. If you give units an attack move order, for example, they wont just totter off blindly toward their objective like so many lambs-to-the-slaughter RTS units of yore; on foot or in vehicles, they advance, use cover, take good shots and actually try not to get killed. The sounds of war are also brought home with frightening veracity When a. well-defended position is assaulted by a large enemy force, for example, your ears ring from the barrage of high-fidelity artillery the , menacing clank of tanks, machine gunnery and the screams of the fallen. Three main resources manpower, munitions and fuel to build your war machine are doled out from headquarters and acquired from capturing strategic points. To make things a bit

more interesting, each resource point you capture has a different value, so its not just about taking territory its about taking the right , territory. Naturally conquering/lib, erating Europe (you can play as either the Allies or the Axis) involves many a splendid opportunity to blow stuff up. Practically everything you see can be destroyed (subject to your guns) and in areas of intense battle, it is. You might start in a city square surrounded by houses and other domestic landmarks, for example, but by battles end, it more resembles an arbitrarily razed parking lot. At the end of the day , Company of Heroes is still an RTS game and still wont appeal to everybody. However, if you already have a reluctant fondness for the otherwise exhausted genre or have shied away from it simply for the methodical micromanagement of it all, waiting for something more innovative, more immersive or more engaging, wait no more. Company of Heroes is the best RTS yet. Good Fair
Nintendos fogey-friendly Touch Generations brand is taking off like wildfire for good reason; it appeals to the 90 percent of gamers who arent considered hard core. So while the Sonys and Microsofts of the video-game world might interpret disinterest in Grand Theft/Halotype games as disinterest in video games as a whole, Nintendo continues to release games for people who think of games as a diversion, not a lifestyle. Though it can be said that Microsoft has made significant headway with the casual gamers market with the quick fix Ockhams Live Arcade, it is Nintendo that continues to lead with new offerings like Clubhouse Games for the Nintendo DS. Clubhouse Games is basically a collection of parlor games and retro fluff, blackjack, backgammon, bowling and the like 42 games, all told interfaced in that unique and intuitive way of the DS with a stylus and a button or two. None of them is particularly enthralling, but all of them offer the solid diversion they intend. Poor

TIP OF THE WEEK

Playing secrets to help you master your favorite games
While in-game with Company of Heroes, hit Ctrl + Shift + tilde (~) to open the developer console, then enter restart to restart the game; abortgame to abort it; ee_bigheadmode 1 (or 0) for Big Head Mode on/off, FOW_Toggle for Fog of War on/off; and setsimrate <number> to set the game speed (default is 8). Hit Ctrl + Shift + tilde (~) again to close the console.

ASK THE EXPERT

Having troubles with your game? Post questions on Shaun Conlins message board at www.ageofplay.com/forum. Responses may also appear here in the coming weeks.

The ratings:

Excellent

Very good

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate for Cox News Service. (800) 255-6734. *For release the week of October 16, 2006.