It’s an open secret that the RTS or real-time strategy genre is a tough nut to crack. Unless you grew up fingering the big red nuke button in Command & Conquer, or your head resting on the emperor’s ass in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, you probably don’t Know some of the intricacies and quirks of this hardcore video game type.
For example, you might not know how to manage a base, gather resources, train units, or even how to navigate between enemy fortifications such as an army that has been “hacked” for 12 turns and is building a siege-ready army that the world has never seen before.
There’s a lot to learn in these games, so we don’t send two or our inexperienced, wide-eyed recruits into an epic WWII combat sim with only (lack of) common sense and a vague desire to survive…we can you?
As you can see in the video above, even some clueless British recruits can barely survive in Company of Heroes 3. Developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Sega for Windows, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, the real-time strategy game is understandable and readable — even for two newbies with little knowledge of the genre.
Maybe it’s the way games map to play on consoles on tablets, maybe it’s the great work Sega and Relic have done in rendering the famously console-unfriendly genre well on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, But something happened that allowed our unlucky couple to finally (sort of) overcome the challenge.
It’s a credit to the design, UI, and control scheme, really, two soldiers with little to no combat experience can figure out how to blast enemy units out of cover with bazookas within minutes of playing the game, and give them The frontline bases seize oil reserves.
While the initial effort seemed doomed, Jim and Connor’s foray into the Mediterranean theater of World War II … went fairly smoothly. Yes, it was a disaster from the start, and if they actually did military service, they would be stripped of any honor and dishonorably fired. But, in the end, Connor – at least – managed to pick himself up and push forward, showing the Axis forces the true courage of the British.
Company of Heroes 3 is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC – if you learn faster than us idiots, it might make you a general (not a big question, really) .