By Alec Meer on April 14th, 2009 at 4:06 pm.
The second expandalone (YES I SAID THE DEVIL-WORD) for Relic’s sumptuous World War II RTS hit our excited PCs late last week. I duly celebrated Easter by killing a lot of men in it. Is it the meaty expansion we’ve been praying for, or money-grabbing tokenism? My hammer of ultra-judgement falls on it below…
When a game’s called ‘Tales of Valor’ and over two-thirds of its running time has you playing as Nazis Germans, it’s hard not to wonder if there was some sort of breakdown in internal communications. We’re by now fairly accustomed to and comfortable with occasionally stepping into Axis jackboots in World War II games, but to have an entire game place them largely centre-stage and thus the de facto heroes of the piece is a really odd decision, to say the least.
Quite obviously, it’s not that Relic are all secretly Axis fanboys, or that they think their players are. Perhaps its genuine boldness, or a decision that these were the most interesting tales to tell, but frankly I’d imagine it’s more just one symptom that Company of Heroes perhaps isn’t being as finely-managed as it once was, now Dawn of War II’s the new baby. Similarly, this standalone expansion (though it does plug into existing COH installs if you have ‘em) is a strange hybrid of inventiveness and incoherence.
As a result (or perhaps a cause), it’s remarkably hard to identify quite why Tales of Valor exists. I’ve personally settled, poisonous little cynic that I am, on there being a dictat from above that more COH would make money, so someone threw something together. It’s not a failure, not at all – it’s simply a little pointless.
The main conceit is the titular stories of heroism – three short singleplayer campaigns, of around 90 minutes each, presenting some of World War II’s most theoretically thrilling scuffles within a heavily-scripted, heavily-cutscened series of linked levels. Lately, Relic have been experimenting heavily with ways to reinvent singleplayer strategy, as it’s something that often struggles to make the same impact as the multiplayer component. Dawn of War II’s campaign borrowed heavily from Diablo, Soulstorm tried the Total War thing, and now this is about the most tightly-scripted RTS ever made. No glorified skirmish maps here – every enemy, and every enemy movement, is pretty much pre-determined.
In fact, it’s closer to the excellent Men of War than Company of Heroes – base-building is excised in most of the maps, and there’s a gentle focus on acquiring weapons and ammunition (for special powers rather than units’ guns) from what’s already on the map. While it’s a more fulfilling approach than the original COH’s singleplayer, these two styles of strategy don’t quite mix seamlessly here, and it’s yet another affirmation that MoW is a far better singleplayer game than CoH has ever been. The blend of organic, what-you-see-is-what-you-can-use with abstract, icon and resource-based special abilities is uncomfortable. Imagine a first person shooter where grenades were an intangible, invisible essence that gradually replenished over time, rather than something your character had x number of.
While it’s very different to Dawn of War II’s weirdy-beardy semi-RPG singleplayer, there is a similar sense of disjointedness, of a collection of strong ideas that don’t mesh together as smoothly as they could. And honestly, when 3 hours of your 4.5 hour game are spent playing as the Nazis Germans, you’re either astonishingly confident or perhaps not entirely clear what the audience wants from a WW2 game.
None of this is to say it’s not enjoyable. There’s a likeable, natural flow to it, in most cases each new sub-level of the three tales being a reaction to some misfortune that has befallen your small army. The opening Tiger tank campaign begins with your being all-conquering in your steel goliath, then moves onto a desperate escape when the tank’s trashed and its surviving crew need to flee for safety from a rampaging Allied force. There’s no investment in the characters – all blandly stiff-upper-lipped spouters of exposition or military derring-do – but there is in the situation. You remain on the same map throughout a campaign, its shape and content evolving as the war over it progresses. Unlocks carry over between sub-levels, so throughout those 90 minutes you’ll escalate from having a handful of guys with popguns to levelling the land with artillery strikes called in from off-screen. It’s more satisfying than the hard-stop, reset the tech tree come the next level approach of traditional RTS singleplayer.
That said, there really isn’t a lot of variety in how you best the challenges, so replay value is essentially nil, bar possibly tackling the campaigns again at a higher difficulty. Again, this is a curiously purposeless expansion, ultimately coming across almost like an appetiser for COH’s main course rather than the filling desert it should be. It should be profiteroles – instead, it’s Nazi-themed garlic bread.
Perhaps that’s the point – it’s an easy-in to lure new players into picking up COH and Opposing Fronts, rather than aimed at veterans. The didacticism and relative ease of the campaigns would, at a guess, very much appeal to an older gamer who wants a neatly encapsulated World War II battle rather than the complexity and micro-management of COH vanilla. That title is key – this is not war, but war stories.
So, really, it doesn’t expand upon the Company of Heroes experience enough to be an advisable sale to long-term players. You’ll have a better time playing team versus with some chums, creating a unique and far more epic narrative rather than simply experiencing the arbitrary defeats and victories Tales of Valor has pre-determined you’ll experience. If you want a glorious, involving and hellaciously explosive singleplayer World War II experience, Men of War is absolutely where to go.
There is, though, one thing that makes this a little more noteworthy to CoH old hands. Amongst some token new multiplayer units and maps is the Stonewall mode (there are also new hero-centric and tank-centric modes, neither of which are quite as elegant) – defending a fixed, pre-built base against escalating waves of invading Nazis Germans. Every building lost brings you not so much closer to defeat, but rather loses you access to specific units and upgrades. You can survive the loss of a few, but each one that crumbles is a harrowing punch the gut.
It can be played solo, but it’s best tackled as a co-op game – an Alamo moment, stood shoulder-to-shoulder against impossible odds. It’s as thrilling gruelling as Company of Heroes gets, but it alone is not enough to justify the asking price if you’re not fussed about the campaign gubbins. It’d be ideal, and celebrated with tears of joy, as patch content – but that’s unlikely, outside of third-party mods.
It’s unlikely that this is Company of Heroes’ last gasp, given how long Relic strung out Dawn of War 1 for, and the menu system is now positively setup for plugging in new micro-campaigns as and when. If buying Tales of Valor wins you access to new ones for free, it’s an investment worth making – 90 minutes of 1940s explodey fun every now and again.
Perhaps best, then, to wait and see what happens, and what Relic’s plans for COH are. It still looks amazing, it still plays with satisfying polish and freshness, and there’s still a crapton of WW2 it hasn’t documented, so there’s scarecely a need for a sequel just yet. Let’s hoping this good-natured mild misfire is just Relic treading water while they decide exactly what COH’s next move proper is.
Tales of Valor is available over Impulse or Steam now. For far too much money, quite frankly – fortunately it’s much cheaper from etailers such as Amazon and Play.
“It’d be ideal, and celebrated with tears of joy, as patch content.”
I was thinking the same thing about the multiplayer. Looks like Relic still has a few things to learn from developers like Valve. At least for fostering a healthy community, I imagine ToV will make a wad of cash for them either way.
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Eh, I liked it. And the new units do really make multiplayer easier, especially if you roll with the allies.
The campaigns too are actually fun. It took me a couple tries to get through the original campaign, but with these I could sit down and blow through one in under two hours which I preferred.
And yes, the new game modes are incredibly fun.
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“Nazi-themed garlic bread”, snicker.
I think the multiplayer modes sound like a neat break from the norm (survival modes are the new co-op darling), but aren’t worth the current asking price. The single player content is interesting, but not what I’m looking for from CoH any more, I’d probably buy Men O War for that type of thing.
If there’s a good Steam sale I’ll pick this up, and encourage the rest of the posse to do the same. I’m guessing Cyrenic is thinking the same thing?
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“When a game’s called ‘Tales of Valor’ and over two-thirds of its running time has you playing as Nazis, it’s hard not to wonder if there was some sort of breakdown in internal communications.” – Perhaps Relic are just trying to reclaim its original meaning, valour just means the virtue of great bravery after all. Unquestionably evil yes, brave, also yes.
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I seriously doubt that playing axis is because relic isn’t managing CoH that well anymore. If anything it is simply because the community wants to play more Axis.
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Are you uncomfortable playing as the Wehrmacht.
“honestly, when 3 hours of your 5 hour game are spent playing as the Nazis, you’ve to question who you think your audience are.”
I don’t know what your trying to say here. Who do you think GTA’s market is? 3/5 hours may as well be 50/50. I don’t see how that’s any different from Opposing Fronts or the multiplayer component, which is split 50% content wise.
Anyway, it’s nice to see developers trying something a bit new even if it doesn’t work out perfectly. Early RTS games were not all that great either. Maybe with more refinement Relic could put out something to really re-invent the single-player RTS.
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Also Relic have always been clear in pointing out the difference between Nazi’s and German soldiers. It’s a key distinction which is easier to come to terms with as the period becomes history rather than a recent event.
AFAIK the characters you play aren’t Nazi’s (at least that was true in the first expansion).
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The Steam price is absurd, but I still ended up paying it as I’d just come back from 2 weeks in Oz and am far too impatient when it comes to CoH. I’ve only played a couple of the Tiger Ace missions so far, and am definitely enjoying the DoW II style action in the familiar CoH universe. Can’t wait to try Stonewall, which by all accounts is the best thing about the expansion. Apparently the skirmish AI is much improved as well – any comments on that?
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It’s probably an attempt to balance things a bit too – this technically brings the CoH campaigns to an even three Allied, three Axis. Although the Axis still get short shrift with how much shorter TOV’s campaigns apparently are.
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@ Andrew Dunn
it may balance the single player but it shafts the multiplayer by reverting half of the 2.4 patch that came out a week or so before. :(
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Did anyone bother to count how many “Nazis” are there in the article? I lost count..
I’d wonder after 60 some years we could already have a game from the German side without being automatically Nazi-sympathiser. But of course there’s still room for another Omaha beach landing and some honest American Valor!
No, I’m not German… I think them dudes whip themselves even more.
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@ Rabbitsoup: I’m well aware of that! I do love me some CoH multiplayer so I’ve kept abreast of the balance controversy recently even though I’ve only just installed ToV (it’s patching as we speak).
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I myself, I always play on the nazi side on the WW2 games. I kind of like the style and feeling of the german weapons. And his tanks are better. If theres something that can be on the “german side” withouth any nazi simpaty is a videogame.
Other thing is that the axis side deserve some simpathy, nothing for the politics, some for the deaths. 65.000 civilians in Dresden. 140.0000 civilians in Hiroshima. There are some rules on war against killing civilians?
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Piispa- 4. If you’re going to object to the point, at least be a grown-up about it. Granted I’m using the word as short-hand for “Germans fighting on behalf of a Nazi government”, but I had hoped that would be taken for granted.
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Does anyone know how the new units play and are they TOV only?
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Alec, you’ve got to admit, it’s nothing new for CoH. The original Axis campaign emphasised very strongly that the characters were fighting for their homes, families and fellow soldiers, not the Nazi agenda.
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To clarify, as people seem to be misinterpeting: I am not saying that playing as the Germans in COH is weird/bad. I am simply saying that it is highly unusual to have the majority of the game put you in Axis shoes, given its main audience is British and American (even the cover image suggests the 3 campaigns are Brit, US and German, interestingly). It’s the kind of thing that I’d expect to usually be ditched due to focus group/marketing feedback.
Anyone know of any games that do similar, incidentally?
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Tei:
The axis deserve sympathy?! Since when? They initiated the war in the first place!
Pearl Harbor was bombed, 2,500 people killed plus 1,200 (all including civilians) BEFORE any declaration of war reached the US from Japan.
What about the bombing of London? What about the thousands of war atrocities committed by both the Japanese and the Germans? Does “Holocaust” mean nothing these days?
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Perhaps you shouldn’t suppose what the audience want. I want a good RTS, the uniform of my little soldiers doesn’t mean fuck for me. WW2 strategy genre does have a great history of playing every side of the conflict, because strategy gamers play them not “roleplaying” of being an american killing nazis, but because they like the strategy.
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@Alec: Sorry, didn’t mean it as offensive as it came. I myself happen to be so sick of WW2 games that always play out the same last few months of the war that makes me wonder if the war started 6th June 1944 and was fought between Americans and Germans. So, now when we finally start to see fresh point of view of the same old story and it gets slammed as “Nazi fanboys”, it did struck a nerve.
Aren’t we over it enough already to admit that the average German soldier fought as much for his home and family as Tom Hanks?
And don’t you think the war-gaming audience is a bit broader than US and Britain?
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You’re being far more offensive by claiming I’ve called anyone a Nazi fanboy, man. Read the piece and my comments again.
Personally speaking – a third tale featuring the Russians would have been both a more interesting and more thematically-balanced choice, in my book. I’m as sick of Band of Brothersiness as anyone else. Sadly they’re not pre-existent in COH, and this is an expansion that relies very heavily on recycling existing content.
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“Anyone know of any games that do similar, incidentally?”
No, but slightly related:
In Dawn of War, the main focus of the campaigns are the space marines, who are practically the SS division of a fascist theocracy.
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I feel its a giant waste of money for $30. It should’ve been priced at $15-20 as kind of COH sampler for newbies. I don’t like playing multiplayer RTS so the 3 hour single player experience infuriated me.
Also the direct fire feature is plainly not as fun as Men of War’s, it felt extremely awkward because I could only move the tank using the right click and you just aim the turret instead of full control over the unit like Men of War.
I wish the Tiger campaign was a bit longer or even as a new faction based upon a few Tiger tanks and pioneer panzergrenadiers.. idle wish from the Flames of War nerd in me.
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Regarding the Russians, I was always surprised that COH included the British before the Russians. Regarding the Nazi thing, hm, you seem to fight for a pretty dirty cause there. Sooo, Time to get back to a Vietnam Egoshooter, or an RTS dealing with the Iraq war, I guess.
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Not if the focus group had comprised existing CoH players, who are surely the main market for this. Your point about Russia is well taken, but obviously that would have taken a lot more work than this expansion did, and presumably they’re saving it for the last expansion, if they do plan to release more.
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It’s disappointing to see Relic putting out something so unambitious. Given how short on content both this and DoW2 are, I have to wonder what’s going on in their offices. ( Staff cuts? Special project? Homeworld 3? THQ leaning hard on them for sales? )
It’s still Company of Heroes though, so it’s still the best RTS around and I’ve bought a copy. The best thing that’s happened to CoH so far this year is the latest patch which has brought new maps ( mostly community made ) and improved AI, which makes for some great Skirmish mode fun.
While I do very much enjoy playing the Wehrmacht in largely context-less multiplayer and tabletop games ( they get so many wonderful toys ), I can’t say that I’m very comfortable playing them in context. I could just about stomach the Panzer Elite campaign in Opposing Fronts because I love the game so much, but machinegunning American and British paratroopers left me feeling pretty bad, frankly.
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Before this all descends into historical argument, I bought the expandalone thinking it would be like OF and have significant single player campaigns. So its a bit of a let down there.
But the mere fact that it comes with all the multiplayer content of the previous games, means I’m trying to get my non COH playing friends to get it.
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Ginger – that’s the thing, I don’t think it is aimed at COH vets so much as it is newcomers. It’s almost a relaunch of the game for a more casual audience (as poe_if says, it includes most of the previous games’ multiplayer content, which is essentially charging old players for stuff they’ve already got). It’d surely be far more multiplayer focused otherwise, rather than the tightly hand-held singleplayer stuff it predominantly is.
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True, true. The difference there is that you’re buying it to play with that specific war-toy. Here the marketing/expectancy (and box art) has a Private Ryan flavour to it – so, again, discovering how much of it is Axis content is surprise more than anything.
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Alec: I really don’t think it is aimed at newcomers. For a start, the single-player content is very, very short compared to the original game and OF. Second, strategy newcomers are not renowned for their love of competitive multiplayer, which is what CoH is all about. Third, it’s a second, overpriced expansion to a several year old game. How many new players do you realistically expect to bring in with such a release?
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@Alec re: Playing germans
Blitzkrieg comes to mind, where the name itself implies the content. Doesn’t fill all the requirements as it was made by germans for a predominantly german audience I suspect.
As far as playing Germans in CoH specifically, the campaign I enjoyed the most of all was the German one in the first expansion. Compared to the dismal British campaign it was stellar.
In regards to playing Germans in WWII themed games in general I’ve always favored it. Not because I’m tall blue eyed and blond (I am), but because the scenarios in more focused war games lead to a higher reliance on the discrepancy of numbers between the antagonistic nations. The Germans were almost invariably fewer but had better small unit leadership, training, equipment and motivation, questionable as the source for that motivation can be. All this leads – for me, as a war gamer – to more interesting game play.
If the German side had 3 times the greater number of tanks and heavy guns and twice the number of personnel I would probably enjoy the GB/US sides more. I still play them, but not over and over again.
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Oh and..
Shameless should-have-been-patch ripoff “Expansion”
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Blitzkrieg was made by a Russian studio, actually.
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Ginger – the reason it’s an exandalone not an expansion is specifically to bring in new players. If it was solely for vets, it’d be cheaper and reliant on the parent game. Fortunately for Relic/THQ, the vets are prepared to pay full price for it nonetheless :(
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The problem with playing germans in WW2 games is that the Wehrmacht was pretty instrumental in the Holocaust. It’s impossible to seperate the militaric actions of the Nazis from the genocide. Wherever german soldiers conquered, the trains deporting millions to the death camps weren’t far behind.
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@Okami: I disagree. Is posible to play a game as a game, and the play the “gray team” like you play the “red team” or “blue team”. The german’s on most RTS games are just the “gray team”. Green dots on the minimap. No one game show that you comment. Of course, what you comment may be true, but games are detached by that reallity, and making that lecture is uncalled for.
Also, you can read a book of the holocaust, from the point of view of a nazi guy. That may help you understand that these people where not monsters, but normal people. Normal people could be that cruel. The nazis where normal people. And that is a truth and a lecture that, of course, normal people dont want to do.
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Okami, that’s why you rarely play German Wehrmacht soldiers transporting Jews to the trains, as rarely as you play US soldiers bombarding civilian villages with Napalm. And I don’t want to equate anything here. It’s just that in Wargames, you somehow always play the valiant and grand soldiers, and never the morally bankrupt, just-following-orders murderous ones.
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@Tei: I’m german, I know all about Nazis. My grandmother still hates jews and sees nothing wrong with killing them. Apart from that, she’s a lovely lady and a really great cook.
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@Okami: My point is better show by Jochen Scheisse comment.
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WW2 genre is a dead horse, bla bla bla… as Yahtzee put it more workhours has been put into WW2 games then the real war, la la la, and then the only different you can do is to play Nazis. Or you know God forbid move to a different timeline or invent your own timeline.
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Ok…. I bought MoW and Tales of Valor the same day…. (last week)
Haven’t even OPENED Tales and can’t stop playing MoW…
And we have a winner… Men of War !!!
(Relic screwed the pooch on COH after the first initial release.. they didn’t create Russian, Japanese, Italian armies and wanted to do strange episodes like this)
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The WWII era non-Nazi, non-directly and consciously holocaust faciliating bog standard German Wehrmacht were often, technically speaking, utter shits too;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
Though in terms of war crimes no one gets away clean, not the Red Army, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_atrocities#Soviet_Union
Certainly not the English speaking world, though our crimes are more bomb related, what with Dresden and the two atomic strikes.
Personally I enjoy WWII and well, war generally, as a setting, though it might be interesting to play a title that reflects the soul numbing, terrifying drag of it. Survival horror on the Eastern Front? A Bioshock clone were choosing the Bad route involves butchering prisoners and buddying up with the NKVD to secure better supplies?
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“And honestly, when 3 hours of your 5 hour game are spent playing as the Nazis, you’re either astonishingly confident or not entirely clear what the audience wants from a WW2 game.”
This is so ridiculously off the mark. Coh’s carefully crafted design and attention to detail are what make it special. These values have been channeled into each of the factions despite the lack of an axis campaign in the original. Whether its the over zealous battle cries of your grenadiers or the cuss-laden croaks of combat engineers, you’re endeared to them all the same. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the active community wouldn’t enjoy axis being explored further.
I also thought the way the stories were driven was incredibly well-executed. The cutscenes are absolutely stunning. It’s true the campaigns too short for any real characterization but they certainly leave the impression of something you could engage with.
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Check out reviews and videos of the game if your not too sure.
payday loans
payday loans no credit check
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Or, if we start chalking up atrocities, google JCS 1067. That one’s a real cutie.
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Perhaps the balancing issues are too time costly to justify it as an expansion, but when are we going to get the Russians in CoH?
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play.com £17.99 Free Delivery
amazon.co.uk £17.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK
steam £29.99
impulse £27.99
And still people lap it up mmmm lets get ripped off to show fanboi love????? makes no sense.
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When are we going to get a Canadian only campaign or the exploits of Indian conscripts ? :)
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Relic’s support has been crap lately, remember they took a month to hot-fix a game breaking bug in DoW II (that broke a bunch of other stuff) and just started properly fixing the bugs. They promised more maps after release to make up for their scant 7 multiplayer maps, over two months they provided a single map.
I wouldn’t expect any of this games flaws to be improved with patches by relic and expect mini-campaigns to just wishful thinking.
Avoid this game, stop buying Relic products. They’re are showing a trend or release buggy/unfinished products and not supporting them.
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I stopped buying relic’s games after they tricked me into buying three dawn of war games : P
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So not only have they ripped off a significant chunk of gameplay from Soldiers: HOWW2, they also ripped off one of the best German campaign missions!
Great…
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Relic is a trash developer now. No longer intent on making quality games that stand the test of time, they’re focusing on the quick loot grab from the ADHD set and moving quickly on. And when they don’t support their buggy games, they can always blame GFWL or Steam.
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I really don’t think Alec Meer understood the point of Tales of Valor. It’s quite clearly aimed at newcomers to the series.
It’s incredibly cheap compared to most games (especially if you’re coming from the console side), adds several less competitive gamemodes to easy people into what ToV is there for: Get them to join the multiplayer, which is what ToV buyers are already set up for since it gives them access to all the factions.
It’s the Company of Heroes Starter Package.
It’s also pretty clear that Alec is rather stricken with Men of War – but calling it, and it’s utterly atrocious voiceovers, the better singleplayer game is pure lunacy. It’s a better sandbox game and a better coop game – but a better singleplayer experience it is not.
@SpessMahrine, I assume by “not support their buggy games” you mean their patching frequency which is factually higher than even Blizzards?
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I’m not sure if I like being called an “older gamer” (get offa my lawn!), but this is the first CoH-related writeup I’ve seen anywhere that really lined up with how I felt about that game. I tried really hard to enjoy the original CoH, but when I realized that it was more of a spiritual relation to Command and Conquer than to Close Combat — i.e., a pretty standard RTS with a coat of World War II paint — I lost interest pretty quickly. Showing my age, I guess…
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Seriously? Bitching about playing as jerry? When i play multi i hit random, they are just little computer mans. Also, i like not being able to plan too much. Men of war will have seriously eaten into coh’s profits if the world has any justice. I feel sorry for relic thq are in shit and are probably riding them hard. But if they make a great homeworld 3 (this means full 3d movement is required) then all is forgiven.
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@DK
I can’t tell if you’re serious or trolling.
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Having just read Antony Beevor’s fine book on the fall of Berlin, it’s pretty hard to assign moral superiority to any side of that sad conflict. Yeah, Nazis are basically horrible, but I can’t say as I’m a massive fan of the rape squads on the other side either. Not to mention the whole grabbing and subjugating Eastern Europe part by Stalin’s gang.
I think these things work best when you just click the mouse and leave the moral calculus behind — if at all possible.
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It’s a bit of a ripoff for those of us that have the previous games (okay, a TOTAL ripoff), but a very nice package for anyone that has only one or none of the previous games. But they new units should be available for free in a patch. Bad Relic!.
Ok, now give us Russians and Japanese, and CoH2!. No more expansions, damn it!
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Shouldn’t Godwin’s Law have kicked in before now?
No-one in WWII are blameless, Allied and Axis killed lots of people – the Western Allies even doing so by forcibly ‘repatriating’ refugees back to Soviet hands, many of whom were simply executed on the spot.
BTW, I always play the Axis side, from Squad Leader through HPS to Steel Panthers and The Operational Art of War. It’s all just little counters in a game, right?
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well, then.
since the sight of Germany or Germans being portrayed as dutiful, brave or even virtuous — and yes, unfortunately for many of the agenda-driven folks even here, many of them were during those times — i look forward to the day when i’m able to play a member of the North Vietnamese Army or Vietcong. i’d enjoy playing a mission where my objective was to investigate reports of US troop movements around My Lai, or to sabotage shipments of unusally large amounts of chemical defoliants.
or maybe for a change of historical scenery, an Indian insurgent or Afghan soldier fighting against the policies and wars of Lord Bulwer-Lytton.
or were those conflicts too morally ambiguous?
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There is a reason German soldiers looked for Us and British squads to surrender to. USSR wasn’t much better than Nazi German but they were a ally we needed if we were going to defeat Hitler. Also he kind of stirred up that hornet’s nest on his own ;P He should have taken a lesson from Napoleon and left it alone.
If you take a quick look at total military death tolls from WW2. The Soviet Union lost 10,700,000 soliders where as Nazi Germany only lost 5,533,000 (only?) The United States only lost 416,800 , UK only lost 382.700. What am I trying to get at with these numbers? Soviet Union conscripted everyone they could and sent them to fight off the Nazi’s regardless of their wishs regardless of tactics and if we’re to believe the movie Enemy at the Gate they didn’t even give half their soliders guns to fight with and shot them if they retreated! I dunno if that is true but it could be. I’d rather play as regular German army unit that a Soviet commander any day.
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Well playing as any patron from WW2 could be designated as poor taste if the games were designed as such.
I think just playing a game as a good side or bad side has no moral repercussions. A game based on history which is what it is.
Now if you had a specific missions set playing as Nazis, to go in to a village and kill off all the “Jews” (aka named bystander civilian npcs). This would be over the line.
Or playing as Japanese where you have to sneak into a US outpost, capture the officers and return to your camp only to end the mission by beheading them in the name of the Emperor. What about guiding a small Russian team of infiltrators into the outskirts of Berlin, mission = Rape at least 25 women and kill 50 men / children.
Anyways… Relic did copy Soldiers and Faces/ Men of War for that fact… look at the Direct Control as an obvious clue.
I used to like COH and Relic but I agree agree that Relic has gone down hill fast since the original COH.
(And btw I like playing all sides of WW2… good or bad… not for the moral aspects but for the historical learning experience of their tactics and armaments of that time period)…
/SOAPBOX
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The Soviet Union did conscript everyone …
It was a live or die situation.
Either you lived for the preservation of the USSR…
Or you died as a traitor.
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Quick question,if I buy this solo,will I have acces to all armies?
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If you think about it the whole War Gaming genre is kind of morbid. I wonder what veterans of WW2 and victims of it think about the whole thing. I know some of them have been interviewed for games so it may not bother them to much. I think they will be remember as heros and villians (depending on which side they were on) for a long time to come. Will they last as long as the ancient Greek heros that still have movies made about them ? :) I think so, they are real heros, for the most part.
I can’t remember his name but there is one solider from WW2 that was fighting for American or Britian (can’t remember) then he was captured by Nazis, taken to Eastern front where he was rescued by Russians, then he faught out the rest of the war as a russian solider and has medals of honor from both countries ;) Talk about a war hero!
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Wacky… I don’t think so… you would have to have all 3 expansions…. but in this one I assume you have American and German and fixed units at that rate.
Your better bet is to persue Men of War or Blitzkrieg.
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You’ll get all the armies for skirmish and multiplayer if you buy Tales of Valor. All you miss out on are the singleplayer campaigns from previous games (Caen, Market Garden, Normandy).
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I always want to play all sides in a conflict, particularly in an RTS. Frankly, CoH not shipping with a Wehrmacht campaign was every bit as disappointing to me as Dawn of War not shipping with Chaos, Eldar, and Ork campaigns. (And look! They did it again with DoWII.)
Nazis are admittedly a bit closer to home than the psychotic demon worshippers of Chaos, but it’s the same principle.
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There are new maps too. If, like me, you just play an RTS for skirmish against AI and mu;tiplayer, then extra MP maps that you know everyone has are like gold dust.
So far I’m intrigued by the new game modes, although havent tried the tank one yet, but having new maps and new units for multiplayer is cool.
I don’t see why they arent also working on a russian expansion though. Hardcore COH pklayers would happily have bought this AND a bigger eastern front expansion.
If you don’t already own COH this is a huge bargain, albeit its stupidly cheaper to buy it on disk from amazon, then just insert the cd key. I havent even needed to take the disk out the box. Stupid retail/online price discrepancy crap.
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Look, the whole point of strategy games is to play the armies, not the political agenda of their masters.
There are other sorts of games for that.
These arguments are ridiculous.
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To me. Tales of Valour seems to be an attempt by Relic to wring every last drop of money out of the franchise and the current engine before they let it die.
They have behaved with breathtaking incompetance towards CoH since just before the release of OF. They have constantly screwed over the community, the fact that its a mostly single player expansion is telling. The fact that they add a few new units, make them overpowered and make you buy the full game to get them screams that they are trying to blackmail the harder-core into buying it.
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Er. The Soviet Union was in a desperate situation. Morale was essentially at rock bottom. Arguably, without conscription, barrier troops, and everything, they could not have held out – and even with those, it came crazy close.
Before we all go whitewash Germany’s actions on the Eastern Front, remember that 11 million Russian civilians died. The German army killed two Russian civilians to every Jew.
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I’m glad Relic isn’t afraid to put the German armies in the player’s control. It’s a break from the norm, and there’s so much more unexplored territory there rather than just having another Call of The Duties of Heroes That Are Also Brothers In Glory.
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Finally being able to play the axis is nearly worth buying the expandalone-thingy – but seriously, 3h ?! Like 0,5h play time per GB ? 25€ for 3h ?! I don’t think so.
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‘When a game’s called ‘Tales of Valor’ and over two-thirds of its running time has you playing as Nazis, it’s hard not to wonder if there was some sort of breakdown in internal communications.”
I think that’s some of the most callous, short-sighted, incredibly dogma’d things I’ve ever read on this site. Firstly, don’t you play as the Wehrmacht and not the “nazi’s”? Unless the game circulates around your Waffen-SS troops, I’m pretty sure you’re commanding farmers, blacksmiths, factory workers, and general populace of Germany. Secondly, who the hell are you to determine which army in a 60 year old war is deserving of having it’s victories valorous?
Do you see what you’re doing here? You’re saying an entire populace is unworthy of praise for how they fought, bled, and died on a battlefield.
I’m so sick and tired of people carrying some bizarre propaganda from 60 years ago that anyone born in Germany/Austria/etc is some kind of slime-dripping monster that rapes women and eats their children. My best friends grandfather was a civil engineer from Gratz in Austria, a non-NAZI party member, who won the Iron Cross for fixing a vehicle under fire, being hit mutiple times, then driving the wounded wehrmacht soldiers under his care from Stalingrad, ultimately saving their lives.
For you to decide he’s some worthless sub-human because the leader of a political party that took over his country was a NAZI is the most ridiculous and pregudiced thing you could possibly say.
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“I am simply saying that it is highly unusual to have the majority of the game put you in Axis shoes, given its main audience is British and American (even the cover image suggests the 3 campaigns are Brit, US and German, interestingly).”
It’s main audience is going to be WW2 nerds. And WW2 nerds (myself included) are just as interested in the German side as any other. They know who’s going to buy ToV, and rightly decided to add in lots of Axis content.
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“It’d surely be far more multiplayer focused otherwise, rather than the tightly hand-held singleplayer stuff it predominantly is.”
I think you got it backwards bud. I spent a couple hours beating the campaigns, and then have been playing the new multiplayer modes ever since, just like everyone else. In a couple months no one will care about the 3 mini-campaigns, but people will still be playing Panzerkrieg, Assault, and Stonewall.
It’d be like calling CoD4 “predominately singleplayer.”
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@Erlam: I don’t think anybody wants to say anyone is “sub-human,” given the disturbing history of that term. It’s a question of motivation and complicity. Recent scholarship has pretty clearly and overwhelmingly shown the Wehrmacht’s important role in atrocities and the widespread ideological motivation of its soldiers. The relationship between the party (and Hitler as a figurehead) and the citizens of Germany was complex and dynamic, but it’s not accurate to say that the people were terrorized into support or that power was “stolen.” I dunno. Strategic bombing was and is awful and the sufferings endured by the Germans during the war are not debatable, but it’s worth remembering that those sufferings became the main subject of post-war memory, and not the sufferings inflicted on others.
It’s important to remember that the depiction of the decent soldier as opposed to the Waffen SS was itself motivated by the politics of the Cold War. The West decided it needed to rearm Germany and in turn needed to provide a palatable basis for a German military. It’s strange how things seem so distant now; it’s hard to remember that things like Bitburg or the Waldheim affair meant something. But so much nonsense was done in the name of the Cold War. Blah.
@Aufi, I’d like to see any of those games. Or maybe a level where you play as . It comes down to identification, I think. Nobody wants to think of him or herself as bad, and so nobody wants to play a bad protagonist. And nobody wants to lose; games are supposed to be enjoyable. Most games just let you have it all and set everything right. If you didn’t, you would have failed, which would violate the pleasure principle (hah). How then to deal with the fact that bad things happen? There’s only second-person, unfortunately. Call it Kane and Lynch syndrome – playing a “morally ambiguous” character just means being an asshole.
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Sorry. Should have said “where you play as
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Oh, come on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson,_Jr.
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Interestingly Men of War is a game in which you actually play as the Nazis, because the German campaign frequently puts SS soldiers under your command.
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“Interestingly Men of War is a game in which you actually play as the Nazis, because the German campaign frequently puts SS soldiers under your command.”
Ouch.
So does every game that gives you command of a Tiger or Panther. Please read up the difference of the SS and Waffen SS as it couldn’t be any bigger and avoids any more senseless discussions that are related to blatant uneducation in this topic.
Now how about cutting a bit of the N-word and discuss the main issue?
Thanks!
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So does every game that gives you command of a Tiger or Panther. Please read up the difference of the SS and Waffen SS as it couldn’t be any bigger and avoids any more senseless discussions that are related to blatant uneducation in this topic.
Um, admittedly I only went as far as Wikipedia (I know, lazy resource for lazy people), but the Waffen-SS were always kept under Nazi party control (Himmler) as the parties armed wing, even if the Army had front-line command for the war.
Unless the game makes an explicit statement that the SS soldiers are conscripts, then they are pretty safely definable as being ‘true’ Nazis.
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I think the main point in the review wasn’t so much that playing as “the nazis” was morally wrong more that he didn’t think it was “target audience”.
Probably better to disagree with him on this point (as I do :P) than to go down the moral route which I don’t think he was arguing. “Your stick has been graspeth at the wrong end”
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Give us CoH: Eastern Front and I’ll buy it instantly. I will give this a pass though despite my CoH cravings. Tales of Valor seems somewhat similar to Men of War, which doesn’t warrant a new purchase.
I’m fine playing the “evil” side, as long as I’m not forced to execute people and get told it’s something good. I don’t even wanna count the number of people I’ve driven over in GTA 4.
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Why does any WW2 game or franchise descend into pointless arguments about WW2 being done to death?
It was the last global conflict with clear moral issues and significant technological advances. The weapons, ships and vehicles of the war are iconic. I would much rather play that period than yet another modern warfare game with M16 wielding marines gunning up arabs in some desert.
Just stick to the topic and stop bashing the sub-genre for existing.
As for ToV – I am a big CoH fan and I agree with the main points in the review. ToV is kind of nice but also kind of lacking. It really does feel like something cobbled together to try and bring in new players, rather than a full expansion like OF was.
I wish I could get my head around Men of War, but it just seems too fiddly and the voice acting makes me want to bash my own brains out rather than put up with it for more than a few minutes.
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Unless the game makes an explicit statement that the trooper was a party member, we can pretty safely say they’re not. Since 1940 Waffen-SS recruited conscripts and even fully foreign divisions and by the end of the war over half the force were non-German.
Leadership of the organization were Party members, troopers were not.
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Messed up quotations and edit seem to be misplaced, the previous was an answer to this:
“Unless the game makes an explicit statement that the SS soldiers are conscripts, then they are pretty safely definable as being ‘true’ Nazis.”, by aldo_14
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Piispa; at the moment I’m trying to root out the composition of the Waffen-SS on the western front at the end of the war (to be really nitpicky, I think foreign Waffen-SS divisions had flags on their helmets rather than SS-symbols). However, one thing regarding foreign divisions is that i’m pretty sure quite a few of these (about 125,000 on the western front) would be volunteers, and from that you can insinuate some degree of pro-nazi leanings. I’m not sure where the 220,000 eastern european volunteers were used.
I’ve been able to glean that some foreign conscript divisions were created for propaganda rather than military use (i.e. British POW-formed divisions). i’m not sure on the German volunteer/conscript ratio.
That said, from a gameplay conceit I’m pretty sure we can at least presume any Waffen-SS unit in the game will be all-German (French, Spanish etc would be needlessly confusing for a player), so it removes the foreign W-SS issue.
All that aside, as a (initially volunteer) organisation which was an express entity of the Nazi party, and declared as such (sans conscripts) at Nuremburg, I think if you can label any one German military group as ‘Nazi’ then this’d be the one. Also, if you are controlling a Waffen-SS unit in the game then there’s an argument that you’re representing (in a sense) the Nazi party (although it’s equally valid to say you’re representing the Wehrmacht).
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@aldo_14:
We can only guess the individual reasons for any volunteer to join the German ranks but I can definately say that the minorities previously under Soviet rule in Eastern Europe and Russia had some strong resentment towards the Soviets which created a strong will to join the fight on the German side when Operation Barbarossa begun.
After Finno-Russo Winter War ’39-’40 ended there was some definite will for rematch in the air which resulted a Finnish Battallion under Waffen-SS “Wiking” division and I can pretty surely say the Party members among those were quite limited and the main reason for joining was the eagerness to fight Soviets. I can imagine same kind of voluntary base from Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Hungarians and whoever joined the ranks of foreign Waffen-SS divisions from the Eastern Europe.
What comes to Nuremburg and war crimes, they are unquestionable but examples from the opposite can be found even from the high ranks of the Waffen-SS:
Felix Steiner was the first Commanding Officer of the “Wiking” division after founding, a traditional prussian soldier since the first World War, decorated as innovative and skillful commander who was imprisoned but cleared of all charges in Nuremburg.
Even the high ranking German officers, even in the Waffen-SS, included those who only did their job – the professional soldiers, not child eating monsters.
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This thread stopped being fun when it stopped being about CoH and turned into a discussion on the morales of the Wermacht and the atrocities of WWII.
I think we’re all aware of what happened, although one could argue the new generation are even more distanced from it then us older folks. Having said that, let’s talk about the game, eh?
I’m loving it. Do I have problem with most of being about the Axis? Nah, I love that. They generally had better gear anyway so it’s great to play that side of it, especially with the Tiger and Direct Fire, oh my. I would have liked to see Ruskkies though, especially as the very first cut-scene of Tiger Ace has T-34s.
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Oh and yes, I think as Cliffsky said, the value in this for me is more about the added maps and new game types for co-op play. That’s why I bought it and that’s why it will keep me from the debacle that was console-oriented DoW2.
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” Also, if you are controlling a Waffen-SS unit in the game then there’s an argument that you’re representing (in a sense) the Nazi party (although it’s equally valid to say you’re representing the Wehrmacht).”
If you just try hard enough you find a nazi in everyone and anything. Just go on excluding every non-nazi and you end up with a bunch of nazis, what a surprise? There is a simple fact, you didn’t need to be a nazi to be a (forced) member of the Waffen SS or Wehrmacht and thus simplifying all to nazis is just non-sense, whatever you try to exclude. Even a lot of hardcore ideology nazis (mostly militarists) were against what the nazi-government did and turned their sides when they found out. The nazi ideology in general was not evil (excluding that an ideology itself is not positive and mostly pervert), but it was used by an evil government that stopped people from seeying the evil things they did by using this ideology.
If there is no glorification of the nazi government or represenation of their ideology displayed in a game than you are simply representing the soldiers and nothing else. The term nazis is simply inappropriate and doesn’t belong to any halfway serious discussion.
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“I think we’re all aware of what happened, although one could argue the new generation are even more distanced from it then us older folks. Having said that, let’s talk about the game, eh?”
Yes, please.
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It’s quite funny, actually, that the majority of WWII games see Eastern Front as a second-thought at best. Anyone who cares to take more than a passing interest in that war’s history knows that it’s the Eastern Front that held the most important events. I just can’t tell how it’s possible to call your game ‘historical’ in even a smallest way and still hold British-American actions in higher regard than those of Russians.
The British ran from German troops in 1940, betraying Belgium on their way out. They kept playing a I-bomb-you-you-bomb-me game till re-entering the European theatre in 1944. Even than, without Russians intensifying their advance effort after a plea from their allies and thus making Germans withdraw the majority of well-trained troops, the land drop should have failed. Hell, it nearly failed even with second-line German conscripts defending the beach! The war ended with Russians taking Berlin, an action deemed impossible by allied top command. The list goes on and on. The only guys who seem to remember it all were those who have made Close Combat 3, unfortunately.
I understand quite well that the majority of the target audience of such games lives in the West, so this biased approach to history is to be expected. But still, it’s such a waste to dedicate WWII games to Normandy ad nauceam instead of using Russian operations as a background. Just leave out all the nonsense about piles-of-bodies approach to warfare that Russians are believed to follow, please, it’s complete BS.
2prowlinger – can you read anything about WWII and USSR that’s not US standard Coldwar-era propaganda textbook? You definitely should try to before spilling ignorance all over the place.
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I mean, there’s plenty of stories to be told about the Eastern front to be sure, but decrying history because a game is about operations by Western powers seems to be one more out of bitterness that your pet game didn’t get made than out of logic.
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Honestly, after a dozens of games playing out an American paratrooper of the 101st battling over French farmhouses and/or a infantryman landing on a beach and blowing heads Tom Hank’s style?
There’s five years of war on the European continent and those two poor soldiers get to be the players’ only protagonists again and again.
“World War” could be re-labeled as “a Battle in France around Normandy area”.
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OK, maybe I’m a bit harsh there. What I say is, you can’t say that you have described an elephant after painting a verbal picture of the trunk and leaving it at that. Same goes for portraying Normandy as a greatest battle ever held in WWII.
Anyway, may comment is mostly regarding other posts here and the general situation with WWII games, not the Tales of Valour itself.
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I think calling them Nazis is not inappropriate, because they fought for the Nazi Administration, and a lot of them were Nazis. The question whether those people were capable of acts of heroism and valour even if they fought in the name of an evil cause is a question that’s been discussed for so long in Germany, I just feel this forum will not contribute anything significant to it.
Here’s another story that makes up the whole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Battel
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It’s odd. Having spent about half of last year actually doing some heavy WW2 research for something or another, it left me with pretty much total contempt for pretty much all sides*. With the possible exception of the Polish.
EDIT: That said, I remember feeling a bit like Alec in the last CoH. Playing Market Garden from the German side, mowing down brainless rush-mobs of paratroopers felt wrong in a game as cinematic as CoH. It didn’t help that I went from watching A BRIDGE TOO FAR to playing it.
KG
*Which is a different thing from saying “They’re all the same”.
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That thing about Paris being liberated by a completely white division was interesting. The problem being that the only completely white French division was an armoured division somewhere in Afirca.
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Well, an American is going to understand playing Tom Hanks or Band of Brothers, fighting the Nazis in France, getting down to the nuance a lot more quickly than he’s going to understand Russian culture, the way the Russians conducted operations, and what made them tick. In fact, the American probably has a lot more in common with the German from a cultural perspective than he does a Russian.
Consider the fact that there are plenty of hex and counter wargames about the Eastern Front strategically, operationally, and tactically. It’s not that it’s completely ignored, it’s just that it doesn’t mean much to us and we can’t really make it interesting and relate to it without delving into the caricature ala “Enemy at the Gates”.
If you look at Eastern European developers, you’ll find that their ww2 games tend to feature the Russians and the Eastern front prominently.
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And there’s always Stalin Versus Martians.
(Nazis were martians, yes?)
KG
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I like to think of Stalin Versus Martians as ww2 if the Russians were on LSD
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No, Nazis are from the Moon, still hidden on the dark side waiting to return.
Eastern European developers do tend to make most of the today’s surprising jewls, whereas West is stuck on the sequel market.
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So the newly patched AI is a very good thing. Hard is hard and expert is you can’t make mistakes or your butt is the ai’s. Tiger ace is fun but easy on normal. Stonewall is quite hard if your team (all friends) are unused to it. Can’t wait to try the other multiplay types.
The new models are a nice touch too – calling them models is wrong though given they can vastly alter the whole play style of your chosen side. Giving PE stukka’s for instance…
Bought from hamazon for <18 squids and feel it is well worth the money at that price. I get the new models, new multiplay options and 3 mini campaigns.
At first I didn’t want to play the operation market garden as like KG I didn’t like the idea of killing the “good” guys. I got over it quite quickly and realised – its a game. Really guys, it IS just a game, please try to relax and treat it as such and leave the angst ridden axis =? evil arguments for the pub.
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Why the hell do we need to relate to them? It’s a strategy game, not a novel.
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And there are plenty of grand strategy games that include the Eastern Front, plenty of operational wargames, even tactical wargames.
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Actually yeah, I’m surprised more people haven’t commented on this, but the Axis faction, both Wermacht and PE, now get amphibious units whereas the Allies don’t. (Unless I missed something?) Surely that’s a hideous imbalance?
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Hrmm, with regard to the whole ‘Is there enough content?’ issue…it is very tempting to accuse relic/THQ of being cheap and hiding their cheapness behind a cloud of pretention.
I am not sure though, knowing game developers (the species) quite well I suspect that there were a raft of good ideas for the game, some of which might even have evolved the genre slightly, and that they were not implemented for time/cost/marketing/prioritisation reasons. What they were left with was a blatant feature rip-off and some boats. Rather sad.
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The puzzling emphasis on how WEIRD it is to play as the Nazis really ruined this review for me. In Vanilla COH there was no Nazi campaign, so in terms of number of hours of single player, the Allies are still WAY ahead. I must have been playing a different game to you because I quite liked the German banter – it was the American NO WE WON’T EVER RETREAT OK WE’RE RETREATING! WELL I’M NOT BECAUSE I’M A MANLY MAN! I WILL DIE HERE! OK NOW LET’S CHARGE BACK IN TO THE EXACT SAME PLACE! I GUESS IT WAS CRAZY TO CHARGE BUT SOMEONE HAD TO BE FIRST! which I found difficult to relate to. I don’t know if it was intentional but Relic seem to be writing the Germans as savvy tacticians and the USA as gung-ho maniacs winning by throwing wave after wave of rambos into combat.
This add-on is excellent, it’s just overpriced for the amount of content. No one seems to be mentioning the AI overhaul, but they play a lot more intelligently now – in a 4 human vs 4 AI battle I went Wehrmacht with Defensive Doctrine and set up a strong point with bunkers, mortars, nebelwerfers and 88s at a key crossroads, only for the AI to throw a massive attack onto the point that lasted something like 15 minutes of constant battle and nearly broke me by sheer attrition. Luckily my compatriots who were Blitzkrieg and Terror managed to turn the left flank while they were preoccupied with my centre. The main weakness of the AI is still its poor ability to react to decapitation strikes. But whatever – I enjoyed the original, I enjoyed OF, and ToV is a small but worthy addition – just a bit overpriced for what you get.
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Everybody wants to see Russian fun in the next add-on, but any chance of the next one being something from Africa, or perhaps even some ANZAC stuff?
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I Wanna see a game about Chinese fighting off Japanese Invasions or Australians fighting Japanese warships, maybe we could play a game where you go to work for 10 minutes then an Atomic bomb falls our your head and the words “You lose” pop up and then the game deletes itself and half of your hard drive with it, we could call it “A-bombed”
I could see the origonal post about not feeling right playing as Germans in a game called Tales of Valor.
Valor (virtue ethics), roughly “courage in defense of a noble cause”
Germans of any type were not defending a noble cause and there is no German then or now that can say otherwise. It is never noble to invade another country for no good reason. Poland, France, Russia, it goes on and on. This has nothing to do with the Nazi party and what they were up to, just invading other countries to conquer them is wrong in and of itself O.o Who were the German’s liberating France from ?
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The french??
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They were taking it from the French not libertaing it ;P It isn’t like they were gonna give it back once they removed the curropt evil government or something noble like that.
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They Liberate france from the french then the english take it from the germans and rename it new england every one is happy.
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@Serondal: “Valor (virtue ethics), roughly “courage in defense of a noble cause””
My dictionary says:
“valour
Noun
1. Value; worth
2. Literary great bravery, esp. in battle [Latin valere to be strong]
3. Strength of mind in regard to danger; that quality which enables a person to encounter danger with firmness; personal bravery; courage; prowess; intrepidity. ”
So your nazi-rant goes to waste – nothing about the cause (even if it’s a German fighting for his family), just being brave while facing danger.
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