Feral Interactive have ported yet another excellent game, and this time we are graced with Company Of Heroes 2!
It’s yet another game I've been highly excited about, and I another I never had a chance to play before. Having it on my favourite platform is fantastic!
Disclosure: Key provided by Feral Interactive, but this will not affect my thoughts, it never does.
Note on expansions: Standalone Expansions like Ardennes Assault and The Western Front Armies will be ported in future, but currently won't work as they are games themselves and need to be ported. I will be personally buying them when they are ported, as I'm loving it.
Multiplayer note: The online multiplayer is Linux->Linux only, no cross-platform multiplayer. They did explain this in more detail here. See below for the rest of the report.
Gameplay video
Here’s me playing horribly as usual! You can see some gameplay from the Skirmish mode, so I don’t spoil any of the campaign for you. I’m still pretty new, so I realise I wasn't doing too well. What I did find extremely fun, was throwing a charge at an enemy occupied building, after which they fled and the building was levelled to the ground—awesome stuff.
Note: Some music tracks were removed from the video, as we got hit by a copyright claim on the video, I really hate greedy rights holders.
Initial Thoughts
I know I was excited about Shadow of Mordor, but I’m actually finding this game just as damn exciting to play. We have a lot of turn based strategy games, but not a lot of high class traditional real time strategy games like this.
The campaign is exciting that’s for sure, it’s not often I’m completely sucked in right away, but the cutscenes showing the brutalities of war really hook you in. The story seems like it’s done pretty well, and the cutscenes aren’t too long to get in the way of the actual gameplay. The cutscenes are really quite nice though, and have kept my attention completely.
I've been rather enjoying taking out tanks with mines, and laying waste to enemy troops with grenades and flamethrowers. I've had plenty of my own men lay down their lives for their country too though, as I'm apparently the worst commander in the world.
The game has a pretty good cover system, where your soldiers can take cover behind walls, in trenches and behind sandbag covers. It’s a little tricky to get it right, as sometimes a soldier or two can be left standing while the others are in cover. Cover can easily be overcome with the right tactic, like some well placed grenades, molotovs or heavy weaponry. So, everything has a counter in this game, which is great for strategy buffs like me.
I’ve been playing it on Standard difficulty, as I want there to be some sort of challenge, and so far it’s proving to be the right balance for me. I almost got overrun in the second mission, so I think for people new to the game Standard is probably a good fit. The third mission difficulty does get a bit higher, and my first attempt at it had me completely overrun in quite a short time by tanks and armoured vehicles.
I am finding it difficult to manage my various different squads at times, as the minimap doesn’t really help you see the difference types of squads, only your units. I would prefer it if the minimap had icons that correlated with different squads, but that might make it too cluttered, which is why they probably went with simple colours. I kept losing where my anti-tank weaponry was at a glance, so that’s something that’s troubling me so far.
At one point it tells me a certain type of squad can be upgraded with submachine guns, but it doesn’t tell me how. I get really annoyed when games do this, as it creates frustration points for me. Eventually I found a small icon in the middle panel, and this allowed me to upgrade them, but it would have been nice to have an arrow point to it or something like that.
Blowing up tanks, mowing down infantry with heavy machine guns, and blowing up icy paths with TNT is all in a days work.
The ability to play against the AI and others online is going to be fun. I tried a 1on1 against the AI in the Custom Game section, and it worked great. I can see myself enjoying this rather a lot, I can’t wait to play some of you!
Learning curve aside, I think it’s a fantastic game so far, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the campaign.
Port Report
To get this out of the way first: The FPS isn’t the best, but this is a real case of me not even noticing unless I’m staring at the FPS counter. I’m saying that genuinely, as I know you can tell the difference easily in an FPS game, or like we saw with Dying Light, but not here.
Generally in the heat of combat it hovers at just above 30FPS, but it will still remain playable and smooth. Being smooth and playable is the key here, and I’m happy enough with CoH2 right now. You do need to remember this isn’t an FPS where pin point accuracy and super high FPS would always needed, this is a strategy game. Having a high FPS is one thing, a playable and smooth game is different.
The game is smooth though, silky smooth for me. I’ve run up quite a number of hours in the game now and I have found that everything works as expected.
I have played through a bunch of the campaign, and I’m finding it to be much more solid than Shadow of Mordor which did crash a few times for me, but so far CoH2 hasn’t given me a single issue. I don’t often get to say that, so I’m extremely happy about the stability of the game so far.
Benchmarks
Please note, that the CoH2 benchmark mode is a stress test, so in-game will actually be higher. This is noted by the game itself:
It's also highly advisable to quit the game and reload it when changing any graphical options. Or else you will get weird results and performance.
Specifications
Ubuntu 15.04, Intel i5 4670K, Nvidia 970, 16GB RAM.
There is no predefined “Ultra, High, Low” for an overall setting, so these are what I picked below.
High settings
1920x1080
Image quality: High
Anti-aliasing: Low
Texture Detail: Higher
Snow Detail: Medium
Physics: High
Minimum: 31.56FPS
Maximum: 67.46FPS
Average: 41.95FPS
Medium settings
1920x1080
Image quality: Medium
Anti-aliasing: Low
Texture Detail: Medium
Snow Detail: Medium
Physics: High
Minimum: 33.11FPS
Maximum: 67.73FPS
Average: 45.64FPS
Low settings
1920x1080
Image quality: Low
Anti-aliasing: Low
Texture Detail: Low
Snow Detail: Low
Physics: High
Minimum: 39.68FPS
Maximum: 67.26FPS
Average: 49.52FPS
Remember, the benchmarks are to be taken lightly, as the game will run better since the benchmark is a stress test.
Check out Company of Heroes 2 on Steam. It's got a big sale on the main game too, so now is the time folks!
It also looks like you can try it free for the next three days, so give it a shot! Not 100% sure if that works or not, as I can't test that myself.
System Requirements
Minimum Requirements
OS Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) or SteamOS
Processor 2.6 GHz Intel Core2 Duo or equivalent.
RAM 4GB
Hard Disk 35GB
Graphics 1GB*
Internet Broadband Internet connection
Input Keyboard & Mouse
*Requires an Intel Iris Pro graphics card or an NVIDIA 600 series graphics card or better with driver version 352.21 or later.
Recommended Requirements
OS Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) or SteamOS
Processor 3.4 GHz Intel i5 quad core or equivalent.
RAM 8GB
Hard Disk 35GB
Graphics 4GB**
Internet Broadband Internet connection
Input Keyboard & Mouse
**NVIDIA 760 series card or better with driver version 352.21 or later.
The trouble with this release is that I’m now not sure which Feral port I love more. Bring on more games Feral! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It’s yet another game I've been highly excited about, and I another I never had a chance to play before. Having it on my favourite platform is fantastic!
Disclosure: Key provided by Feral Interactive, but this will not affect my thoughts, it never does.
Note on expansions: Standalone Expansions like Ardennes Assault and The Western Front Armies will be ported in future, but currently won't work as they are games themselves and need to be ported. I will be personally buying them when they are ported, as I'm loving it.
Multiplayer note: The online multiplayer is Linux->Linux only, no cross-platform multiplayer. They did explain this in more detail here. See below for the rest of the report.
Gameplay video
Here’s me playing horribly as usual! You can see some gameplay from the Skirmish mode, so I don’t spoil any of the campaign for you. I’m still pretty new, so I realise I wasn't doing too well. What I did find extremely fun, was throwing a charge at an enemy occupied building, after which they fled and the building was levelled to the ground—awesome stuff.
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Direct Link
Direct Link
Initial Thoughts
I know I was excited about Shadow of Mordor, but I’m actually finding this game just as damn exciting to play. We have a lot of turn based strategy games, but not a lot of high class traditional real time strategy games like this.
The campaign is exciting that’s for sure, it’s not often I’m completely sucked in right away, but the cutscenes showing the brutalities of war really hook you in. The story seems like it’s done pretty well, and the cutscenes aren’t too long to get in the way of the actual gameplay. The cutscenes are really quite nice though, and have kept my attention completely.
I've been rather enjoying taking out tanks with mines, and laying waste to enemy troops with grenades and flamethrowers. I've had plenty of my own men lay down their lives for their country too though, as I'm apparently the worst commander in the world.
The game has a pretty good cover system, where your soldiers can take cover behind walls, in trenches and behind sandbag covers. It’s a little tricky to get it right, as sometimes a soldier or two can be left standing while the others are in cover. Cover can easily be overcome with the right tactic, like some well placed grenades, molotovs or heavy weaponry. So, everything has a counter in this game, which is great for strategy buffs like me.
I’ve been playing it on Standard difficulty, as I want there to be some sort of challenge, and so far it’s proving to be the right balance for me. I almost got overrun in the second mission, so I think for people new to the game Standard is probably a good fit. The third mission difficulty does get a bit higher, and my first attempt at it had me completely overrun in quite a short time by tanks and armoured vehicles.
I am finding it difficult to manage my various different squads at times, as the minimap doesn’t really help you see the difference types of squads, only your units. I would prefer it if the minimap had icons that correlated with different squads, but that might make it too cluttered, which is why they probably went with simple colours. I kept losing where my anti-tank weaponry was at a glance, so that’s something that’s troubling me so far.
At one point it tells me a certain type of squad can be upgraded with submachine guns, but it doesn’t tell me how. I get really annoyed when games do this, as it creates frustration points for me. Eventually I found a small icon in the middle panel, and this allowed me to upgrade them, but it would have been nice to have an arrow point to it or something like that.
Blowing up tanks, mowing down infantry with heavy machine guns, and blowing up icy paths with TNT is all in a days work.
The ability to play against the AI and others online is going to be fun. I tried a 1on1 against the AI in the Custom Game section, and it worked great. I can see myself enjoying this rather a lot, I can’t wait to play some of you!
Learning curve aside, I think it’s a fantastic game so far, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the campaign.
Port Report
To get this out of the way first: The FPS isn’t the best, but this is a real case of me not even noticing unless I’m staring at the FPS counter. I’m saying that genuinely, as I know you can tell the difference easily in an FPS game, or like we saw with Dying Light, but not here.
Generally in the heat of combat it hovers at just above 30FPS, but it will still remain playable and smooth. Being smooth and playable is the key here, and I’m happy enough with CoH2 right now. You do need to remember this isn’t an FPS where pin point accuracy and super high FPS would always needed, this is a strategy game. Having a high FPS is one thing, a playable and smooth game is different.
The game is smooth though, silky smooth for me. I’ve run up quite a number of hours in the game now and I have found that everything works as expected.
I have played through a bunch of the campaign, and I’m finding it to be much more solid than Shadow of Mordor which did crash a few times for me, but so far CoH2 hasn’t given me a single issue. I don’t often get to say that, so I’m extremely happy about the stability of the game so far.
Benchmarks
Please note, that the CoH2 benchmark mode is a stress test, so in-game will actually be higher. This is noted by the game itself:
QuoteThe performance test allows you to preview your currently selected settings in a graphically intense worst case scenario.
It's also highly advisable to quit the game and reload it when changing any graphical options. Or else you will get weird results and performance.
Specifications
Ubuntu 15.04, Intel i5 4670K, Nvidia 970, 16GB RAM.
There is no predefined “Ultra, High, Low” for an overall setting, so these are what I picked below.
High settings
1920x1080
Image quality: High
Anti-aliasing: Low
Texture Detail: Higher
Snow Detail: Medium
Physics: High
Minimum: 31.56FPS
Maximum: 67.46FPS
Average: 41.95FPS
Medium settings
1920x1080
Image quality: Medium
Anti-aliasing: Low
Texture Detail: Medium
Snow Detail: Medium
Physics: High
Minimum: 33.11FPS
Maximum: 67.73FPS
Average: 45.64FPS
Low settings
1920x1080
Image quality: Low
Anti-aliasing: Low
Texture Detail: Low
Snow Detail: Low
Physics: High
Minimum: 39.68FPS
Maximum: 67.26FPS
Average: 49.52FPS
Remember, the benchmarks are to be taken lightly, as the game will run better since the benchmark is a stress test.
Check out Company of Heroes 2 on Steam. It's got a big sale on the main game too, so now is the time folks!
It also looks like you can try it free for the next three days, so give it a shot! Not 100% sure if that works or not, as I can't test that myself.
System Requirements
Minimum Requirements
OS Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) or SteamOS
Processor 2.6 GHz Intel Core2 Duo or equivalent.
RAM 4GB
Hard Disk 35GB
Graphics 1GB*
Internet Broadband Internet connection
Input Keyboard & Mouse
*Requires an Intel Iris Pro graphics card or an NVIDIA 600 series graphics card or better with driver version 352.21 or later.
Recommended Requirements
OS Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) or SteamOS
Processor 3.4 GHz Intel i5 quad core or equivalent.
RAM 8GB
Hard Disk 35GB
Graphics 4GB**
Internet Broadband Internet connection
Input Keyboard & Mouse
**NVIDIA 760 series card or better with driver version 352.21 or later.
The trouble with this release is that I’m now not sure which Feral port I love more. Bring on more games Feral! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
0 Likes
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Mountain Man Aug 28, 2015
Quoting: datuxSo I gave it a shot with my AMD GPU and the newest catalyst drivers. As expected and announced by Feral it's not working at all (crash after the first game logo screen). I'm a bit disappointed in the ports if their they are only usable for Nvidia users.Really no point in owning an AMD GPU in Linux until AMD gets their drivers sorted out. It's an unfortunate situation and kind of gives Nvidia a monopoly on Linux, but that's how it is at the moment. Hopefully AMD steps up their game soon.
4 Likes, Who?
Great news, but in my case 28 gb is just too much, its like 3 days just downloading a game on a laptop.
Last edited by edo on 28 August 2015 at 3:06 am UTC
Quoting: LeonardKHm, what happens on highest possible settings on Full HDIs it on windows? I would expect at least the same behavior than the windows version, but if it doesn't support it neither, then we shouldn't expect too much, its just a port of the windows version after all.
Also, is this game multi-monitor-able on Linux?
Last edited by edo on 28 August 2015 at 3:06 am UTC
0 Likes
Mblackwell Aug 28, 2015
There's definitely something going on with the framerate if you use steam's FPS overlay. You can see that the main menu itself hangs out at 60fps (which, it's a menu so why's that?), and then after running the benchmark its framerate will drop to the 40's and 50's... in the menu. Yep.
And yes Vsync is disabled in both the game and Nvidia control panel.
The benchmark itself seems to get some micro stutters during loads from time to time (nothing major) but about halfway through the fps drops in the 40's and doesn't really recover.
For this sort of game anything over 30 should be fine for playability but it does all seem odd.
(Note: Ubuntu 15.04, i7 4770k@4ghz, GTX 970 w/ 355.06, and 8GB RAM)
Last edited by Mblackwell on 28 August 2015 at 3:21 am UTC
And yes Vsync is disabled in both the game and Nvidia control panel.
The benchmark itself seems to get some micro stutters during loads from time to time (nothing major) but about halfway through the fps drops in the 40's and doesn't really recover.
For this sort of game anything over 30 should be fine for playability but it does all seem odd.
(Note: Ubuntu 15.04, i7 4770k@4ghz, GTX 970 w/ 355.06, and 8GB RAM)
Last edited by Mblackwell on 28 August 2015 at 3:21 am UTC
2 Likes, Who?
I ran some preliminary tests with my R7 370 with RadeonSI. The game works just fine, as in it doesn't crash before or during the performance tests, but the performance seems to be rather low. I set everything to minimum except the resolution and I get 20 FPS average in the performance test. It does run at a fine-ish 27 FPS every now and then during that test though so it could maybe possibly be playable. I have yet to play the actual game so I will need to experiment with that a bit more.
I'm quite sceptical of the game running on Iris Pro though.
I'm quite sceptical of the game running on Iris Pro though.
0 Likes
This will probably be the first Feral game that I won't buy. RTS isn't my favourite Genre and the performance is sub-par to say the least (26-34 FPS, 1920x1080, middle settings, no AA on a Rig with a i5-4670k and a GTX 760). Shadow of Mordor didn't have the best performance either but it was at least better than this one. So I guess I'll wait for Ferals next port. Hopefully in a different Genre and with better performance.
0 Likes
Quoting: d10sfanI understand the thinking of lower fps dosen't matter on a rts, but it is noticeable when it drops really low. I also wonder if Virtual Programming would have gotten the same free pass in regards to this that Feral seems to
Just a note about this, there is no such thing as a "free pass" here.
The difference between VP and Feral ports is that I can play all Feral ports for hours on end, where as all VP ports have major crash & hanging issues for me. I agree performance isn't top here, and it was the first thing I noted in my port report, like I said, no free pass here.
0 Likes
TheRiddick Aug 28, 2015
You can download the main game and play for free for the next day or so. For anyone wanting to try it out on Steam, its 18gb download however.
I'm getting it to test out the performance at 4k on my 980GTX, was surprised the Dying Light Demo performed quite well on high settings with 4k. (blur/AA off obviously)
I'm getting it to test out the performance at 4k on my 980GTX, was surprised the Dying Light Demo performed quite well on high settings with 4k. (blur/AA off obviously)
0 Likes
Stupendous Man Aug 28, 2015
I'm getting 20-25 fps on all low (textures "higher" ) with an i3 at 3,30GHz and a factory overclocked nVidia GTX660 with 2GB VRAM. I'm sorry, but that's just too low, and I can't get myself to buy this game. I know my PC is rather old and not the fastest one around, but this is the only game of the over 80 games I have in my inventory which performs so poorly, and it's not even a particularly good-looking game.
The last game I bought, Shadow Warrior, runs at a solid 60 fps on highest graphics!
Sure, CoH2 game might be playable at 25 fps, but I had expected to be able to run at least medium settings with 30+ fps on this hardware. CoH1 ran a lot better for me in Wine (40+ fps on an older graphics card and high settings).
Last edited by Stupendous Man on 28 August 2015 at 8:56 am UTC
The last game I bought, Shadow Warrior, runs at a solid 60 fps on highest graphics!
Sure, CoH2 game might be playable at 25 fps, but I had expected to be able to run at least medium settings with 30+ fps on this hardware. CoH1 ran a lot better for me in Wine (40+ fps on an older graphics card and high settings).
Last edited by Stupendous Man on 28 August 2015 at 8:56 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
This is the last game I support, ported by Feral without looking twice.
I've had a wonderful time with XCOM and Total War, although I use an unsupported gpu-manufacturer.
But now I really think that Feral has too much on their plate and that they are (currently) not up to the task of quality porting anymore. If a game from 2012 that runs perfectly fine on Windows is not really comparable on Linux by one of the best supported gpus out there (nvidia 970) I just think they have too much work in porting too many titles, hence can't deliver the quality I am used to.
I supported them by buying from their store, but I'll play the game on Windows where it actually runs, despite an AMD card.
Last edited by Maelrane on 28 August 2015 at 9:23 am UTC
I've had a wonderful time with XCOM and Total War, although I use an unsupported gpu-manufacturer.
But now I really think that Feral has too much on their plate and that they are (currently) not up to the task of quality porting anymore. If a game from 2012 that runs perfectly fine on Windows is not really comparable on Linux by one of the best supported gpus out there (nvidia 970) I just think they have too much work in porting too many titles, hence can't deliver the quality I am used to.
I supported them by buying from their store, but I'll play the game on Windows where it actually runs, despite an AMD card.
Last edited by Maelrane on 28 August 2015 at 9:23 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: SabunQuoting: Stupendous ManYou and me both! I'm really missing a pause button in these games so that I can think and give orders at my leisure.
Haha, then it would be a turn-based strategy game and not a real-time strategy game :D
RTS = Real-time Stress
2 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me