Fourteen years after its original release, classic strategy game Company of Heroes is coming to iPad.
Prolific iOS and mobile port maker Feral Interactive has announced that they will be bringing Company of Heroes to iPad on February 13, 2020. The original PC version Company of Heroes was originally developed by Relic Entertainment and published by THQ. Company of Heroes is a real-time strategy game set in World War 2. As the name implies, Company of Heroes follows several American infantry companies starting at the D-day invasion of Normandy and hopping from unit to unit throughout the war. Gameplay takes place at the company and squad levels, with players controlling anywhere between a handful to a little over a dozen units in battles that take place in real-time.
When it was first released on PC in 2006, Company of Heroes was met with critical acclaim winning several PC game of the year awards. The game also shifted the conversation about what an RTS could be. At that time, most RTS games were chasing the eSports multiplayer-focused model pioneered by StarCraft and its expansion Brood War. By focusing on a relatively small squad of soldiers in World War 2 Company of Heroes created a single-player friendly RTS that didn’t necessarily have the brutal skill curve of games like StarCraft. An emphasis on finding cover by using terrain and buildings also helped to set Company of Heroes apart from other games in the genre.
This focus on single-player and slower pace is probably the only reason Company of Heroes could even work on the iPad. Another factor is the relative size of units in Company of Heroes compared to other RTS games. Company of Heroes favors larger than average character models than most RTS games, which makes controlling those characters with a touch interface easier than the ten-pixel tall models of other games.
What classic game do you want to play on a tablet?
Stephen Krusel, known as Sven Kroosl to some, has played video and tabletop games since 1987 and has written about the gaming industry since 2008. He has yet to be convinced that Final Fantasy Tactics is not the pinnacle of gaming.
