On the face of it, Tales of Valor is more of the same, especially when you're forced to watch someone else have all the fun before you're allowed to get your hands on it. It looks great, of course. In fact, for a game that's a relic by usual PC standards, Company of Heroes is still the best-looking RTS on the market. Relic isn't planning to raise the system requirements with Tales of Valor, but the sight of bodies being uprooted from behind stone walls and the billowing dust from explosions still looks impressive and provokes snorts of child-like glee. So it's business as usual on that front.

Where the changes are evident are in the first of three new campaigns (and hopefully across the other two that are still at the pencil stage), where there won't be a single capture point to worry about. Advancing will of course be a necessary route to success, but the resources to further it will have to be gotten by plain old killing and maiming, and the completion of those things generals have set a lot of stock in since time immemorial.

This may not seem like a radical shift, but then COH was always an evolved and polished game, rather than a revolutionary one. The genetic material here has been augmented by such modern classics as World in Conflict, where progression was dominated by using tactics to drive the story forward. The other design consideration that has driven the construction of Tales of Valor is to pull away from having more and more units, and focus instead on fostering just a few.

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PLAYING:
GTA IV (PC)
Halo 3 (X360)
COD4: MW (PC)
Fallout 3 (PC)
Prince of Persia (PC)

Meh

With Starcraft 2, Daw of War 2, and Empire: Total War will people still care about this expansion pack?

I think they should just move on and make a sequel.

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"Anything that humans can imagine is a possibility in reality" - Physicist Willy Karen