Steam is giving away the WWII Real Time Strategy game 'Company of Heroes 2' to celebrate its fifth anniversary. This includes the single player campaign and the Soviet and German multiplayer armies. The offer ends on Monday 10th December late afternoon (UK time). You'll find the offer HERE. Please check the end of this review for more details, thank you.

Mission of Hero

In Brief

You are a soldier in an elite, special squad that was sent to carry out a secret operation to steal information from the terrorists' base.

Installation:

Mission of Hero downloads to a 162 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper, the set-up file and a read me). Those with multiple hard drives can save games on any drive they wish. The newly installed game is 370 MB in size. The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed by the user if you prefer:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mission Of Hero

Five shortcuts are installed to the desktop, four of which can be safely deleted (Falco Space Online, FalcoGo WebG, Free Games and Falcoline Online Games Website). Even if you uncheck the install shortcut to desktop, you'll still get those four unneeded shortcuts installed. Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you uncheck the box when the additional tasks window appears.

Introduction:

You are a soldier in an elite, special squad that was sent to carry out a secret operation to steal information from the terrorists' base.

To complete this operation, you are secretly inserted on a cargo ship full of terrorists. However, the mission is not going according to plan and your cover is blown. Now your mission is simply to survive! Use all your skills for this purpose, like the ability to move cloaked and the ability to handle all kinds of weapons! Find out what awaits you at the end of the journey.

Edited reference accessed HERE. 6th Dec 2018

The Game:

Mission of Hero starts with you and your squad mates hiding in a transport container on a ship full of terrorists, unfortunately your squad is discovered and murdered. You are the only survivor. After escaping the ship onto a deserted beach, your primary task is to escape the beach and secure a weapon. You use your training to find your way to the extraction point. When you first land on the beach you can see a star marker in an orange circle with a distance marker where you need to head for. As you approach this marker you enter the next stage. These are save points. Head for that using as much cover as you can to avoid being seen by the OpFor (opposing forces), Once past the first stage you are contacted by your commanding officer (C.O.) who tells you you need to complete some of the objectives before you can be extracted. Along the way are obstacles such as a swing bridge. You need to find a special lever to lower the bridge before you can progress further via that route. Until you find a weapon, you must avoid all contact with the enemy, as there's no way to kill them without a pistol or rifle. (Hint, when you enter the third stage, stay on the road, and you'll find a pistol on the right side on top of some crates and further on in a large corrugated shed you'll also find a rifle and second pistol plus a first aid kit. If you already have a pistol or rifle, you pick up the ammunition instead of the weapon. To pick up just walk near to the object and you'll automatically pick it up.). If you die you only have to restart from the last save point.

The game is similar to previous first person shooters given away by Falcoware, apart from there are no zombies. It's not up to the quality with respect to game play, sound or graphics or even basic movements such as kneel, prone and lean right and left firing positions. The weapons do not have a scope or iron sights, only a reticule showing where you need to aim. Even the early versions of Call of Duty/Battlefield/Medal of Honor/ArmA games from 16-17 years ago had most of those. That said, it is a playable shooter created using the Unity Engine. There are a lot of free assets available using Unity and you'll probably find similarities between this and other FPS games created using the Unity engine; (for example, most of the Falcoware shooter games), not that there is anything wrong with that. There's enough playability for the average FPS player for an hour or so of reasonable game play. Don't let the retro graphics put you off. Compared to all the previous FPS games given away via Falcoware, this does have some advanced graphic settings, i.e. Motion blur, Small and Big Details, though, to be honest, I couldn't see much difference between this and Mission Escape from Island 1 to 3 when the quality was maxed out.

Whiterabbit-uk 7th December 2018

Key Bindings (unchangeable):

W = Forwards
A = Left
S = Back
D = Right
Shift + W = run

Conclusion:

Despite being an avid player of all of the above mentioned shooters over the last 18 years, Mission of Hero does have it's own charm, be it basic game play compared to all of the above titles I mention. I recommend checking it out for yourselves.

Video of Mission of Hero:

You can see an game play video for Mission of Hero HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via Steam for £2.99/$2.99 HERE.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Mission of Hero to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Falcoware for giving away Mission of Hero and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Mission of Hero doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).

With respect to the Company of Heroes 2 offer, I paid over £30 for the base game when it was released 5 years ago. None of the DLC is included in the offer, but they are definitely work buying while they are on sale. All of the original DLC (over 100 packs) have either been combined into larger DLC packs, or placed on separate Steam pages, because they are free standing, i.e not requiring the base game, to play; for example the British Army, Ardennes Assault, and The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West. Most of the packs are on sale at the moment. You can get the Company of Heroes 2 Master Collection DLC bundle that includes virtually all the DLC's available for 91% off the usual price (apart from two charity packs) for only £5.40 HERE. That would effectively give you what I paid over £120 for five years ago (i.e. all the DLC plus the game). You don't need the DLC; however, some do add new campaigns such as Southern Fronts Missions and Victory at Stalingrad. The skin packs for tanks, environments and uniforms are not necessary but do add different perspectives to the game play.

If you like strategy games, Company of Heroes 2 is well worth having, especially while it's free this weekend. I was involved in the Beta and found it a big improvement on the original, both graphically and improved game play.