Company of Heroes brings WWII to you with amazing graphics, advanced AI and all manner of things exploding; a god's eye view of the horrors of war all inside a real-time strategy (RTS) game.

Amazing cinematics that put you in the boots of your soldiers is just the first way that Relic has taken RTS to another level. The effect may induce shell shock in some as your soldiers scream and lament about the loss of their fellows. Your boys even call out for their fallen by name at some points, adding to the level of immersion.

If you don't have high expectations for the single player experience in an RTS, Company of Heroes will be a pleasant surprise. First off, it's extremely long, taking you from D-day to, well, without spoiling it, that end bit you'll probably recall from grade ten history classes.

Too, if your PC has the horsepower to run Company of Heroes at its highest level of detail, you can zoom in and even see some facial animation amidst the buildings and terrain being blown to bits. But it's not all flash and bang; there is a lot of gameplay innovation here as well.

The striking visuals are matched by an AI system that makes units behave like, well, like they have intelligence. If you give a unit an "attack move" order, they won't just totter off blindly toward their objective like so many RTS lambs of the past, off to be slaughtered; they advance, use cover, take good shots, and generally, actually try not to get killed. Vehicles also move with impressive realism. Several scenes in the campaign convey the anger and berserker rage that the characters in this RTS cinema are feeling. Relic has defiantly injected some of the stark horrors of war into it, not just fun and glory.

The sounds of war are also brought home in genuinely scary detail. When your well-defended position is assaulted by a large enemy force, for example, your ears ringing from the barrage of high-fidelity artillery, tanks, machine guns, and the screams of the fallen, it's enough to make you soil your trousers, as the saying goes... went.

Three main resources - manpower, munitions, and fuel - to build your war machine are doled out from headquarters and acquired from capturing strategic points. To make things a bit more interesting, each resource point you capture has a different value; it's not just about taking territory, it's about taking the right territory.

On your way to conquering/liberating Europe (you can play as either the Allies or the Axis), you get to blow up a lot of stuff. Practically everything you see can be destroyed (subject to your guns) and in areas of intense battle, it is. You can start in a city square surrounded by houses, for example, and by battle's end, it more resembles a parking lot (tanks are particularly satisfying to play with as you can crash them through walls to get to any pockets of resistance).

If you've ever wondered if or when the exhausted RTS genre might be innovated, wonder no more. Company of Heroes is the best RTS yet made.

• TIPS: While in-game with Company of Heroes, hit Ctrl + Shift + tilde(~) to open the developer console, then enter restart to restart the game; abortgame to quit the game; ee_bigheadmode 1/0 for Big Head Mode on/off, FOW_Toggle for Fog of War on/off; and setsimrate to set the game speed (default = 8). Hit Ctrl + Shift + tilde(~) again to close the console.