From the same guys who made Dawn of War, this game manages to take something I didn't think would work (a resource based WWII RTS) and make it work great.
The idea of a resource based WWII RTS didn't work for me. WWII wasn't about building mines, or collecting gold, or drilling for oil, or whatever... But this is a game that gets all the details and nuances right. The resources are a factor, collecting them is an issue, but they're tied to objectives, and thus don't distract from the theme. The amount of resources you have tends to be less of a deliberate job of collecting on your part, and more of a represenation of how efficiently you're fighting. If you're wasting lots of men, building lots of stuff you don't need, you'll find yourself struggling to pay for what you want. If you fight intelligently, you'll soon be rewarded by having no need to concern yourself with the cost of new units.
The units manage to be pretty standard as RTS games go, and yet still simulate their WWII counterparts pretty well. Most RTS games tend to boil down to churning out units and zerging them to chokepoints, but CoH manages to include elements that make it far more focused on the tactics. Units can be positioned in cover or occupy buildings, and combined arms are a major factor in victory. Tanks, light vehicles, infantry, engineers, crewed weapons all combine far more effectively than churning out lots of one unit type would.
This is one of the first FPS games I've played that includes destructible terrain, and while it's a nice feature, I think it's a bit exaggerated, one of the few tuning issues the designers didn't get right. It's annoying to build a sandbag defensive line, set up your troops behind it, and then have a friendly tank run through and level all the bags you just put up. Tanks go crashing through thick stone walls like they're styrofoam, etc. It's nice to be able to drive a tank up and punch a hole through a wall, and it's fairly realistic as well, but then when the tank proceeds to drive around and crush the entire length of wall, just because it's lazy taking a corner...
The single player campaign is very long for a game of this genre, and has nice cutscenes between battles. It'd be nice, though, if the cutscenes didn't replay every time you restart a battle.
All in all a great game, especially considering its an RTS, a genre which has left me feeling a little disinterested lately.
It'd really be nice to see a Close Combat style game done with this engine...