Some time last week Relic's Company of Heroes was made available as a multiplayer open beta on Fileplanet. Having interviewed the Relic team in the past on this title I was obviously quite interested in getting my hands on the code and taking it for a spin.

Everything I had been led to believe would be there was present; Great graphics with a silky smooth frame rate, deep strategic options and well integrated destructible environments. In many ways the game reminds me a lot of Codename: Panzers, a game I enjoyed greatly when it was released early last year. Things are certainly boding well for the final release and I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty with the retail code.

The game also seems to borrow a lot from Relic's previous title Dawn of War, a game I also had quite a deal of appreciation for despite a nigh on heretical absence of Eldar Harlequin troops (I'm sure Tim shares my pain on this one). Unfortunately there was one aspect of that game I never warmed to that was included in the feature-set that would come over to Company of Heroes and that was the puzzling camera controls.

If you have not yet played the beta for Company of Heroes and foolishly let Dawn of War slip you by you're probably wondering what I'm on about. For some reason I can't quite fathom camera rotation in both of these games requires the Alt key to be held down while you move the mouse. Which simply leads me to ask why?

Since 3D RTS titles have become the norm it has long been standard practice that the mouse wheel/button is used to control both zoom and camera angle. Why would you move to a system where you require two hands to achieve what one is capable of? It is far from logical and makes enjoying those wonderful graphics the Relic art team put so much time into that much more difficult.

The very best control schemes should be invisible. Ideally you should never be aware what you are physically doing to make the action on screen happen. To use theatrical parlance, it is the fourth wall that should not be broken. Obviously this goal is next to impossible but through well thought-out design we can minimise the dissipation of the control illusion. By requiring more work to make something happen when less is possible you go against that most basic of design concepts.

Granted, most of us own mice with an extra button we can assign the alt key to but it is just strange that Relic persist with this design feature. Maybe it does not annoy you as much as it annoys me but for a company who have such a solid understanding of RTS design (They made Homeworld for crying out loud) making such a simple design error irritates me. Of course none of this has done anything to curb my enthusiasm for this game but it just got on my nerves enough to warrant, in my mind, today's rant.