Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (PC DVD)

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

Last year’s Company Of Heroes was probably the best new real-time strategy game on the PC for ages but it didn’t quite do as well as it deserved – probably because the whole World War II setting is starting to look a bit overdone nowadays. This standalone expansion provides a second chance to experience not only the best strategy game for ages but also one of the few games to do anything original with the WWII theme. For a start you don’t actually control American troops in the game but either the British 2nd Army or the German Panzer Elite. (You can play though the missions as the U.S. Army and Wehrmacht if you have a copy of the first game to hand though.)

The Allied single player campaign revolves around the Battle for Caen, shortly after D-Day, and features the three primary regiments from the campaign: the Royal Canadian Artillery, the Royal Commandos and the Royal Scottish Engineers. The unique way the 2nd Army’s technology tree works allows access to all manner of new weapons and tactics including creeping barrages, Horsa gliders and three variations of the Churchill tank.

Meanwhile, the Panzer Elite campaign centres around the German opposition to Operation Market Garden. Here you can control the 2nd SS Panzer Corps and Luftwaffe paratroops. Ironically while the British are focused on defence the Germans specialise in speed and mobility with many varieties of tanks of and halftracks. With the same stunning graphics as before it invigorates both the real-time strategy game and the WWII game all at once.

Harrison Dent

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Customer reviews

review by: The Gamer, The Modeller date: 2008-11-11 rating:
The best addition to any RTS game
Having played CoH since its release I just had to buy this expansion pack, well..... if you can call it an expansion pack. The good thing with CoH/OF is, it comes with the original CoH which is a plus.

INSTALLATION - I had no problems with installing this game, just like any game out there, there are a couple of patches to download, I would do this out of game prior to installing it, is faster than letting the game download them.

GAMEPLAY - CoH/OF introduces 2 new armies, the British Common Wealth and the Panzer Elite. I found both of them hard to play at first but you do get used to them. For example you can't cap your resource points with observation posts, so if they are not covered by units they are easily taken by the enemy, so you have to go back and recapture them. Neither army has snipers (par say) so you have to rely on first contact with a combo of rapid and heavey fire power. The Brits can convert a rifle section to a recon team team but you have to get up pretty close to use the sniper exposing all the section. The PE have a Kettenkrad which you can camo, but it has no offensive capabilities so is vulnerable to attack.
The game also introduces new tank units ranging from the British Cromwell to the German Marder III. The artillery is awsome if you are the Brits, bringing along the 25 pounder and the 105mm Priest. A quote from 1st Srgeant Lipton (Band of Brothers), "The most awsome display of firepower I have ever seen". If I am playing a 3v3 or a 4v4 I leave the frontline to my allies and I just build five 25 pounders, and let rip on the enemy where ever they are spotted. And when I have a Captain who does a victor target then all available artillery is brought to bare on the target, some times you can't see anything for the smoke, lol.

A link to my orginal review for Company of Heros (to follow)

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review by: Androgenous date: 2008-10-21 rating:
Toy soldiers
The original was pretty good, coming in around 3-4 stars, and this add on is no slouch either. Can't believe all these comments about crashing - i have never had a problem with either the original or this add on. It runs flawlessly.

However much i like this game though, there are issues that bug me. For a start you don't get attached to your troops, because there is no continuity between missions, you can't take a set of men and machines through from mission to mission a la desert rats vs africa corps. I think this would make a huge difference to the game and it is noticeable for its absence.

Secondly, because you end up learning a mission from end to end, and it never plays very differntly, replayability is somewhat limited. If you added the rpg element above and some randomness to the mission elements, replayability would score much higher and it would get 4 stars for sure - please fix it on its next outing THQ, or consign the title to the bin of mediocrity.

On the plus side, all effects and explosions are great, and the models lovingly recreated. However, i still think 'soldiers heroes of ww2' beats all of the ww2 strategy games that have ever been made.................

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review by: junaii date: 2008-09-08 rating:
Fatally flawed
Opposing fronts is a stand alone add on to the original COH game.

First of all, I've had comapny of heroes for a while and it is brilliant, interesting, varied and has two well balanced sides and a wealth of units you can use for different applications each with individual skills and upgrades.

Opposing fronts adds two new armys to the mix, the british and the german panzer elite. The british have a rather sparse collection of units, commandos, basic infantry and some tanks, all of which take ages to build. The germans have a large collection of rather useless vehicles. Wasnt impressed with either of them. For multiplayer you'll try with the british for a bit but will end up back with your favourite of the original two armys.

The single player campaigns where also well done on the original and early impressions are not good on this new one. The first panzer mission sees you placing units on anti aircraft guns and then simply re-inforcing them. I gave up out of boredom after 10 minutes. Im hoping there is something better in there.

Other things to mention about this are the oft-mentioned updates, you cannot play until you have downloaded around half a gig of seperate updates that will take you a few hours. Save yourself some time and before you install download them all from thq's website on-mass at least you can be doing something else in the meantime.

Lastly this game has bugs, since installing its has crashed half way through 10 out around 12 games I've played. I'm fully updated, latest drivers and running on a vista dx10 dual core with very respectable specs, it is the game trust me.

All in all I regret buying it and unless it wins me over soon will be uninstalling and seeing if I can return it.

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review by: date: 2008-07-12 rating:
Sublime
A lot of people complaining about the download and patching, all I have to say is you can in fact skip this step by disconnecting from the internet, unless you're here for the multiplayer.

On the game itself.

Brilliant RTS, graphics are superb, audio is excellent, and gameplay is great.


review by: date: 2008-05-27 rating:
good game when it works !
This is a really good game... when it works. Installing the game takes forever then after that you have to sit and wait till the game downloads and installs patch after patch. Then you might get to play on the game but the game will more than likely crash or you will suddenly be drophacked (kicked out of a match by another player.)

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