If you are a fan of the real-time strategy genre and haven't played Company of Heroes then you've missed out on one of the best RTS games ever released. In fact, if you haven't played it then you should stop reading now, go buy it, play it and come back so I can tell you why you should buy this expansion! If you have played it then you are aware of how great it is and probably bought it the moment it hit shelves, only here to check if I thought it was as great as you did (and indeed as it is). On the off chance that you got buried under the pile of fall releases and haven't picked up a copy then don't despair - it's worth whatever money you can scrape together after finishing your holiday shopping! Of course, Relic has put this out as a standalone game rather than a direct expansion requiring the original game, so there is no need to play the original in order to play the expansion. I could barely type that sentence - in fact, let me assuage my head-spinning outrage that a strategy fan might not own the original by restating it as "you don't need to reinstall your copy of the original game to play this expansion". There ... I feel better now.

For my final push on playing the original first, let me comment on gameplay. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is a standard real-time strategy (RTS) game in this regard - you amass resources in order to build units to conquer territory to be able to gain more resources in order to build more and more powerful units to conquer more territory and so on. The weakest games in the genre can be summed up as 'whoever builds the most units first wins', whereas better games involve planning what to build, when to build (in order to capitalize on opponents' weaknesses) or building to your own strengths. Yet all strategy games have some amount of 'build fast and win' - even a great game like this. You will lose battles by planning too fastidiously while watching your opponent build haphazardly, but while you might lose battles, you will eventually win the war. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is a deep game - you cannot simply toss a mob of grunts at a problem, nor a row of tanks - you need to analyze defenses and weak points, then plan your building to play to your advantages.

The core gameplay is familiar to anyone who has ever played a real-time strategy game; you use resources to build up units, with each type taking a certain amount of time and resources to construct. You need to do this in real-time as your opponents do the same, so tracking how they are deploying forces, the status of all of your builds and what areas need defense or reinforcement for attacking purposes is critical. In addition there are technology trees for your squads to master as they gain experience through achieving objectives, allowing you to build some very powerful squads along the way. However, the game makes sure you cannot over-build by capping the size of squads and basing the possibilities of what you can build on the number of control points you hold.

The single player campaigns take you on both sides of the front lines, playing as both German and British forces. These story-based scenarios are narrated and play out in heart-wrenching realism. The immersive feel of the scenarios makes you feel like a General controlling his troops and armor - sending young men off to their death, while trying to get as many of them home to their families as possible. This isn't your typical shooter mentality of blasting away as many Nazis as fast as possible as if they weren't humans - they are human. When you find yourself in those Nazi shoes you quickly need to understand their point of view; they were being thrown in great numbers to their death to further 'the cause'.

Each side of the war has its advantages and disadvantages, with the German forces focused more on offense and the British having better defensive strength - but early on everything seems tilted in favor of the Germans. The Panzer tanks are speedy and powerful, which means when playing as the Allies you need to work your skill tree and counter-tank forces to adapt. This is one of the great strengths of the game - while the core is obviously the same, Relic have worked hard to make sure that the experience of playing each side feels distinctly different. Skill trees differ, unit capabilities differ and therefore your entire approach needs to change when you switch sides. Trying to play as the Germans using the same strategy as you used for the Allies will spell certain death; the game demands strategy at every turn and being lazy just won't do, a fact that is magnified when facing human opponents.

However, single player mode in a strategy game is like an appetizer - no matter how tasty and satisfying, it is ultimately just a warm-up for the main course of multiplayer. That isn't a slight to the single player campaigns, which are huge and engaging and warrant multiple play throughs to improve your techniques, but rather a testimony to just how much there is to do when you face other players. If you are new to real-time strategy games in general and Company of Heroes specifically then I suggest you spend a good amount of time running through the campaigns more than once. It would be quite foolish not to experience skirmish modes against the PC (bonus: you get to play against the Americans and another set of German forces if you still have the original Company of Heroes installed!) before taking on live opponents. I don't consider myself a real RTS expert, so I wasn't crushed when I tried multiplayer games and was, well, crushed. There are folks online who have dedicated themselves to learning all of the intricacies of playing Company of Heroes to perfection and watching them work is a thing of beauty. It is in this execution that you truly see the depth and strategic variety available in this game.

Visually, Company of Heroes was a wonderful looking game and Opposing Fronts is every bit as gorgeous. If you have the latest DX10 video card and Vista you'll be rewarded with some extra shading features, but the game works and plays great on the more common DX9 video cards running on Windows XP. Not only that, but it scales wonderfully to lesser hardware - you may lose some of the eye candy and nice particle effects, but the guts and glory of the action remain intact.

Despite all these positives, I did encounter a couple of problems with Opposing Fronts, although they are fairly endemic of the whole genre; there is still a fair amount of 'build fast and win' that goes on, despite the game attempting to balance things out and remove this. This is just a reminder that Company of Heroes in general isn't anything all that innovative - it just does everything you need in an RTS extremely well. The other issue I have is something I often have problems with in RTS games - selecting and finding units to work with and upgrade while furious battles are ongoing. I am used to this happening, but I found it happened more in this game and it was more frustrating as a result. Aside from that I didn't have any serious complaints - the game performed well on both of my laptops, sounded good through the speakers or headphones and provided excellent challenges online and offline.

So, despite a couple of minor niggles, let me jump back to the beginning and reiterate that Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is a truly excellent gaming experience that anyone who is a fan of the genre, war games, or of trying out excellent games in general should buy. The depth and difficulty for new players (especially against experienced players online) can be daunting, but it is rewarding when you persevere. Opposing Fronts is an immersive game that draws you in for the emotional impact of the way the stories are told as well as for the visceral thrill of the fast paced battles. It is occasionally hard to believe that this is just an expansion - there is a ton to do in this game, just as in the original, and there is little chance that anyone could honestly walk away from the experience feeling disappointed in any way.

Reviewed by Michael Anderson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).