Company of Heroes, Opposing Fronts (Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (PC))

Member Name: Steve80

Product:	Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (PC)
Date:	26/05/09 (4 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great game play & online community, good graphics and audio

Disadvantages: Can be unstable with crashes occuring.

Company of Heroes Opposing fronts is a real time World War 2 stragegy game, which makes the battle come to life!
You can play as the British Army or the German Panzer Elite. You can play a campaign in both British and German mode.
Interestingly, the campaigns are staggered so that they're in nonlinear order. You'll begin with the story of two German brothers battling against the daring airborne assault of Operation Market Garden, and in the following campaign you'll leap further back into the past to participate in the British Army's lengthy and bloody assault on the French city of Caen.
Panzer Elite is built around the idea of hard-hitting and fast-moving combat groups that can race around the battlefield, either to counter what the enemy is doing or to exploit an opening. To that extent, the Panzer Elite doesn't so much lock down territory as it bulldozes its way across the map. Thankfully, Panzer Elite infantry can repair vehicles during slight pauses, but you won't have a lot of time to hunker down before another situation needs putting out.
British Army is built similarly around the idea of mobility and defenses, given that it has mobile headquarters units that can relocate around the map. However, the British also excel at building things: devastating howitzer emplacements, mortar pits, slit trenches, and more. As one might expect, the campaign missions highlight each faction's abilities quite nicely. In the brutal house-to-house fighting of Caen, the British can call in the dreaded "creeping barrage" that shatters enemy lines. Likewise, the Panzer Elite can punch through Allied defenses and raid around their rears to capture or destroy landing points for airborne forces.

There is also a very large online multiplayer community too. Players range from complete beginners to seasoned verterans. With every battle that you win, you are given an increase in rank. Pretty cool stuff.

The graphics and audio in this game are very good. The only down side that I can report is that the game will crash for no reason at random times. This tends to happen after an automatic patch is installs when starting the game, when Relic update the game.

This is a fantastic game that you can play very seriously, or if you've had a bad day at work, you can just turn it on and blow stuff up.
The AI is very good when playong against the computer, but you can change the difficulty.

Summary: Best real time WW2 strategy game on the market.