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> Results: Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
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The ESRB Says
Blood and Gore: GamerDad saw blood spatter everywhere as his forces destroyed enemy forces. Strong Language: War is hell ... and worse, according to the characters here! Violence: The basis of the game is wiping out enemies to achieve objectives. If you are a fan of the real-time strategy genre and haven't played Company of Heroes, then you have missed out on one of the best games ever released in the genre. In fact, if you haven't played it, stop reading now, go buy it, play it, and come back so I can tell you why you should buy the expansion. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is a standard real-time strategy game in many ways - 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 be able .... 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 in order to capitalize on opponents' weaknesses or build on 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 weaknesses and plan your build-up to play to your advantages. The excellent 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 make you feel like a general controlling his troops and armor - sending young men off to their death, 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, and when you are put into their shoes you need to understand their positions as they were being thrown in too great numbers to their death to further 'the cause'. However, single player mode in a strategy game is like an appetizer - no matter how good or filling, 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 playthroughs to improve your techniques. Rather it is a testimony to just how much there is to do when you face other players. If you are new to RTS games in general and Company of Heroes in specific, I suggest you spend a good amount of time running through the campaigns more than once, playing skirmish modes against the PC (bonus: you get to play against the American 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 grognard, so I wasn't crushed when I picked up 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. The problems I encountered with Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts were fairly endemic of the whole genre: there is still a fair amount of 'build fast and win' that goes on despite the game balancing against it. 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 was more frustrating as a result. Despite these minor niggles, let me jump back to the beginning and reiterate that this 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. Company of Heroes: 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.  
Real-time strategy games tend to provide some degree of abstraction - you are separated from your decisions, watching little characters stream around the world killing each other and then you just build more. Company of Heroes is a great example of a modern trend to make the genre more immersive by making the battles larger in scale and scope and pulling you into them. You feel like a general in charge of troops that actually exist as people - your good decisions will send many of them to their deaths, while your bad decisions will kill them all. The game plays out with plenty of in-game cutscenes as well as just watching battles in progress - and all of it includes voices of soldiers on both sides crying out in agony and cursing their fate - it is a brutal and in-your-face depiction of war that is not meant for younger kids - while older teens might not have a problem, I advise caution and using your parental knowledge of your own kids, and give this an Adult GamerDad Age Seal.
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