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Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts Review Hot

Games RTS

Written by admin

Friday, 12 October 2007

Page 3 of 3

During battles tactics are vital, for example you can deploy artillery to cover your advances but will need to back this up with a combination of different troops and vehicles, each one has different abilities, so one tank may be good at taking out infantry, but not so good against enemy tanks. You will find the German tanks are also a lot tougher, so you need to outflank them and hit them from the rear where their armor is weaker.

Playing as the Germans is more of a defensive game than playing as the British, after all the Germans are on the back foot after the D-Day landings. However you will find it much more fun playing as the Germans, with regards to the vehicles at your disposal.

The vehicles are a lot more powerful than their British counterparts and the King Tiger especially - which you get to play with later on in the game, put it this way when we played as the British it took over 9 tanks worth to take this King Tiger out.

You also have Motor Halftracks that can fire both shells and incendiary grenades, the latter is great for clearing out slit trench emplacements., you can also deploy munitions halftracks to speed up the reload time of certain vehicles.

Some of the newever tanks can also be used to repair vehicles and recover vehicles that have been destroyed.

The engineers on the German side also have new skills, they now have the ability to booby trap buildings, so in the event of an enemy trying to stakeout one of your nearby structures they will be blown up as a result.

Your troops can carry incendiary grenades which are great for taking out infantry camped inside buildings.

You also have Tank buster Infantry which carry Panzershrek weapons, these are a lot more deadly than before and can take out light tanks easily.

Then you have Flak 88mm Guns and 20mm AA guns at your disposal.

Again the Germans firepower is great for attack but the British have better defence so you have in essence well balanced battles.

We managed to complete the British campaign in around 12 hours, playing on Normal difficulty and the German campaign in slightly less time, there are 9 missions on the British and 8 on the German campaigns.

After these are complete you can then take part in Skirmish missions again the computer or play online in 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2 or 4 vs 4 battles, you can also mix and match the sides from the original game (if you have it), so you can fight the Americans against the Germans once again or mix all the different infantry types together if you wish.

Graphically the game is beautifully drawn, if you zoom in (even on 1024 x 768 res) the detail is pretty impressive. Buildings can be destroyed and collapse in a nice fashion, artillery leaves craters and smoke/fire.

Maps are played over city destroyed landscapes, to open fields and you have rain and lightning conditions thrown in to capture the solemn gloom of the war.

And the sound effects have also been greatly utilised, with shells hitting armour in a realistic fashion and the sound of artillery going off is pretty cool. The British soldiers also mutter a lot to themselves and use a fair few swear words in the process.

The music has also been coated with a movie style score and is very uplifting and fits the mood of the game perfectly.

Editor review : Final thoughts

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful


Overall rating		8.3
Graphics		8.0
Sound		9.0
Gameplay		8.0
Longevity		8.0

The expansion pack is even more enjoyable than the first game, there are enough new units, vehicles and tactics to satisfy the hard core players, whilst giving new players a taste of RTS heaven.

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