Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (PC)

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Okay, first, a rant. There's no point mucking up a review of a perfectly good game, so let's just get this out the way. By adding a restrictive copy protection scheme, Opposing Fronts breaks one of the very things that made Company of Heroes in particular and THQ's games in general so good. The new game even retroactively changes the copy protection for the core game. Opposing Fronts will no longer allow Company of Heroes LAN games to be played with a single copy; it requires online authentication, and it prevents you from playing during Relic's server outages, which have continued intermittently even well over a month after the game's release.

So if you want to take a stand against companies foisting restrictive copy protection onto paying customers, here's an ideal candidate: a game that suddenly and dramatically does a 180 from its previously player-friendly stance. Vote with your wallet -- in which case, you should probably stop reading here, as it'll be easier if you don't know what you're missing.

On to the matter of the game itself: Opposing Fronts is flat-out great. It's a stand-alone game that consists of two new sides, which may not sound like a lot until you recall that Company of Heroes has been a game with only two sides all along. Opposing Fronts delivers that amount of content all over again. There's a reason THQ isn't calling this an expansion, and that's not simply because you don't need the original Company of Heroes to play (in which case you won't be able to play the Americans and Germans). By including new sides, new maps and two brand-new single-player campaigns, Opposing Fronts is a lot more than an add-on.

This means that Company of Heroes is no longer as streamlined as it was. Note the long threads on the game's official forums about how Opposing Fronts is unbalanced. This is probably true for the hardcore players who've solved the calculus of every combination of unit, commander power and map. But to the wider audience, more choices and more interactions among the different sides are a good thing. In the so-called 'vanilla' Company of Heroes, players selected a commander power once their units had earned a little combat experience, effectively determining each player's "sub-faction" after the game had begun and heads had butted. In that version there were some very clear distinctions between the two sides that don't exist anymore. For instance, the armor advantage no longer belongs only to the Axis, and the skies aren't the exclusive domain of the Allies. Now, with twice as many commander powers to distinguish twice as many sides, everything's up for grabs.

Both new sides consist of entirely new units, as well as entirely new commander powers. The British are a compact and muscular faction, with only a few buildings (that, in fact, aren't even buildings at all) and about a half-dozen different units. They improve their army by bringing out powerful leaders, who can be attached to infantry to buff them. They have an emphasis on fixed emplacements, such as trenches, AT guns, artillery pieces and mobile bases that drive around and deploy to improve your income in a sector. In other words, if you like turtling, this is the side for you.

One of the British commander powers calls in the Royal Engineers, which offer improved turtling capabilities and a variety of handy tanks (it's worth noting that a Cromwell Command Tank can buff British armor much like officers can buff British infantry). The Royal Commandos' powers call in gliders bearing new units, along with some fancy intel tricks for spying on and tricking your opponent. And the Royal Artillery powers are a way for the otherwise turtlish Brits to reach out and touch someone from the comfort of their trenches and emplacements. Royal Artillery powers also add new options for automating artillery fire to cover an entire sector or to return fire against enemy guns. Rather than rehashed variations on what was already available for the Americans, the range of powers and options available for the British feels new and exciting.