Kill Aero Planet

It's a long time since World War II, the setting for this new game from developers Relic Entertainment. Thankfully it's not been nearly as long since the original Company of Heroes was released, ensuring that at least some of you remember its greatness. This follow up, Opposing Fronts, has me confused - is it a true sequel or an expansion pack that doesn't require the original game to play? Either way it doesn't really matter, because it's fantastic!

This stunning game follows two different paths, those of the German Panzer Elite and the British 2nd Army, both with playable campaigns available from the offset. The British were often referred to as Tommies during the war and since my name is also Tommy (after the Tommy gun) I will explain the British side of things first. The Tommies are tasked with taking control of Caen, a heavily defended city in Normandy. The Germans (also known as Jerries) must defend bridges that cross the Rhine River against the largest allied airborne invasion in history. This airborne invasion was part of Operation Market Garden (one of the best named operations ever!) a once seldom-visited setting for war games that's now becoming increasing popular. However, Opposing Fronts is the only game that allows you to experience it as the Germans, which is an exciting prospect. Both German and British campaigns take place around the same time, so it's a shame that they don't intersect in any way - winding the story of one into the other and colliding the two armies in heated battle.

Before tackling the campaigns, in any order you wish, you may want to take a brief look at the tutorial, which is divided into separate smaller tutorials so you can skip to the bit you want - very useful if you just need reminding about certain key features. The first tutorial covers basic troop selection and the issuing of orders, all performed via the mouse buttons. In the more action packed battles you'll need to move the camera around the large maps to select all your units - also explained in tutorials - with the option to zoom out to get a wider view of the battlefield, zoom in to see the meticulous detail on each unit and rotate the camera freely to ensure that you don't miss a thing. Later tutorials explain the incredibly simple and streamlined system of resource management and the rare feature of being able to collect the weapons of fallen enemies to use against them.

You'll have played all these tutorials already if you've played Company of Heroes before, but you can still dip into them for a quick refresher. The ones you won't have played are the last two; one to show how the British do things and one to explain the might of the German Panzer Elite. As you may remember, the playable forces in Company of Heroes were the Germans and the Americans - pretty good all-rounders - so it's very nice to see that the new armies introduced have new play styles, just like when the Imperial Guard were introduced to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - another of developer Relic's very impressive games. Since the last two tutorials explain the new playing styles of each faction, they should not be overlooked, even by wartorn veterans.

The British are the defensive players. Basic squads capture strategic points with a simple right-click as usual, but where the stalwart Americans built a securing structure around it for defence, the British must actually pack up their mobile command centre and drive it near to the captured point before unpacking it again. This pattern of capturing a point and waiting for your command centre to drive there before moving out again definitely slows the game down, but it means that enemies have a hell of a time pushing the British back if they're allowed to advance too far. This makes for a daunting experience playing against the British, seeing the neutral sectors gradually turning blue as the defensive rock approaches your position like a tidal wave in slow motion. To demonstrate that the British are so much more cautious than the gung-ho Americans, even the way troops move around the map has changed. Troops in 'safe' occupied sectors (territories) move at the usual brisk jog, whereas when they enter neutral or hostile ground they slow to a walk, guns aimed, scanning the horizon for enemy soldiers. Having soldiers walking around the battlefield all day isn't that effective in some situations however, so you can train up a lieutenant back at base and attach him to one of your squads, ensuring that order is maintained and granting combat bonuses to any nearby troops. Soldiers' walking speed isn't the only change either - all the British 2nd Army units are unique - my favourite being the Churchill Crocodile, a big, lumbering behemoth of a tank with its 6-pounder gun for long range and fiery flamethrower for close encounters.

The German Panzer Elite are the speedy, aggressive side, relying heavily on vehicles. To demonstrate this, the Germans use the fast-moving scout car to capture and then secure strategic points - a task normally left to foot soldiers. Since the scout car enables the Germans to expand their borders quickly, any soldiers on foot are at risk of being left behind, but luckily they can be transported in many of the large range of halftracks available, firing from their open-tops and making the halftrack much more destructive at the expense of the new passenger's safety. This ability to whiz soldiers around the map in transports and the other mechanical monstrosities the Germans are so fond of - tanks, armoured motor bikes and munitions trucks (to increase the fire rates of nearby units) - makes the Panzer Elite a deadly opposition; you never know where you will run into a fully mobilised army and they always turn up when you are least prepared. Being fast movers, the Germans have the disadvantage of a limited number of static defences like machine gun emplacements and fixed artillery when compared to the British. With no fixed heavy guns, the main firepower for the German side is provided by their wealth of tanks - more than either the Americans or the British. However, mobile tanks just can't match the destructive power of an artillery barrage, so you have the choice of locking a tank on the spot to improve its rate of fire or keeping it moving at speed. The lack of long range guns and having a choice about firing tactics is a remarkably well thought out design that really emphasises the fast expansion, assault tactics of the German army.

The two new playable armies change many things about how the game plays while still keeping some things the same as the original Company of Heroes. You still need to gather the same three resources - Manpower (to increase the size of your army), Munitions (to upgrade individual squads) and Fuel (to purchase tanks and other vehicles) - albeit in a slightly different way than before. Another feature that has deservedly remained intact is the devastating and awe-inspiring abilities that can be unlocked after killing a certain number of enemies. Like the original, each new army has three divisions of ability, such as the Royal Engineers for the British, giving access to some really meaty tanks, and Scorched Earth for the Germans, allowing them to block roads and booby trap buildings. Like the units for each side, the abilities are also tightly based around each faction's unique playing style. My personal favourite is the Royal Commandos for the British, which allows you to call in a Glider - a sort of wooden plane that glides - actually it drops to the ground like an unexploded missile, wings breaking off as it crashes into trees or pylons, unloading a squad of troops armed with machine guns when it comes to a stop. Dakka-dakka-dakka go the guns as bullets spray into the unfortunate Germans who stood too close - it's magnificent stuff!

With the brilliance of the combat, you'd expect the sound to be to follow suit, but it's actually one of the minor letdowns. The game arrives with all types of sound - speech, music, effects - cranked up to full and ready to blast your ears off with every mortar shell. However, this unfortunately drowns out some of the smaller sounds like unit speech and mission briefings, which can lead to some frustration at times, although thankfully it can be rebalanced in the options. The unit speech and voice acting isn't one of the game's strengths anyway - the Germans have a slight accent but don't sound convincing. While the voice acting isn't great, the other sounds make up for the lack of quality. Tank shells thump into objects with a thud followed by a mandatory explosion, machine guns rattle as troops adopt the 'spray-and-pray' shooting tactic, tanks rumble along and can be heard crushing bits of hedgerows or loose rubble under their tracks - tanks don't use doors, preferring to drive straight through obstacles - and squads can be heard shouting orders to each other to really give you a sense of being immersed in the frontlines of the battle. While some of the sound is excellent, the music is only decent; it is suitably British for the British campaign, sounding triumphant and victory-inspiring, but you do feel it could be improved - not that you'll really be paying much attention to the music anyway, because you'll be too busy gazing at the fantastic graphics and shouting "wheeeee!" as soldiers are catapulted into the air by nearby explosions.

Recently, I have heard about times when nobody cared what a game looked like, all that mattered was the gameplay. Opposing Fronts proudly holds up two fingers to that idea - and not the gesture meaning peace, either! This game looks amazing - everything from the grains of dirt thrown up by an explosion to humble fence posts have been created with plenty of detail, ensuring a realistic finish throughout. A particular highlight is the amazing looking water that flows down rivers, shimmering realistically and reflecting aeroplanes flying overhead. Realistic looking water is all well and good, but support for DirectX 10 has been added, meaning that the visuals are even better than the original Company of Heroes - the only RTS that maybe has a slight lead is the awesome World in Conflict, another awesome game. If you haven't got DirectX 10 yet or don't wish to plunge into the Windows Vista operating system then never fear, as the game still looks great and often performs better without it - just switch from DirectX 10 shader to High in the options. There is even a very handy performance test feature to ensure that you get the best setup for the fast paced and explosive combat.

In combat it is impossible to avoid the odd miss, and when a grenade or tank shell smashes into a building all this technical talk of graphics power goes out the window - along with any enemies who happened to be in the building at the time! In fact, apart from the fixed non-deformable ground, every object in the game, be it men, trees, walls, hedges, fences and so on, shatters, explodes or splinters realistically when hit or run over - the enjoyment provided by launching a telephone pylon high into the air and watching it crash to the ground cannot be matched. All this action isn't restricted to the gameplay either, as even the remarkably well made cut scenes, most of which utilise the in-game graphics engine to keep the game flowing well, make use of the chaos and pretty effects caused by a surprise attack. Talking of surprises, the first cut scene actually takes place while the game is installing, a nice touch that I have never seen used before.

When the game has installed (it does take quite a while) and you start playing through some battles, you will notice a slight problem with clipping - where units can stick through each other. The game does its best to avoid situations where clipping becomes a problem, but they do occur, albeit rarely and on a small scale. This is quite disappointing but bearable, as it has no real impact on the superb gameplay.

And speaking of the superb gameplay once more, there multiplayer mode is just as excellent as the campaigns, where you can pit any of the armies against each other online or via a network. In the big online community there are many Company of Heroes veterans ready to give you a good thrashing, so you'd best practise your skills in open battle with the skirmish mode - basically multiplayer against fiendishly clever, easy, normal or difficult computer-controlled opponents - before venturing out. What's more, if you have the original Company of Heroes installed beforehand then you can play using the American army or Wehrmacht army (the German army from the original) in multiplayer and skirmishes, in addition to unlocking the American single player campaign. This unlocking gives four armies in total, but sadly you can only play Axis versus Allies in multiplayer and skirmish games - you cannot pit the British against the Americans, for example.

The high quality multiplayer and two new single player campaigns add hours of fun and would be enough on their own - but you lucky people also get a map editor free of charge! The map editor, called WorldBuilder, can be quite hard to find, especially under the Windows Vista operating system - accessed by right-clicking on the Company of Heroes icon - and is even harder to get to grips with. The game doesn't come with any documentation or tutorials; in fact, it doesn't even mention that WorldBuilder exists at all! To resolve this problem and get you started on your map making quest there are many user written tutorials online that can be found with a simple search.

After extensively playing Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, I realised that expansion packs just shouldn't be this good. It does have a few minor problems - the sound needs re-balancing, occasional clipping problems appear and it doesn't really add anything extremely new to the real-time strategy genre - it just does the regular stuff really well. For the game to be a proper sequel it would require more changes to the underlying genre concept, so if for some reason you didn't enjoy the original then you'll find little to change your mind here. However, if you're a fan of the original or indeed a strategy buff who's never yet dipped into the series then you will be missing out considerably if you don't snap this gem up right away.