Ah, the expansion pack.  Time was, you would rush out to your local game emporium to pick up an extra chunk of your favourite game, only to find you'd bought a couple of poorly-executed extra missions and a single new character/weapon/background texture.  Thankfully, these days we ask for a little bit more for our hard-earned cash.  Relic have been excelling themselves of late, not only producing varied expansion packs for Dawn of War, but also making them stand-alone so that any gamer new to the series can get stuck in, without having to shell out for the original.  So, how does Company of Heroes:Opposing Fronts (or COH:OF as I shall lazily call it) stack up?

The short answer is, pretty damn well.  What you get are two new army types, along with their corresponding new command trees and two new single player campaigns to test their mettle.  The campaigns cover Operation Market Garden (from the Axis perspective) and the liberation of Caen.  Both campaigns are generally very well thought out, and the historical scenarios allow a great mix of tactics and mission objectives.

The Axis campaign focuses on the scattered remnants of German Panzer divisions caught in and around Arnhem by the mass of Allied airborne forces.  The mix of forces in the new 'Panzer Elite' army is therefore mostly based around tanks and mobile infantry.  Accordingly, infantry squad sizes are (especially initially) very small and poorly-equipped.  This often makes defense of sectors using entrenched infantry difficult, relying instead on a wide range of specialised half-tracks to do the job for you.  On the flip-side, the Panzer troops can repair their vehicles in the field, meaning that armoured spearheads are often unstoppable.  These strengths and weaknesses are exploited very well by the campaign, especially by manipulating the command trees so that you have a specific doctrine available.  About the only place the campaign does fall down (and this counts for the Allied story arc too), is an attempt to tell a more personal story.  Some may find this a draw, but a combination of poor in-engine 'acting', occasionally cheesy voice acting, and hackneyed themes (two brothers fighting together, wondering 'what it's all about'), really didn't gel.  Put that aside though, and the story of the 'Panzer Elite's' defense of Arnhem and Oosterbeek is challenging and exciting.

The same goes for the British Army's campaign.  Caen was a D-Day objective due to the road network, defensive position and open country.  The Allied campaign recreates the battle to capture the city and surrounding areas by Canadian and British soldiers and offers the same varied gameplay of the Axis campaign.  The Allied army doesn't have the heavy armour of the Panzer army, so has to be reliant on fast infantry attack via airborne commando squads, heavy artillery and light tanks.  To counter this, there are a number of great defensive options available and the story flips between rapid assaults (taking a strategically valuable hill for instance), and then defending the objective against counter attack.

In both cases, the historical background is used well, and the missions are a great fit for the armies strengths and weaknesses.  These tactical options are even more accentuated in the multiplayer game, where the command tree options really dictate your play-style.  The Allies have the choice of Artillery (options to increase arty range and create 'creeping barrages'), Commandos (dropped in by glider, intercepting enemy orders) and Engineers (tanks).  The Axis can specialise as a Tank Destroyer, Luftwaffe (stealth troops, emplacements) or Scorched Earth (booby traps or strategic point destruction).  It might take a while, but it's very likely you'll find a combination of faction and command options that  really suits your playing style.  It does mean that you increasingly rely on other players on your team to cover your weaknesses, but as World in Conflict has shown, that is no bad thing!  The extra factions therefore offer a genuinely new experience to multiplayer, so if that's what floats your boat, this is still a worthy purchase without ever touching the SP campaigns.

If you've played the original, you will know what to expect from the game's Essence engine.  Company of Heroes has always been a good-looking feast of a game, and this expansion pack is no different.  What the pack does include is the DX10 patch.  Those of us lucky enough to own a machine with a DX10-compatible card (nvidia 8 series or ATI 2xxx series) and Windows Vista can expect to see a number of visual enhancements over the DX9 original.  The terrain gains a layer of sporadic grassy vegetation, explosions and smoke have softer, more realistic edges and lighting, and the amount of debris has been increased.  If your rig can support it (there is a performance hit for enabling the DX10 settings), the graphical update covers over any ragged edges the engine has, and the game often looks really stunning, especially when in the thick of it.  Even without the new bells and whistles though, the game engine is holding up very well despite it being over a year old.  As ever, the animations on units are fantastic and believable with great touches like shells bouncing off armour never getting old.  The sheer concussive feel of explosions, and more importantly, their effect on buildings, terrain and soldiers still convey a sense of drama and danger to every engagement.

The sound work obviously has a large part part to play in making you feel 'in the thick of it' despite your elevated view.  This is just as good as it ever was, with touches like explosions on distant parts of the battlefield sounding realistically muffled and bassy.  Weapons sound distinctive, and the radio chatter still acts as a useful indicator of unit's status.  The only fly in the ointment with regards to COHOF is some of the voice-acting work in both cut-scenes and unit 'barks' as mentioned above.  The voice of the British forces occasionally ranges into stereotypical cockney-esque “cor blimey, apples n pears” accents, with an almost constant stream of swearing.  The language is obviously included as a nod to the more mature audience (the game has a 15 BBFC rating in the UK), but when it's overused, runs the risk of sounding a bit overdone, even silly.  The German's don't escape the worst of the atrocities either – one of the briefing officers has the campest German accent I have ever heard. 

Overall though, the sheer quality of Company of Heroes still shines through like incendiary rounds.  It remains one of the very best RTSs, let alone games available on any format.  The campaigns are just about long enough (9 missions in total for the Allied campaign, and 8 for the Axis), especially for an expansion pack and the action never lets up, but still manages to feel different from level to level.  If you really got stuck into the MP of the original, there is much here to please you, including a wide range of tactical nuances to perfect.  You'll also like the little touches: the game automatically logs on to Relic servers on loading, meaning you are always patched and ready to dive into the fight.  Your profile stats and other multiplayer info is also available from the menu screen, and the game even loads without the disc (you'll need it to validate patches though).  All in all, a highly recommended purchase.