Company of Heroes is a WW2 real time strategy game that was released in September 2006 and its standalone expansion Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts was released in September 2007. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but if you are a gamer then you must play this game before you pick anything else up. I bought the original after it was released and just finished playing the expansion. The fact that I finished it is a big plus considering I’ve been struggling through Half-Life 2 which is suppose to be totally awesome.
What’s so great about it? The level of detail. Bombs and artillery leave craters infantry can use for cover. Buildings take damage and realistically collapse. Armored vehicles have weak rear armor that make flanking a required strategy. Infantry get pinned down by raking machine gun fire. Units attack in their line of sight making unit placement key. All these little details calculate into the strategy used to accomplish each mission.
The single player campaigns are well worth a play through on Normal difficulty which puts up a pretty good challenge without being frustrating. At higher difficulties you’ve got too be really good to keep up with the computer.
Highly recommended if you are a PC gamer of any sort.