Originally released in late 2006, COMPANY OF HEROES was initially somewhat overlooked on release for being yet another World War II game featuring yet another depiction of D-Day. It was also a real-time strategy game and no really decent WW2 RTS game had ever been made prior to that.
CoH, made by Relic, the same team who had created the HOMEWORLD series and WARHAMMER 40,000: DAWN OF WAR, turned out to be a major commercial and critical success, with strong gameplay and excellent unit balancing eventually making the game the finest real-time strategy game since the release of STARCRAFT eight years earlier. Two expansions, the so-so OPPOSING FRONTS and the godawful TALES OF VALOUR, followed and added some new modes and factions to the game, some useful, some not.
One of the most constant requests from fans has been for the addition of the Soviet Union to the game's existing sides (the Americans and British for the Allies and the Wehrmacht and Panzer Elite for the Axis). With Relic concentrating on DAWN OF WAR II and its expansions for now, some fans realised they'd be waiting for some considerable time (possibly not until CoH II, if there is one) and decided to make their own Soviet faction.
EASTERN FRONT is thus a fan-made modification or 'mod' to the original game rather than an official release. However, the mod team's early screenshots and work attracted the attention of Relic, who provided some technical advice and assistance in the mod's programming, and also heavily advertised the mod's completion and release a few weeks ago. Praise for the mod, with many fans and players citing it as being of professional quality and that the new Soviet side is a more interesting faction than either the Brits or Panzer Elite, has been very strong.
The expansion is being rolled out in stages. The first stage is the simple addition of the Red Army to the game, along with twenty new multiplayer maps. Due a bit further down the line is a single-player campaign, followed by the release of a new custom German army, the Ostheer (the Eastern Army), comprising the units and divisions which faced the Red Army on the Eastern Front during the latter part of WWII.
The Red Army faction is an interesting addition to the game. They are a heavily infantry-focused side, with cheap but relatively weak infantray units being available from the get-go. Reflecting the supply limitations on the Red Army in early WWII, the initial infantry units, the Conscripts, are weak and only half the men in the unit are armed, with their comrades taking up their rifles when killed. They can be significantly upgraded later on into a more dangerous force. Reflecting the "Not one step back!" order issued by Stalin in the opening weeks of the invasion, Soviet infantry units cannot be retreated, and either have to fall back in good order or die where they stand.
The sheer ruthlessness of this play style compared to the Brits and Americans (where conserving your forces is encouraged more heavily rather than sacrificing them in a failed attack) takes some getting used to. Due to programming limitations, the Soviets are also incapable of re-crewing or seizing abandoned weapons on the battlefield, which is both annoying and historically inaccurate (the Soviets actually made great use of turning German equipment against its former owners).
As a game proceeds, the Soviets' tech tree becomes considerably more impressive. T-34 tanks may be relatively cheap, but they are also a workable counter to German Panzer IVs and can out-maneuver Panthers and Tigers (although the upgraded 85mm-cannon variants are needed to do some real damage to them). The arrival of the later Stalin-class tanks which outgun the German heavies generally means game over for the Axis. The way the Red Army works in a game is actually a solid reflection of how the USSR won the war: riding out the initial assaults by feeding tons of cheap men into the grinder and supporting them with disposable but lethal Katyusha rocket batteries, just about keeping the Germans at bay until the heavy tanks and better aircraft were able to enter the fray (the Sturmokovic fighter-bombers in the game are absolutely lethal as well).
The Red Army proves a worthy addition to the COMPANY OF HEROES mixture, and was needed to inject some more enthusiasm into the game precisely at the point, three and a half years after release and two years since the last faction was added, where it was starting to die down. Balancing work and patches continue to refine the impact of the Red Army on the game, although a couple of annoying crash-to-desktop issues remain.
Required: Either COMPANY OF HEROES, OPPOSING FRONTS or TALES OF VALOUR. EASTERN FRONT's system requirements are very slightly higher than the standard game, and more slowdown is to be expected if the Soviets build a vast number of Conscripts (who have no pop cap).