Company of Heros, Opposing Forces: Help!

[XT]

Ok, some background then my question. I bought CoH when it first came out and installed and played it for a few hours then sort of put it on the shelf and never went back to it. For the last week I've been quite ill so I've been looking through my old games and picked it up again, reinstalled it and played through the campaign. It was fairly enjoyable though not really challenging to blow through the campaign. I got my wife to go to the store yesterday and pick up the Opposing Forces expansion which, I presume, is supposed to let you play through a campaign as either the Brits or the Germans.

However, when I installed the thing, the first thing it seemingly did was rip out the prior CoH installation (I can no longer play the original CoH seemingly). Next, after the install was complete I keep getting endless prompts to install an patch to allow me to play online...which I don't have any desire to do. All I want to do is play the solo campaign as either Germans or Brits. Reading the manual I SHOULD be able to do this from the main menu...but the main menu isn't coming up, only the prompts for the online downloads, which if I skip them brings me to some kind of log in screen for online play.

I realize I'm not at the top of my game mentally atm, but what am I missing here? The games instruction manual clearly shows a menu with Campaign, Multiplayer, Skirmish, Tutorial and Options...a menu I have yet to see. Anyone played this beast and any suggestions about what I'm doing wrong here? I've tried to put in the original CoH CD and this simply brings up a prompt to install....and has exactly the same effect when I run CoH OF whether the new CD is in or not.

-XT

[Carnick]

You need log on to their servers in order to access the main menu, and you need the patch for that. There is no way around it, short of unplugging your internet, I believe. On the plus side you won't need your CD in to play.

The patch affects single player too, so there is no reason why you wouldn't want it.

[XT]

Yeah, that's what I finally did. I guess you need to create an account, sign in with the key codes from the games, and then you get to play. Took me literally hours to download all the patches and finally sign in so I could play the game. Good thing I didn't know all that before I bought the thing...I would have just left the original game on the shelf.

That said, the Germany campaign has been relatively fun so far. Haven't tried the Brits yet.

-XT

[Gukumatz]

Originally Posted by xtisme

Yeah, that's what I finally did. I guess you need to create an account, sign in with the key codes from the games, and then you get to play. Took me literally hours to download all the patches and finally sign in so I could play the game. Good thing I didn't know all that before I bought the thing...I would have just left the original game on the shelf.

That said, the Germany campaign has been relatively fun so far. Haven't tried the Brits yet.

-XT

Oh, the Brits are quite fun. There's nothing quite like Creeping Artillery . . . Especially when you're playing against friends on the net while talking on Vent

Friend: "Hah! Wasted artillery, way offfffff-----arrrrrrrrrgh!"