Imagine if the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed and instead made a decisive advance into Europe. NATO forces clash with the Red Army and a second front is opened up as the Soviets launch an attack on continental United States. You will find yourself taking on the role of a commander in the escalating conflict, controlling the era's most powerful and technologically advanced military hardware.
It's almost a shame this game's fallen into obscurity and never really was well known to begin with. The gameplay and story were good and it looked great for its time, easily overshadowing the original Company of Heroes at least in the looks department.
It tried to do something new, tossing out the old base building RTS model and putting the focus on combat and a host of support abilities going as far as tactical nukes. You could take on any number of roles between, infantry, armour, ground or air support and weren't dependent on some perfect build or way of doing anything like the typical RTS. Merging well, both the mentality of the fast pace of the shooter genre and the tactical/strategic understanding one needs in an RTS make this different but again very good.
The story wasn't the now all too frequent simpleton's propoganda infused anti-USSR plot, it was about two massive empires waging war without a metric ton political baggage ruining the story. There were instances where the political officer would reference his connections to the Politburo, along with the idiot nephew who was the poster child of propaganda incensed idiocy. That's all it took to get the message across to the player that the USSR was internally screwed, without being so lazy as to just toss dozens of civilians being mowed down before the players eyes or an having entire platoon's worth of men gunned down by their own machine guns.
And the US wasn't portrayed as the mystical savior either, as most of NATO was portrayed in the game and on its own territory, the United States had to resort to reasonably desprate measures. In that, I can respect the writers and whoever else was involved in actually bothering to come up with an enjoyable realistic story.