At a glance...

Previewer	Platform	Publisher	Developer	Players	Release Date	Screenshots
Matt Bailey	PC	10tacle Studios	Stormregion	1-8 (LAN, Online)	March 2008	Here

Codename Panzers: Cold War preview

There seems to be a general movement away from World War II games at the moment. The period has become somewhat overused in both the strategy and first-person shooter genres over the past few years and despite the fact that these games are still selling (and as the likes of Company of Heroes and Medal of Honor: Airborne demonstrate, they can still offer new ideas), some publishers have decided it's time to do something a bit different. But not too different, of course - hence why we have a selection of 'alternate WWII' titles now arriving, from RTS game War Front: Turning Point from 10tacle, to Codemasters' upcoming FPS Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. But the Codename Panzers series - which has a history in the WWII RTS genre - doesn't like to turn it's back on reality completely. So instead WWII finished as normal, but that the events immediately after, in the beginnings of the Cold War, happen differently to how they did in reality.

It begins, as all games in the series do, in Germany, but this time we're in 1949, the year the Soviet Union developed the atomic bomb, and with the NATO-led Berlin airlift in progress, saving cut-off Allied-controlled West Berlin from starvation. In the game, an Allied plane accidentally crashes into a Soviet one, and with tensions so high, the war that was narrowly avoided in the real 1949, breaks out in Codename Panzers: Cold War. The Red Army invades from the East, and so the campaign begins as you try to take hold of the situation with your NATO troops.

The gameplay plays fundamentally to the Codename Panzers formula, which has worked so well in the past. The game again features "Heroes" who will prove vital to your success, and Prestige Points - the series' alternative to resource gathering - also make a return. You earn these through completing various objectives such as capturing points on the map, or simply finishing missions, and allow you to resupply your army with fresh troops, tanks, helicopters, etc. However, this doesn't mean things are the same as before, with the game having been completely rebuilt from scratch. There's a new engine called Gepard3 which seems to be working rather well. It provides varied and detailed environments without demanding too much from the system, which should give the RTS title wide appeal. It's a very capable engine, and is particularly good at destruction, allowing you to demolish buildings to your tactical advantage, with impressive effects employed to demonstrate a ravaged Berlin. Troops firing out of buildings, meanwhile, also feature a sense of realism, as they tumble rag doll-style out of windows when they've been killed, while realistic weather effects add to the sense of atmosphere in the battle environments.

The preview version does exhibit a few bugs which we hope will be fixed before release. There are some notable ones which were acknowledged by the developers, as well as some crashes which were not mentioned, but should be rectified. However, there were also some other curiosities - like an inability to load a saved game until you've started a mission - which we certainly hope Stormregion sort out ahead of release. Though we've only seen 5 missions, there seems to be a solid campaign here, along with a multiplayer mode we haven't seen, and we think this should be a strategy release to look forward to later this month.

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