Achtung Panzer

[weapon2010]

Does anyone who loves CM like this as well?How is the realism factor compared to CM?It sure looks pretty, but that doesnt mean much to me if its silly.I only play CM and Silent Hunter, are there any other good games war games out that people can recommend?

[bodkin]

Just picked up Achtung Panzer Kharkov a few days ago and it's resigned every other game I have to the shelf.

It takes a while to work out what the hell's going on due to a lack of any meaningful tutorial but once you sort of know what your doing it's very rewarding.

The level of detail is amazing, I heard a banging sound coming from one of my immobilised Marders, I zoomed in to see a crew member bashing the rolling gear with sleadgehammer and he got it going again after about half an hour much to his credit.

At the end of a battle you can zoom in on knocked out tanks where all the penetrations are marked with red arrows that tell you what type of gun made the hit and what kind of shell was fired.

I'm loving the large maps as well, Recon units are actually useful in this game, you need them to scout and locate the enemy so you can then manouver your main fighting units into the battle.

It dosen't have the same level of squad control as Combat Mission, you basically manouver your squads into an engagement and they then think for themselves somewhat in terms of taking cover and weapons choice. However it's definately not a mass market RTS type experience it requires thought on the strategic and tactical level and it's all very historically accurate as well in terms of units and setting.

I hope the guys that made this expand the series with new theatres and addons, I've already forgotton about CM:Normandy.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Does anyone who loves CM like this as well?How is the realism factor compared to CM?It sure looks pretty, but that doesnt mean much to me if its silly.I only play CM and Silent Hunter, are there any other good games war games out that people can recommend?

Depends on what kind of wargame you like.

I like the AGEOD games well enough. It's not the greatest UI ever, but is about as good a strategy game as there is.

There's the Distant Guns/Jutland games if you like Naval warfare. Apparently they will be ditching their rather onerous DRM so I'll be picking that up when they do.

[MeatEtr]

I hope the guys that made this expand the series with new theatres and addons, I've already forgotton about CM:Normandy.

I too own and play Achtung Panzer. They already announced their next followup title

Details here graviteam.com.

I like this dev a lot, they made the excellent tank sim Steel Fury: Kharkov 1942. So looking forward to their next tank sim

It's based on the Iran-Iraq war of 1981, Afghanistan 1984, and Angola 1987. A bummer the followup to the Kharkov tank sim will have to wait longer now, but they did confirm it will still be coming.

Also, our near and dear Battlefront published their T72: Balkans in Fire title awhile back. So hopefully someday they will come back here. IIRC the primary reason they didn't work together again was because of the language barrier.

[bodkin]

I can't wait for Operation Star but there seems to be a delay in the english version as the Russian version has been out for some time. I heard that the publishers have no real interest in getting it translated, hopefully not so I can finally counter those T-34's with some Tiger payback.

I don't know the history of what happened with T-72 but I'd wish they'd come back to BFC as it all seems a bit messy at the moment.

[noxnoctum]

I thought the AI was remarkably good, in fact I'd go so far as to say it was the best strategy game AI I've seen, whether that be in RTS type "clickfests", Total War type games, or wargames.

That said, I really disliked how limited in scope the battles were. Also the game had an issue where the game crashed every 30 minutes or so (sometimes the computer with it). Kind of a turn off .