Codename: Panzers preview

Codename: Panzers sports one of the most impressive 3D engines ever used in a real-time strategy game.

Sometimes it seems that German developer/publisher CDV is throwing more World War II real-time strategy games and expansion packs at us than Nazi Germany sent V2 rockets at London. However, luckily we don’t have to head for the nearest bomb shelter these days, as most of the games are either well above average or brilliant. Codename: Panzers definitely seems to be heading for the latter category.

The German version of Codename: Panzers has already been released and finally the UK release is getting close too. Currently CP-Day is planned to take place on September 3rd. The game comes with three single-player campaigns (German, Russian and Allied) as well as multiplayer support for up to four players.

Breaking news: This RTS has a story

Hans, the German officer, whom you play as in the German campaign.

The three campaigns take place at different time periods during World War II. The German campaign spans from the invasion of Poland to the turning point at Stalingrad, while the Russian campaign focuses on the last-minute victory at Moscow and key battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk. The Allied campaign begins with the invasion on D-Day and tests your skills in critical battles such as Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge. Each campaign centres round a certain officer, whom you follow. Codename: Panzers utilises its strong 3D engine (we’ll get to that later) to create lots of cut scenes in order to advance the story.

The cut scenes are not merely panoramic shots of your units – they take you right down to the officer’s world in a third person perspective like we are used to from 3D action games. However, that’s still very unusual for a real-time strategy game. Sadly the voice acting is terrible (especially the German one, which is an inconsistent mix of German, English and English, with a German accent) and the 3D engine is not flexible enough to emulate the emotions that the story wants to portray due to the lack of facial expressions and fluid movement. Thus the developers at Stormfront have not really succeeded at adding a strong background story to a real-time strategy game, but at least they’ve made the attempt. An attempt that makes sure this game stays in your memory for a longer time.

Is this strategy or tactics?

Battle in Stalingrad is a brutal experience. Note the infantry attack against the Tiger tank with flame-throwers. If the tank gets too hot, the crew abandons it.

Most real-time strategy games don’t really deserve the term “strategy” as they are in reality a mix of tactics and action and only involve a small group of units. Codename: Panzers is such a tactical real-time strategy game. And it’s very good at being just that. As a commander you can use up twenty-five units in a mission and before most missions you gain access to a buying screen where you can upgrade, sell and buy infantry, tanks, transports, artillery and so on. Much emphasis has been put on the infantry units, so they don’t feel superfluous as they did in Blitzkrieg. Take the flame-throwers for example. They can attack a tank and with their flames heat it so much up that the tank crew has to abandon their vehicle. Then you just have to wait for the tank to cool down again, and you can take it over if you have bought a spare tank crew.

The missions are probably the highlight of the game. No two feel the same – each has unique objectives and background. There’s a world of difference between invading Crete and fighting in Stalingrad. Some missions even have secret objectives, so you have to try to figure out how you can get the extra points. Points for completing objectives can be used for buying new units for your next mission.

Now where is the realism in that?

Here the armour ratings are clearly visible. When it falls to red, your tank takes massive damage.

Controls are very easy and use a standard CDV setup, but unlike in Blitzkrieg it is actually very easy to control your units precisely. They do what you tell them as they rarely have path-finding problems and rarely get stuck. You have the usual group commands, you can change the infantry’s stand, you can occupy buildings and you can order air strikes and heavy artillery. The joy of it all is that it works like a charm. My only complaint is a few instances of inconsistency with the use of the right vs. left mouse button for commands.

Codename: Panzers really emphasizes realism and you’ll appreciate any knowledge you have about World War II weapons and vehicles. Each vehicle has not only a ‘health meter’ indicating the damage, it also sports four armour ratings: front, sides and back. If an armour rating drops from white to red, your unit takes significantly more damage from each shot coming from that armour plate’s direction. This is a great way to simulate continued fire damage.

Units also seem to appear at the historically correct time period and the buying menu includes a detailed description for all units. There’s one big spot on the otherwise clean tuxedo, though. While the cut scenes correctly show that tanks are blown to pieces by a single shot from high-calibre cannons like the German’s 88, the gameplay doesn’t let that happen. Here you’ll see 88’s hammer a series of shots into an enemy tank before it’s destroyed. This is probably a deliberate choice made by the developers, but Blitzkrieg showed how this should be done. I may sound a bit picky here, but in a tactical game, where you are so close to your soldiers, this is something that irritates.

Not fully prepared for war

Thanks to the impressive engine, war feels like war.

The most impressive part of Codename: Panzers is the graphics. You can zoom very close to the vehicles and even see working tires and gears, not to mention the great explosions, animations and shadows. The level of detail is highly impressive and apart from Codemasters’ Soldiers, you won’t see better graphics in a World War II real-time strategy anywhere else.

However, even though the German version has been in the shops for a while and the game has reached version 1.06, it still doesn’t feel quite finished. The AI is sometimes brilliant and sometimes plain stupid (a group of soldiers lay just two meters away from my tank, but never moved until I started shooting at them). Worse still are errors like the one I encountered in the Crete mission. Here your officer meets his brother, whom you must then protect. But while the mission says his name is Walter, his name is Kurt if you click on him. Those small things just irritate, as they are plain to see and should have been fixed a long time ago.

Thus Codename: Panzers has a few areas that need more work, mainly the AI and gun realism, but make no mistake: it’s still a great game and every armchair general should be looking forward to the release of the English version. In the meantime we can highly recommend the two Codename: Panzers demos.