World War II: Panzer Claws Review

Apart from the excellent ‘Commandos’ series, I had never really considered Eidos when looking for a new strategy game - they tend to get pigeonholed with Lara Croft & the like. Then I saw this game, was intrigued & then totally hooked - it rocks!

First things first though, this is not another ‘crank out the units & rush em’ type game - & its also bloody hard compared to Red Alert & the like - you really do have to think about this game, and that is a refreshing change.

There are 3 ‘flavours’ to this: Single player: take command of Wehrmacht, Allied or Russian forces and follow the campaigns through. There is no micro-management involved, just careful planning & loads of action. Each campaign has 2 or 3 scenarios with ½ doz. levels in each, and every one will take you a while as you try to minimize your losses and keep enough units to actually complete the level.

Skirmish: hone your multiplayer skills by defeating the PC AI over a variety of different maps. Capture mines & factories to make money, build up bases & develop your forces. Some of the maps support up to 8 players but as yet I have found no way to ally with any of them. Even on the easy settings, playing against 2 opponents will tax your strategic skills to the limit as you frantically try to defend against pincer attacks.

Multiplayer: fight real people on line (apologies - not tried this yet - will update ASAP).

The overall lighting & sound effects are superb. At the start you set whatever option your card can comfortably support, test it & then enter the game - you can back out & change it at any time to improve game performance if running a low spec machine (I run a p3 500 with a Geforce 2 64mb card and use the 1024X768 setting with absolutely no sign of slowdown at all). Explosions and smoke are very realistic, its great watching an enemy tanks turret sail through the air as the tank is ripped apart by your fire. Another plus is watching the shadows change as the day progresses, until it starts getting dark & your vehicles turn their lights on to see where they are going (you can turn them off manually when mounting a night attack). For me though, the best is the rain / storms - you can virtually feel your troops getting wet & the lightning flashes light up the whole screen, couple this with the authentic sounds & you are in a whole new world.

Much the same as any other of the genre. Your unit display is located at the bottom of the screen. This can be turned off to give you more viewing area but then you will lose the important information it contains (like how many shells your Tiger has left before it sits around completely defenseless). Units can be grouped together by holding down the left mouse button & dragging a box then using the standard ‘ctrl number’; they then show up in your unit display & can be selected either by clicking on the icon or just hitting the number key. An oddity here is that you cannot use the ‘shift’ key to multiple select units - you have to move all the units you want to an area where you can drag a box round them. Also, there are no hotkeys to select any particular type of unit. Having selected your units, a left click sends them on their way & they will automatically fire at any enemies within range - you have to click the target icon then select a target to manually intervene. As stated above, ammunition is not limitless & your units need to be resupplied with it when they get low. This generally happens automatically (as long as you have transports and an Ammunition dump) but you can ask for a resupply by clicking the appropriate button in the display box.

New units, buildings & air strikes are all controlled from the building screen. To build, select the building, rotate it to the correct facing (vital for placing bunkers etc as they have a limited arc of fire), position it and just click to confirm. Once the ‘supply’ time is complete, a construction vehicle will appear to manufacture your new building. Any new units ordered all arrive at a production point and can then be moved on.

Camera control is intuitive & fluid, easily controlled by a combination of mouse buttons & scrolling, enabling you to view the action from a top down perspective or virtually a '1st person' type view. Zooming in & out helps out considerably when trying to locate errant units and is good for close up viewing of the destruction.

Use the tutorials - they lead you into the game nice & gently & really do help. "Don’t rush in!" just about sums it up - the units are evenly balanced and your armor will lose out massively if you don’t support them properly. Infantry anti-tank squads are lethal to any of your vehicles (even the King Tigers) & the only effective way for tanks to take out infantry is to squash them. In the same way, massed infantry versus well sited machine guns (or vehicles mounting automatic weapons) will just be mown down in double quick time. For that particularly bothersome unit or defensive position, you can always use an air strike or artillery if they are available (using the artillery is another graphic treat - just enjoy the total destruction over a large area as the shells arrive). There are only 2 formations to choose from: line or box, and it is just a matter of personal preference as to which you choose - they are both about as effective as each other. Line of sight plays a big part here - you cant shoot what you can’t see - so make use of air reconnaissance (but watch out for the AA guns). A really nice touch here is the ability to take over damaged or abandoned enemy vehicles. Armored cars & mobile artillery were generally ‘soft skinned’ so a good attack by machine guns could take out the crew and do little or no damage to the vehicle itself. This is faithfully replicated in game and once a vehicle is rendered immobile, all you need to do is crew it with some ordinary grunts and it can then be used as a spy vehicle. As long as you don’t engage in any combat in any shape or format, the enemy will assume the vehicle to be one of its own. This is a great way to scout out those areas heavily defended by AA guns and lay down targets for any mobile artillery you may have. This works particularly well in the single player mode but does not appear to be so effective in Skirmish mode.

The big difference between campaign & skirmish is that with campaign mode you only have a finite no. of units - lose em & game over. Once you achieve each objective within the level, more reinforcements arrive to help out on the next one - but beware - they may well have to fight their way through to you. In Skirmish, as soon as you have the technology & money, you can crank out any units you like (but the ‘rush’ is still largely ineffective if up against a well sited defense). You start with just 1 production point but more are located all over the map - moving any unit to one of these locations will capture it. If you lose all of your production points, you can’t get new units so guard them well (& target the oppositions!).

Once you have built a hangar, you have the opportunity to build paratroopers that can be dropped anywhere on the map (right click on the minimap to select a general location, then left click on the screen to pinpoint it) and watching a stick of paratroopers deploy is another nice graphical touch.

I like this game a lot. It does present a challenge to play & it’s not a walkover even on the easy settings. The graphical effects set the mood perfectly and it’s nice to hear your troops speaking the correct language at times. The movement of the vehicles seems paced correctly although the infantry appear to be wearing rocket skates which does detract from the overall effect slightly. Unit selection could have been better but it’s not enough of a bugbear to worry about. The battle sounds are great as well, it may have been the booze but I’m sure that you can differentiate between the different factions machine guns just by the sound. The AI is remarkably good - try a skirmish on the hard setting and try & crush its defenses (took me nearly a whole bottle of vodka to manage that one). I can’t wait to try out the online game (my modem has gone to the great modem graveyard) and will eagerly await new skirmish maps to be made available.