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Panzer General III: Scorched Earth
by Steve MacGregorOn the Battlefield
First of all, I have to admit that I didn’t play Panzer General 3D Assault. The last PG game I played in depth was Panzer General 2. So, the first thing to strike me about this latest game was the very 3D-ness of the battlefield. The terrain has an organic, hand-painted look that I found very appealing. Tiny tanks and vehicles trundle over undulating hills, bombers wheel and swoop overhead, dust swirls from columns of vehicles, smoke rises from damaged units and rain and snow blow across the battlefield. Actually, I found the weather effects a little weak, amounting to not much more than some streaks of rain or blobs of snow on screen. Other than this though, I thought the graphics were superb. Hex borders are invisible and the 3D view can be rotated, scrolled and zoomed. On the test system, everything was very smooth, even on large scenarios. Terrain affects both movement and combat, so that the very detailed map also provides more than just eye candy.
A mixed group of tanks and armoured cars move out, with aircraft flying in support.
Units are selected by left clicking on their icon on the battlefield, or on the roster bar at the bottom of the screen. I occasionally found difficulty with this, for some reason particularly with aircraft. I would try to select a unit by clicking on it, only to find that I had missed it, and that the previously selected unit would move to the hex I had inadvertently clicked on. Irritating, but usually my ham-fistedness could be rectified by using the Undo button.
Movement. The hexes to which your unit can move in the current phase are highlighted in green.
When a unit is selected, the hexes to which that unit can move are highlighted in green, and any hexes it can attack are highlighted in red. In addition, the roster bar uses a series of dots of varying colour to show how many movement and fire points a unit has left, and how much damage a unit has sustained. Damaged units emit smoke and units, which have no more fire or movement points left are greyed out. Overall a commendably simple system that makes it as easy to visually assess the status of any individual unit on the battlefield as it is to check on the state of you whole force. If you want a quick snapshot of the overall situation, the new strategic map provides a 2D, plan view of the whole battlefield.
The Strategy Map
Although the game is turn based, units can have several movement and attack phases during each turn. Thus clicking on a tank unit will highlight the hexes that the unit can reach in that phase. Having moved the unit, it is possible to move another unit, and return to the first, or to move the original unit in several consecutive phases. On each consecutive move for a unit, the distance it can move is reduced. Overall, I liked this system. It made it much simpler to move units as combined arms groups so that, for example, it is possible to use a reconnaissance unit to scout an area, bring up heavy units, bombers and artillery to attack any discovered enemy units, and then move the reconnaissance unit on all in one turn. I felt this captured the fluidity and rapid change of mechanised warfare better than a simple one turn – one move system.
The computer AI in PG:SE is pretty much average for a computer wargame. That is to say, it is competent in defence but poor (or at least predictable and inflexible) in offence. The game sound is adequate, providing the requisite bangs and whooshes, and even the sombre classical music is tolerable.
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