Pay no heed to curstking, Brumes Wolf, and GenXGamer, the three people who’ve Steam reviewed the Platoon Commander demo so far*. While this available-since-Monday trial currently has more rough edges than a gritstone rhombhectotriadiohedron, it’s also the closest thing to a 3D Close Combat I’ve played in a long while.
A low-profile Slitherine signing with an Operation Barbarossa setting, Platoon Commander sports a slew of features sure to find favour with CC aficionados. For starters, tanks can be trashed by single AP rounds, even single AP rounds fired by outsized rifles.
Manned by individual, woundable crewmen, my poorly-animated Panzer IIIs never seem to shed tracks or bog down, but I have looked on approvingly as they have carved tell-tale corridors through standing crops and long grass.
Fatigue and panic modelling…
occupiable buildings…
area fire…
excellent LoS tools…
the sizeable selection of movement modes and unit stances…
and the CC-style truce system (call a halt, and the fighting continues at a later date on the same map)…
…vulnerable AFVs aren’t the only things that make me think newcomers Alpharabius Games are out to woo wargamers.
Hopefully, in the next day or two, the devs will fix the issue that sometimes causes the flexible ‘tactical camera’ to get stuck at a drunken angle or descend below ground level. Actually, come to think of it, I’d like to see the tactical cam scrapped altogether. There’s no reason why it needs to be a separate device. Jabbing ‘V’ every time I want complete camera freedom, feels like an unnecessary complication.
As the computer-controlled Reds defend in the demo and do so pretty statically, it’s not easy to assess AI at this point. Is that Soviet AT gun I watched bee-lining for a victory location on one occasion, a bad sign? Maybe, but as I’ve struggled to take Kollantai inexpensively, three times in a row now, I think it would be a trifle unfair of me to start rubbishing the CPU’s command technique.
* Oddly, the reviews in question vanished while I was putting together this piece!
Improved LOS tools are something I crave in modern war games and strategy titles. The Steel Division/WARNO one has a permanent hotkey on my mouse.
Arguably my biggest frustration of Combat Mission currently is having to camera-squint or abuse the hull-down order to try and suss out appropriate LOS for commands.
Do we think this current version of Platoon Commander is more of the true war game persuasion, or war-gamey with RTS underpinnings like Eugen offerings?