Dusty but Trusty: Steel Fury

It’s rare but not unknown for the work of one studio to appear on two Stone Tablets – the A4-sized sandstone slabs upon which my personal ‘Top Fives’ in various game genres are engraved. Graviteam, for example, feature on both the ‘Wargames’ tablet and the ‘Tank Sims’ one. They owe their presence on the latter to a superb 2007 armour title that Steam is selling for an insulting £2 right now.

If, eighteen years ago, Graviteam had been properly rewarded for crafting Steel Fury, the fact that they make almost nothing from this armoured masterpiece now would be less galling. Knowing that the bankruptcy of their EU publisher meant that they missed out on a massive chunk of the royalties due to them, makes it hard to play SF today with a twinge of vicarious bitterness.

Other emotions you may experience while playing this corker from Kharkov? Excitement, trepidation, delight, sympathy, grim satisfaction, and the good/apt form of despair, are all pretty much guaranteed.

With the possible exception of Panzer Front Ausf.B, I can’t think of any tank sim that communicates the spectacle of a rural WW2 land battle as well as Steel Fury.

Standing in the rocking turret of an advancing Panzer IV or T-34 during a large-scale SF attack, it’s difficult not to be both exhilarated and awe-struck. Wherever you look, dust-churning AFVs and bent-backed grunts bound for the same objective. Ahead, the grimy sky smudges and flickering muzzle flashes that mark your arty- or airpower-softened goal.

If you’re anything like me you’ll drink in such scenes, shamelessly time-machining until it’s time to button-up, descend into that claustrophobic darkness, and press your Mk I peeper against a jiggling eyepiece.

Anti-tank gun in the trees at eleven o’clock! After requesting a short halt, you hose it with the coax, then follow up with an HE round. The MG nest that comes into view as you crest the next rise gets the same treatment.

Things almost go pear shaped when you manage to topple your trundler into a fresh bomb crater, but eventually the flailing caterpillars bite and the horizon regains its horizonality. Literally back on track, you plough on, knowing that your next moment of inattention or sloppy marksmanship could well be your last.

Welcome to Steel Fury, according to some, the best WW2 tank sim money can buy. Yes, Panzer Elite diehards are not wrong when they point out that SF’s campaigns are simple, sequential affairs, and Graviteam’s AI code isn’t noticeably superior to Wings’. However, there can’t be many PESE fans who don’t also own and enjoy this wonder.

The Ukrainians might not have provided campaign treats like crew management and op map decision-making, but no-one could accuse them of cutting corners elsewhere. While its contemporary, WWII Battle Tanks: T-34 vs Tiger, offered two types of extensively modelled angry abode, SF provided three.

Supplying something like a Tiger, Panther, or Lend-Lease Sherman along with the game’s T-34 mod. 1941 and Panzer IV F2 would have made sound commercial sense, but being incorrigible WW2 nerds out to faithfully reproduce a specific phase of Eastern Front warfare, Graviteam opted to furnish players with the ponderous, peashooter-equipped Matilda III instead.

All three of the steeds boast virtual interiors as atmospheric as they are functional, optional manual gearboxes, and the kind of fussy mechanical details that only true obsessives would bother to implement. For example, you can drive G5’s T-34 with the hatch open or closed. In Graviteam’s sim the same armour-plated digit-squasher can be locked in five different positions! Why cant you see anything through the T-34’s turret-top periscope in SF? Probably because you’ve forgotten to flip open its animated armoured cap using the G key. In the light of such fastidiousness, the absence of functioning smoke launchers on the Matilda is somewhat surprising.

Appropriately spastic tank handling, plentiful destructible scenery, and fine collision detection, ensure helming an SF landship is almost as stimulating as gunlaying in one. When was the last time you played an armour sim in which you could reshape trench parapets with your churning treads and trace a turret rotation issue to a stout conifer blocking the sweep of your main gun? Quite possibly, the last time you played this classic.

Fans of Graviteam’s tactical titles won’t be surprised to hear that the ballistics are bang on. When munitions and metal monsters meet, armour angle and thickness at the point of impact really matters. At times you’ll see rounds ricocheting off resilient and angled targets, and punching straight through relatively thin-skinned ones. I can’t recall ever scoring a ‘double kill’ on bunched halftracks or light tanks, but I suspect it’s technically possible.

Where other WW2 armour sims are happy to fill ammo racks with AP and HE shells, SF goes the whole hog. The main gun of the game’s T-34 can sling five different round types. In my last mission, a scripted ammo shortage forced me to take-on several Panzers with shrapnel shells. As real Sh-345T rounds could be fired in three different fuze modes – shrapnel, grapeshot, and impact – naturally, the ones in SF boast the same capability.

Obviously, there’s little point in delivering realistic ballistics and optics in a tank sim if the accompanying battlefields are so cramped, AFVs with long reaches and thick hides can’t utilise their innate advantages. Happily, Graviteam’s venues are open enough to facilitate long-range duels, but not so devoid of buildings, trees, and undulations that a canny TC can’t use cover and dead ground to overcome weaponry or armour shortcomings.

Another tank trap SF skillfully skirts is overabundant opposition. If you finish a mission with a couple of enemy tanks, a few AT guns, and a dozen infantrymen on your kill tally, you’ve had a pretty good day. Not afraid to deploy players a mile from the closest threat, and more interested in furnishing evocative engagements than intense or relentless ones, Graviteam’s scenario designers provided the breathing spaces without which anticipation and trepidation can’t grow.

The weakest facet of SF? Probably the slightly bovine TacAI. While effective enough to guarantee challenge and sow alarm, Graviteam’s lacks the responsiveness and range of behaviours necessary to create truly memorable battles-within-battles. It’s rare to see an outgunned AFV reverse in this sim, or see CPU-controlled assault guns and tank destroyers employed with any flair.

If this article encourages you to try Steel Fury, I’d recommend spending at least a week with the excellent vanilla game before expanding your horizons. Yes, the sim’s mod scene is incredibly verdant and tempting, but getting user-made adjuncts – many of which seem to hail from Japan and the former Soviet Union – working can be tricky.

When you do eventually tire of operating Panzer IVs, T-34s, and Matildas, this Steel Panzer 2.3 pack isn’t a bad way to begin an SF modyssey. Standalone and dead easy to install (Extract using WinRAR, then – if you can’t read Russian – rename the ‘loc-rus’ folder to ‘loc-eng’*. Use Starter.exe to launch the game, selecting the second option on list A before pressing button B) it includes dozens of new trundlers, many of which come with bespoke campaigns.

* This only translates the menus. Briefings remain in Russian – not a huge issue as usually the accompanying maps make mission objectives crystal clear.

The following snaps were taken using Steel Panzer 2.3.