Codename: Panzers - Phase One

The Good
I basically liked everything. The graphics are so good you'll stop playing zoom in the camera and take a look at the European countryside or the Tanks just to see how cool everything looks. Plus with their new revamp of units they are tripling the polygons so the soldiers look even better.

The sound effects are great too, the machine gun fire, bombers, artillery, tank fire, houses exploding all has a really authentic feel to them. The music goes really well with the game because it's very Epic like, and let's not forget that good old tank driving around sound that is oh so prevalent in this title.

The gameplay is the cornerstone of this game. It seems like these guys have refined the gameplay to almost perfect levels. There are lots of handy automatic things the game does that saves you hassle and that go unnoticed most of the time. For example if you're grouping units into group 1 and you want to take one out just click him while holding shift then press ctrl 1 again. Okay it's not easy but seasoned players of the RTS genre will definitely appreciate all the hard work the developers have gone into to streamline this game for great gameplay. Better yet the units have armor on different sides so the battle depends a lot on strategy. More so then games of this genre usually do, not to mention it's a heck of a lot of fun to play!

Presentation wise the game is good too, the interface before entering a scenario is clean and fun to look at but when you go in the game it's tweaked for maximum performance and looks quite nice. The cutscenes throughout all the of the over 30 single player missions are very well done with some good motion capture acting and lots of good voice-overs. The realisticiness of the whole situation makes it very easy to stomach in a logical sense. The camera movement is concrete and easy to manage as well.

Last appeal: This one is high too because the multiplayer has some good fun mixed up into it. Even though the singleplayer doesn't have any unit creating buildings, on some multiplayer maps you can capture buildings that do create units. Single player is so good you'll want to do the whole campaign again in a harder difficulty level.

The Bad
One annoying thing was the repetitive acknowledgements from the units. Especially with the snipers, who are bound to say the same thing 3 times. But it only happens if you keep clicking for them to walk short distances over and over again.

The Bottom Line
This game is Real Time Strategy perfection. If you were ever an RTS this is the game for you. If you were ever an Age of Empires 2 freak like me this is the game to replace it! Yes, it's that good.