GC '07: Codename Panzers Cold War First Look

LEIPZIG, Germany--Leipzig was a fitting place for us to get a look at the next strategy game in Stormregion's Codename Panzer series. That's because Codename Panzers: Cold War will be set in 1949 Berlin, when the city was divided between the West and the Soviet Union. However, in this alternate history, an incident during the Berlin Airlift triggers a war, and you'll have to guide the Western forces to victory.

The game's campaign will let you play an 18-mission campaign mostly as NATO, though there will be three Soviet missions to let you see the perspective from the other side. What's exciting about the campaign is that it will be playable with another person cooperatively online. We can't think of another real-time strategy in recent years that has such a feature.

The campaign battles will be built around the concept of seizing and holding strategic points on a map, which are called prestige flags. Capturing a flag starts generating prestige points, which you can use to purchase fresh units and reinforcements, as well as other items in the game because they serve as currency. But you won't have to worry about base building because units arrive on to the battlefield in logical ways. They may arrive by road, rail, ships, or even helicopters. The weapons and vehicles in the game will also adhere to history. Instead of upgrading units, you'll get a chance to equip them with different systems.

Infantry are handled in a different manner because squads are highly modular. You can custom design squads by matching different types of squads with officers. Meanwhile, the different squad leaders can erect different types of structures. The ranger digs foxholes, the medic constructs a first-aid tent, the lieutenant builds a fox tower, and the Green Berets construct tunnels that can network across a map, allowing you to send units deep into the enemy rear.

Cold War will introduce the newest version of Stormregion's proprietary Gepard graphics engine, and the level of detail is impressive. We're talking excellent time-of-day lighting, as well as intricate shadowing and reflection effects. There's also an impressive physics engine that makes everything from large-scale destruction to the rag-doll animation on individual soldiers look really cool. The best demonstration of this was watching how the direction of a bombing run can send a construction crane smashing into the buildings around it. We watched it collapse three different directions, crushing the structures beneath it in a realistic manner.

The Codename Panzers games have always proven more popular in Europe than in the US. There's plenty in Cold War for fans to like, and hopefully the shift away from World War II will make the game more attractive to those tired of World War II games. Cold War is due out in the first quarter of 2008.