Remember playing with plastic army men? What if you could do that again without making a mess all over the floor? What if you could be one of them without undertaking a horrible plastination process that turns you into a nightmare beyond life and death?
Total Tank Simulator
Developer: Noobz from Poland
Price: $20 USD
Platform: PC via Steam
Total Tank Simulator is the realization of that dream. It’s a strategy game, but simple enough to understand: Buy some units, smash them against enemy units, see what happens. You don’t have to memorize build orders or worry about managing a ton of different upgrade paths. You just sit back and watch the carnage.
Or, if you want, you can jump right into it, because Total Tank Simulator lets you take command of a tank, a single troop, an artillery gun, an anti-aircraft gun, a plane, or any of the other units in the game. Lead them forward shouting “AFTER ME, MY LEGIONS!” or get gunned down trying to storm the enemy base.
And while it seems simple–as I’ve cunningly led you to believe–it is actually a pretty sophisticated game under the hood. Tanks are the focus largely because tanks are cool as hell, but you’re going to be playing with leg infantry from riflemen to snipers, tanks of all kinds, artillery and anti-tank guns, fighter planes, dive bombers, and other military units, all of which have a use and a counter. Oh, and there’s upgrade trees. Oh, and there’s units from the USSR, the UK, Germany, France, and the US. You get so many toys you’ll feel like your dad may just come back from the store one day.
Add to that a good wargame’s level of overview screens, health bars, deployable officers, and even a few units that spawn buildings, and you have a surprisingly detailed and complex wargame that initially looked like it was going to be super-easy. And you’re going to have to make use of all those units I mentioned because a force that’s all heavy tanks is going to get rolled by a well-balanced combined arms team. Ask me how I know.
There’s a campaign mode where you can play as the British, French, Germans, USSR, US, and Poland, and some of the modes even include theoretical scenarios like the British trying to retake London, or the US invading the Soviet Union post-war. Obviously, the length of the campaign varies for the poor bastard Poles and French that get taken out early, but there’s enough replayability and options to play through them several times, try different battles, try different unit mixes, and see what happens. It’s not a branching campaign like in the high-end wargames played by ubernerds with no lives like myself, but it’s easier to understand and, dare I say, a little more fun to play when you can actually hop in and lead a tank charge across burning terrain.
There’s a sandbox mode with an array of different maps, seasons, and times of day where you can go nuts with your own scenarios. I mean yeah it’s just a play map, it’s not 1:1 satellite recreation of the Fulda Gap but there’s a ton of maps and all 4 seasons are represented. And there’s a mode called Shadow where you create an army, then in each following battle, you fight your army from the previous battle. FINALLY, A WORTHY OPPONENT. ME!
Now the big question is: How much micromanagement is there? Personally, I’m not a Starcraft-playing elite-level APMer, so this is important to me. The AI does a decent job handling your troops. Sometimes your infantry will run backward to secure a location you don’t want. Sometimes your tanks will wind up snarled in a dogfight in a treeline. That’s war, baby!
There are annoyances, of course. Sometimes, an enemy air unit can hang around and you’re stuck hopping from vehicle to vehicle trying to machine gun it down because your AA is dead. A lot isn’t explained in the tutorials like officers and the tech tree system. If you don’t know how to fight a combined arms battle or what a good force comp looks like, you’re going to be doing a lot of flailing around trying to figure it out. You even have to be aware of the terrain. Not in, like, “Hmm, that tile says -2 gunfire”, but “hmm, I’ve put my artillery in a depression and it can’t fire up and hit the tanks on that hill.” And it chugs a little when you have a huge battle, even on a fairly beefy system.
But for a game like this, one that’s both a fulfillment of childhood fantasy and one that’s something I haven’t really seen before, I’m not complaining too much. Soldier up and deal with it. THAT’S WAR, BABY!
The Final Word
Easy to start, but miles deep. THAT’S WAR, BABY!
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
