iPanzer '44 simulates World War II armored combat during the Summer and Winter of 1944, from Belrussia to the Ardennes. Developed by Charybdis and distributed by Interactive Magic, iPanzer builds upon the same basic simulation engine as their prior modern armored combat release iM1A2, but with many improvements and additions in the realm of graphics, sound, realism and gameplay.

Base Feature Set

iPanzer '44 puts the player in command of an armored company of either Axis or Ally forces on the Eastern Front (Belorussia, summer '44) and the Western Front (Ardennes, winter '44). You can command the Germans or the Russians in Belorussia, and in the Ardennes, the Americans or Germans. Currently there are three main modes of play; instant action, single play (fight any map), and three dynamic campaigns (with crew tracking, skill improvements and medals). The readme file mentions a coming patch to allow multiplay, but as it stands now the game only supports solo play. All these modes are played on some 80 maps spread over the two fronts.

The main focus of iPanzer are the three medium tanks fielded by their respective forces during the conflict: the German PzKw V G, the Russian T-34-85, and the American M4A3(76)W Sherman. These three medium tanks are fully simulated, and this is home base for your game persona. You may jump into any primary tank type on your side (example; if your German, you can jump into and fight any Panzer V on your side). Also simulated are other medium tanks, light tanks, tank destroyers, armored cars, trucks, jeeps, infantry, antitank guns, mortars and artillery.

What's in the Box?

The Windows '95 program is delivered on one CDROM in a cardboard sleeve, and comes with a very nice spiral bound manual, a keyboard reference card, and various loose cards (registration, etc...). I must say the 156+ page manual is extremely impressive, being both well written, very complete and well made. Everything is explained clearly and matches the game exactly. The weapon data section is impressive, giving you ordnance tables for all the guns in the game (even infantry rifles!), and many detailed notes. I can't say enough about how much a good manual can add to a simulation.

Machine Requirements and Installation

Like many sims, there are minimum and recommended system requirements listed on the box and in the manual installation section. Let's just pass over the extremely optimistic minimum requirements and look at the 'Recommended' requirements; 200+ Intel Pentium, 32 megabytes RAM, 8x CDROM and a 3D Graphic Accelerator. iPanzer uses DirectX v5 and Glide to drive 3D cards and works with 4meg 3DFX, Rendition v2100 or later, and Riva 128 chip sets. You may have luck with other cards, as long as they have 4meg video RAM, have hardware alpha-blending, bilinear filtering, z-buffering and, of course, DirectX support. 3DFX owners can drive their cards with either DirectX or Glide (Glide being better), and it works on VooDoo Rush cards. I reviewed on a 200mmx, 32 meg, with a 4meg VooDoo Rush based card using Glide, running under Windows '95. This is likely the slowest system setup on which you would want to run the sim.

Installation was uneventful and painless. iPanzer has your standard Typical, Compact and Custom install choices, for different install sizes. I used custom and checked the Program Files option, and Models, Images, and Campaign Data option, which totaled for a 87 meg install size. I tried larger installs, but didn't see any marked performance improvement over the 87 meg install, so I stuck with that. The install program also has options to install DirectX 5, DirectX 5.1 Media API's, and Intel Indeo 4.1 drivers (used for the introduction video clip and in game clips).

A note about starting the simulation for the first time; the sim will start in the most compatible graphics mode first (Device Independent Bitmap). This mode uses the 2D aspect of your graphics card and will not use the 3D features. If you have a 3DFX card, start the game with the 'Run' button on the Windows start menu with this text;
c:\i-magic\panzer\panzer.exe -vtarget 3dfx

This will force the game to use Glide when you set the render option in the option menu in the game to Direct3D There is no Glide choice in the menu, so do this to be sure your using it. Conversely, if you want to use Direct3D instead of Glide, use this line;
c:\i-magic\panzer\panzer.exe -vtarget Primary

Also, the option menus in the game write to the file panzer.ini. You can edit this file directly if you know what you're doing, and there are some options there that are not in the in-game menu system (like disabling the intro).

The Player Management Shell

After starting the program, you are presented with the standard iMagic and Charybdis animated logo's, then a nice little WWII film montage of some tank action . After this intro, you are presented with the main management screen of the game. A graphic of a antique wood cabinet with clickable hot spots represents your interface to the simulation. From this screen you can go to Instant Action, Single Battle, the Bookcase (explained later), Campaign Resume, Options, Credits and Exit.

Options Screen

iPanzer '44 has a tremendous amount of flexibility in the option menus. You can choose to set some general levels of graphic detail and gameplay difficulty, or use advanced mode and tweak each and every important performance and realism setting you are likely to need. Especially interesting is the fact that you have three independent realism screens for each of the modes of play (Instant, Single, and Campaign). This allows you to play any way you want, like arcade for instant action, and full realism for the campaign. Nice feature. Of note in the realism options are the aiming and stabilization settings.

Aiming has to do with how ranging is handled. On the Arcade setting, when you fire at the enemy, the sim calculates the range and superelevates the gun for you in one step. On the Automatic setting, when you have the enemy in your sights, hitting the space bar returns the range and does the gun superelevation. On the Realistic setting (the best way to play the sim), you can still hit the space bar to get range, but you must set the gun superelevation manually.

Of course, the most realistic way is to never range with the space bar, and use the mil markings on the gun sight. Stabilization can be set to on and suddenly you can shoot on the move like a modern tank, but this takes a lot away from the game, as WWII tankers had to stop, if only briefly, to aim and fire on the enemy (talk about pressure!).

On the graphic side there are some interesting choices besides the ones you might expect. One of them is Optional Collision. This makes all trees, vehicles, men, shells, bullets and other objects have full collision detection. This level of realism is quite impressive, but be warned, you will suffer a framerate hit with this option on.

Another graphic detail feature is the Horizon Distance setting. This works as you would expect for the first few settings (2.0, 2.5, 3.0 kilometers). This may seem like you can't see very far, but considering most WWII tank battles were fought within 1500 meters, and quite frequently at a range of 1000 meters, this seems adequate. The last setting, 3.x, allows you to see the farthest, and also does not simplify distant terrain detail. You won't get 'floating tanks' or objects on this setting, but the frame rate will suffer unless you've got a screaming computer.

Bookcase

When you click on the low row of books in the cabinet, you are taken to the Bookcase. The books are clickable and the first three open up to reveal data and notes for every weapon platform in the game for each country, complete with a 3d image from the game. As you go to the right, the books become photo albums of campaign progress for the four possible scenarios, German vs American, German vs Russian, American vs German, and Russian vs German. You can create a new book at any time, and can also copy a book to another place in the case.

When starting a new campaign, you may name your commander and company, and are given a crew for your element (platoon). The crew can improve over time, and they can also be killed. There is a map of the entire campaign theater, and as you play through the missions, your front will move on a smaller picture of the map, along with a debrief of the battle. Photos represent the battles, and you can return to a battle and replay from that point, changing your own history. All the proper medals for each country are represented, and will end up in your medal box if you do well.

Each campaign theater has about 40 battle locations. You and the computer opponent start with one battle location that, if lost, will end the campaign. The missions are dynamically generated, and will continue with an operational strategy based on the outcome of the previous battles. So, if you're doing well, expect to be on the offensive, and vise versa. This component is handled very well compared to most land combat sims. In too many sims it seems you always have the same mission, kill everything and move forward.

In iPanzer you usually have several battle locations to choose from to fight next, and your posture at the time determines the missions available. But you can be in a big offensive push and decide on the next mission to do a hold and refit defense mission (cool). There is more depth in the handling of the campaign aspect than I will go into here, but the diversity of missions and excellent records of all your hard fought battles makes playing a campaign a pleasure.

The Single Battle option allows you to use any of your in-game personas to play any battle map in the game. This is nice for learning the victory conditions and tactics for the many mission types, and experiment with different equipment choices. Instant Action is split into 3 clickable framed pictures of the 3 featured tanks in the game, and takes you to a predetermined map. The separate realism settings for each mode of play comes in to play here, as you can play just the kind of game you what with all these different modes.

Pre-Battle Options

Now we get to heart of the matter, the actual missions. Assuming you are starting from a campaign or single mission, you start from a map of the front and choose your battle location. Once this is done you are presented the Prebattle Option screens. Your 'clipboard' has five layers of screens; a overview theater map, a listing of expected enemy forces if you have perfect intelligence option selected, a small map of the upcoming battle and list of possible battle plans to select for that map, and a form to select support elements by spending resource points determined by the your battle plan choice. In Single Battle mode, you can set the weather and time for the battle, where as in a Campaign, this is fixed.

The Simulation

After a brief loading period, simulation starts proper. Charybdis uses the MythOS engine, first used on their earlier release iM1A2, but now vastly improved. The specifications have been expanded to support 16-bit color depth, hardware bi-linear filtering, alpha blending, and z-buffering, with Direct3D or Glide driven 3D accelerator cards. The look is much better, has you can see ground contours much better now, and have trees and forests. The forests are of the 'impassable box' design so pretty they are not, but they work tactically and if you squint they are not so bad ;). The sky is nice although you can see where the clipping plane starts, but it is texture blended pretty good, so it's hard to notice. The look is better than in iM1A2, but the overall design philosophy is to streamline shapes and contours and reduce the on screen poly count.

This makes it look a bit utilitarian, but when it's all moving and your in a big battle, it can be very a immersive experience. If you have a very fast system (333-400 Pentium II, 3D hardware) you can turn off simplification of far terrain , and enable full collision detection for all si-mulation objects. Played like that, iPanzer becomes a very high fidelity simulation of armored combat. Sound is very good, the track sounds being very convincing. Sound is properly positioned in the stereo field, and there is a good variety. Your crew members vocaly resond to any orders, as do other elements under your control.

After loading you find your self in the gunners position on tank 1, element 1. You can occupy the Unbutton (TC) position, the Gunners position and the Drivers position for any primary tank type in your company. When you initiate an action for that position, the crew member moves out of the way. When you leave, or give new orders for that position, the crew member takes over and carries them out. The Unbuttoned position is where the Tank Commander (TC) can take a look out the top hatch of the tank, and use binoculars. You can be killed from the unbuttoned position, so watch out.

The Drivers position works as expected and has control of the bow machine gun. There are some nice touches though, like if you hold ctrl down and use the keyboard of joystick to move, when you let go the throttle will snap shut and the brakes will apply, good for precise position adjustments. Also, you can drive the tank from an outside view with the joystick. This makes driving around very satisfying.

The Gunners position has the sight and controls for the main gun, and at the top are the vision block of the TC cupola. These to view are controled separately, to nice effect. There is an outside view with eight preset camera angles that are pan and zoomable, and can view any of your company, and can be set to view enemy units too. The models are a bit bland and simple, not much extra detail, but infantry are polygonal which is interesting. Each tank simulated has separate and authentic interior art work, as well as the different mil marking systems the three factions used on their gun sights. The detail is very nice, and the three tanks feel very different.

As in IM1A2, the gunnery simulation is where this product really shines. All the correct shell types for each gun are simulated and this does not only apply to the tanks, but to antitank guns, tank destroyers, infantry, artillery, etc. The best seat in the house is the gunners sight, as you fling shells at the enemy, hoping to connect. When you do, the shell may bounce off, cause a fire, punch a hole in the hull, maybe even pop the top (blow the turret off). The explosion, fire and smoke effects are nicely done, and very informative.

There is a 2D damage display that show important tank damage and crew casualties. The damage modeling is sophisticated, with track hits immobilizing, a hit to the turret ring can prevent the turret from turning, crew members can die, the engine can be hit and catch on fire, in fact fire can spread and tanks will brew-up even if only disabled at first. The controls are first rate, and there is a key for every possible order and command laid out in a logical manner. You can use hot key combos, or the alt key brings up a pull-down menu system to use with keyboard or mouse. The tank interiors are clickable in certain parts, and you can use the mouse to aim the gun, drive, and look around unbuttoned. The Tactical Map

The map feature in iPanzer '44 is very complete and allows you fine control over your forces during the battle. The map displays the battlefield, all friendly units, all known enemy units, phase lines and objective areas. There are many filters and display options. By right clicking on th map or a element / unit, a context sensitive menu will appear. If you right click on the map, you get to general display options and filters. By right clicking on a unit, you get the element / unit orders main menu. This has more nested menus such as Formations, Orders, Tactics, etc. Waypoints can be quick drawn, with one waypoint, or you can set multiple waypoint paths.

The order set is the most complete i have seen. Seems like every good command from every tank game up to now is here. Also every command has a hot key combo for quick access. On the right side of the map display is a clipboard with the current element / unit's data, including just about everything you could think of. This aspect of the sim is very deep and is quite fun to work with. I have just scratched the surface in my description, but if you like plenty of commands and options, you well be very happy discovering all the stuff you can do.

Gameplay

iPanzer '44 has very solid gameplay. The AI is competent, the realism is there, and the design is logical. You can watch the AI behavior very simply. Just start a mission and don't do anything. The company will follow a tactical battle plan based on the mission you choose. If you are on a Probing Attack, let's say, you will see your scout element move out ahead of you main element, and it's supporting element. When contact comes, if it can kill the enemy or delay him, or it will call for artillery, or it will call for the main element to attack, etc. When the Main element moves, the support element will overwatch, then leapfrog. Flanking attacks, ambushes, and the like are all possible.

When played at full realism, against Elite Panzer forces in a T-35, or worse yet, a M4A3 Sherman, the sim forces you to overcome technical disadvantages with tactics in order to win. In fact, each force that is fielded requires a differnet tactical doctrine to win at the higher realism levels. Deep and involving, gameplay is king in this product.

Conclusion and Rating

I think iPanzer '44 is well worth the money I shelled out for it. I am frankly surprised at the level of detail and utility that the design has for simulating general WWII armored conflicts. The program has never crashed, it has tons of options, strives to be ultra-realistic, and is fun and compelling to play. Some may be thrown off by the fact that iMagic is the publisher, or the 'particular' graphic look that the MythOS engine seems to have, but if you can get past that, and especially if you have very fast system, iPanzer '44 can help you understand the tremendous courage and dedication of WWII tank crews,and the technology they used to fight with.

Core Rating; 60-90

I would have to say this is product for the hardcore sim-combatant. But because it has so much flexibility in the realism setting, I gave it range to reflect this. I went to 90 on the high end due to the facts of WWII tank combat. The fact that you had to estimate range using apparent size compared to the mil markings on your gun sight, and the guns were not stabilized and would dip and tilt with the hull, made moving shots very difficult and mostly not possible. Add to this the choice of fighting the Germans superior tanks and guns with Russian or American forces, makes this a real hard sim if you want it to be.

Gameplay; 90

I think gameplay here is super. This where iPanzer shines. There is lots to do, the realism is there, the AI uses sound tactics, and the campaigns are dynamic with many mission types. Also, I like the photo album approach to keep records of your progress. It is great to flip through and see your game personas history, and be able to jump in at any point to create a new path from that point.

Graphics; 75

The simplist models and sluggish frame rate are damaging to my rating here, along with a bit of a rough look. The graphics are serviceable, but it could be a bit prettier. I personally don't find them distracting, but graphics are very subjective. Make your own call, but remember, it's how things move and interact, not what they look like in a screen dump, that creates the immersion quality we all want in our sims. On framerate; I tested on 200mmx 3DFX system (ouch), but I feel that there are similar 3D engines with similar loads, that have faster frame rates. Although, I could be under estimating the work load on the engine.

Sound; 85

Audio is very good throughout. There is some very nice music in the non-3D sections of the sim, and the sound are very good in the sim itself. I like the track noises a lot. You will hear rounds cook off, and secondary explosions, as well as artillery shells and firestorms.

AI; 85

Ai is a tough call. The sim is so configurable as to crew quality and realism, that the AI could be weak but appear strong (your fighting the sim as opposed to the enemy). But I have seen my side and the enemy use sound tactics, and that in it's self is impressive. I think to judge the AI better, it would be necessary to never use the map, or jump tanks, or use outside views or things like that (get rid of the informational advantage).

User Interface / Map Interface; 95

The best so far in a tank sim (i will be flamed of couse). Every possible control, gads of options, several ways of doing the same thing, mouse-joysitck-keyboard enabled, etc. Very logical keyboard layout, with a duplicate mouse or keyboard menu system, every turret-hull-TC facing combination has a key, and some very smart controls, like Halt (key H). Hit 'H' and the driver comes to a fast stop, and holds for about two seconds, then continues with his orders, perfect for getting off a shot then scooting.

Fun Factor; 85

Yep. Fun, fun, fun. I give it a 85 for fun, because you can set it up to work like an arcade game in just one mode of play, say instant action, and someone (your girl say) who hates complex games, can sit down and kill some tanks 'Quake' style pretty painlessly. Also, it never crashed (although it doesn't like to switch programs, I don't consider this a game-play bug). Everything pretty much works, the manual matches the game, and it feels solid. That makes it fun in my book.

Learning Curve; 8-24 hours

Well, you could actually be playing in about two hours on low realism, but if you go full realism, you have to estimate range with the mil etchings on the gun sight, and the three nations use different etching schemes! Thats some serious manual study time there. And to fight effectively, you need to learn the characteristics of each kind of shell, and the penetration figures for different armor thicknesses. Then there is the tactical map and all the element and company orders, so I think 24 hours on the high end is maybe a little optimistic.

Overall; 85

I like this sim. I would give it a 90, or should I say I will consider giving it a 90, if one thing happens. The readme file mentions a multiply patch that 'may' become availible. There is a graphic for this on the main interface screen, but I don't know for sure if iMagic or Charybdis will implement this feature. If this feature does become availible, and it works as well as the rest of the product, I would be very interested to play the sim online. The nature of WWII gunner would make it a supreme test of skill when played with full realism, and would allow close range dogfights that just don't happen in a modern armored combat sim. Regardless, this product works as advertized, has few if any bugs, is realistic, and has many play options. A good deal in my book.