By John Walker on December 5th, 2011 at 4:26 pm.
Mr Timothy Stone, in his superb regular column The Flare Path, has been keeping an eye on Steel Armour: Blaze Of War. In fact, he’s interviewed the team behind it. And today there’s a new trailer for the ultro-realistic tank sim.
Crikey, there are two modes here. In the sense that a chaffinch and a blue whale are two different animals. You switch from the most hardcore-looking 2D maps imaginable, to full 3D tank/plane-based war action. It hurts my brain a little that the two can co-exist in the same game. But here they are:
05/12/2011 at 16:37 BAshment says:
the setting time and environment wise is a welcome change.
05/12/2011 at 16:37 Guyver says:
seems good.
05/12/2011 at 16:41 Mavvvy says:
Truly looking forward to this, if only for the non-linear campaign map.
Ideally I would love if this was multiplayer, nothing like stomping around in tanks with your mates.
05/12/2011 at 17:02 Janek says:
Achtung Panzer’s strategic level plus lovely-looking tank sim from devs with a proven track (aha! ha!) record? Sold!
05/12/2011 at 17:24 wodin says:
Steel Fury with mods and the user made campaigns\scenarios is the most underated and overlooked Tank Sim made.
I don’t normally like Tank SIms but Steel Fury was\is the exception.
So if your into a more modern day(ish) kind of Tank Sim then I’d highly recommend this one here.
05/12/2011 at 18:17 Napalm Sushi says:
What an unapologetically manly title.
05/12/2011 at 18:18 Itanic says:
Been playing World of Tanks since early beta…. Have 5 tier 9 tanks,, have spent money,,,
Not played for 2 months because i felt there was always something missing.. and here we have it!
Looking forward to this! :-0
05/12/2011 at 18:53 BSG11 says:
To be fair to WoT, it made it clear from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be a proper tank sim, to the point of making a video making fun of tank sims.
06/12/2011 at 00:18 exenter says:
@BSG11
Do you have a link to that video?
08/12/2011 at 10:45 abase says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBvhUYI6T5U
05/12/2011 at 19:57 grundus says:
As an entirely stupid person, I wish I was smart enough to play this or had time to learn. However, I am not and I do not, so I will miss this unless it’s very cheap and on Steam maybe. I bought Arma II: OA under those conditions and enjoyed it, but if I’d paid three tenths of a hundy stick for it I’d be sad. It’s not that the game isn’t worth £30, rather my ability to play it means I only get £5 out of it, which is genuinely annoying but at the same time, that’s what I paid, so I can’t complain.
I think flying Apaches belly-scrapingly close to the ground up a mountain before slowing down to a hover, peeking over the top to acquire targets for a few seconds, hiding again then popping up to take one out before moving on has accounted for £4.99 of that enjoyment. The last £0.01 is in the early part of missions before I’ve ‘encountered’ any enemies, I say ‘encountered’ because I get killed without ever knowing where from.
05/12/2011 at 20:23 Dana says:
No multiplayer ? Meh, Im still waiting for Steel Beasts 2.
05/12/2011 at 21:14 bartleby says:
Well, you’ll be waiting a while then, since they’re stopped working on it.
05/12/2011 at 21:25 BathroomCitizen says:
I will buy this game if that music is INSIDE my tank.
05/12/2011 at 23:06 owenj says:
I wish more hardcore grognard Sim / Strategy companies would embrace Steam as a distributor. When I see this is available as PC/CD, I also assume download straight from the company which makes me sad. Battlefront, makers of the Combat Mission series, are pretty uptight about their game’s DRM, limited activations and that sort of thing. I just feel like Steam would help these companies protect their IP and reach a bigger audience.
Props to Eagle Dynamics for having A10 on Steam, even if I bought it at full price a mere week before it went on permanent price reduction.
Been looking into getting a tank sim for a while, Steel Fury / Beasts / Whatever seems like a good bet?
Also that looks like the tactical map from the Achtung Panzer? Wish more sims would have stuff like that, instead of just looping through what amounts to a Single Mission folder.
06/12/2011 at 00:20 bartleby says:
Recommend Steel Beasts. It’s the gold standard, it’s on sale at the moment, and it’s about to receive a major update. It’s a little pricey ($85 on sale vs $125), but it’s worth it.
06/12/2011 at 00:58 TheGameSquid says:
@bartleby
Hmmm, I’m not sure I follow here. I always thought Steel Beasts had several different versions: a “consumer” version and a “professional” version. The professional version was actually intended for the training of professional tank operators if I recall correctly. However, I only seem to be able to find the Pro version. Is the “consumer” version still being sold/supported?
06/12/2011 at 17:16 bartleby says:
It does – the consumer edition is called the Professional Personal Edition, or Pro PE. They do get most of their money from military contracts, yeah. The differences are pretty small, though, and have to do mainly with stuff like networking and referee modes.
06/12/2011 at 00:47 geeknik says:
I haven’t played a good tank game since M1 Tank Platoon. I hope this one takes me back to those days. =)
06/12/2011 at 01:46 Tac Error says:
Been waiting for this for quite some time, and dealing with the lesser-known Cold War proxy conflicts is nice too.
06/12/2011 at 12:53 tigershuffle says:
Steel Fury and even T34 vs Tiger (multiplayer mods) are great sims/games………….once you have patched and added all the fan based mods
you can see the potential
head over to tanksim.com for more info
will get this, as im a bit bored of WOT since playin in beta since August 2010……. feel theyve never delivered on lots of the goodies they couldve added ….instead of churning out ‘paper tanks’ and doing WoWarplanes