It seems like Hungarian developers Stormregion have grown as tired of based games as the rest of us. The latest game in their Codename Panzers series boldly makes the move into the next decade on the list, the 50's, and takes the escalating Cold War of the time as the basis of the action.

Obviously here in the real world the Cold War remained mercifully conflict free so the developers have taken history into their own hands a little to provide a basis for the action. Taking the increasingly tense events surrounding the 1949 Berlin blockade as a starting point, an accidental mid air collision soon lights the blue touch paper and war breaks out between the West and the Soviet Union. You take the role of a NATO general responsible for turning back the Soviet invasion across an eighteen mission long campaign that can be played out both in single player and co-op. Despite the obvious NATO angle of the main campaign you will get to play three Soviet missions towards the end of the game as well.

The game runs on Stormregion's new Gepard 3 graphics engine which is looking very promising as anyone who's seen the available gameplay videos can confirm. The most obviously impressive feature of the new engine is the degree of destructibility everything in the game has. Explosions rip entire building apart with spectacular ease, steel girders bend realistically and all the while the physics engine does a lovely job of treating each piece of debris as a unique object in its own right causing some realistic domino like effects when structures fall into each other.

The RTS itself is played out over a number of different environments taking in battlegrounds across Western and Northern to the Asian parts of Russia. Key to success on each however is the focus on understanding your units and deploying them with care. Each unit has highly detailed stats with things like tanks often having different armour ratings depending on the direction you attack them from, understanding these complexities can be the difference between success and failure so learn them well. The levels are pleasingly open-ended too, with most offering multiple ways to secure victory which should make for increased replayability. At the end of each mission you're shown how well you did and what objectives you achieved as well as those you may have failed so you can try again using a different tactic.

The kind of traditional resource management seen in lots of other RTS titles has been replaced by prestige points in Cold War. These are accumulated by successfully completing mission objectives, capturing key points on the map and, of course, killing bad guys. Once you've got enough you can spend them at specific reinforcement points on new units, equipment (including unit upgrades like improved accuracy), and flashy outside support such as airstrikes.

As you'd expect for a game based around a real world timeline (albeit one based on fictionalised events) you'll be controlling historically accurate units throughout the game, although interestingly some of them failed to get beyond the prototype phase in real life. Units added to your army earn experience as you move through the game becoming stronger the longer you keep them alive. This does a good job of personalising the combat somewhat, no longer do you throw units into battles with wild abandon, especially if you've nursed them through the last six or seven levels.

There also promises to be a strong side to things as well with around 25 maps, a map editor and a wide selection of game modes for up to eight people available from launch.

The Cold War era is a slice of history ripe for the picking now we're all getting a little bored of WWII flavoured games, and Codename Panzer looks like it's done a great job of doing just that. The impressively detailed environments and challenging yet well balanced gameplay found in the recent preview build we got our hands on look like providing RTS fans with something unique when it's released. Expect more on this closer to its March launch.

By Paul Newcombe