Codename Panzers: Cold War Demo - Single Player

The Cold War was mostly an arms race that never resulted in any actual fighting, although the conflict could have gone out of hand at any point. Due to the fact that both sides owned a lot of nuclear warheads, the entire world was in danger, even if no one else had any part in the war.

Codename Panzers: Cold War is an RTS that envisions a different fate for the world somewhere at the turn of the century, as the United States and the Soviets go at war over Germany and the entire Europe. Naturally, your role is to play as the US army and try to defeat the Soviets, although there are some missions that allow you to play with the opposite side as well, in order to make use of a few special units.

As with all of the previous Codename Panzers episodes, there's a lot of emphasis on the tactical aspect of the battles, because you are always in command of a few units at a time, rather than huge armies. Hence, you must come up with the right strategy in order to make full use of their capabilities, as well as avoid losing them pointlessly throughout the missions.

Although there are some changes and improvements, the basic gameplay mechanics have remained largely unchanged, which means that the fans of the series will be able to keep on using the same tactics all over again. However, the controls are a bit smoother and you can certainly feel the improvements as you keep on advancing through the campaign.

Moreover, a lot of work went into the new graphics engine, which is capable of rendering impressive scenes and a large quantity of detail. The units are nicely animated and the terrain suffers from the constant bombardment, not to mention the fact that you can destroy buildings, or even use them as shelter in order to set up an ambush.

In the end, Codename Panzers: Cold War achieves its purpose and turns out to be an improvement over its predecessor, which is exactly the point of a sequel. The new graphics engine should make the battles more immersive, as well as give you plenty to look at.