Armored Brigade (in development)
Armored Brigade is realtime / WEGO style tactical simulation wargame, which is based on "hot" cold war European battlefield. For more information, please check
Official webpage:
http://www.armoredbrigade.com/
Matrix forum:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=1639
Following is the example Alpha version video, which is more or less different from current beta version, but still it would be helpful to get some idea about this game.
Alpha version was free, and it was some sort of test project for devs. Then they get official support from Matrix and made a contract, developing a beta version now, and they closed all alpha version download links.
This game is under closed beta phase now. If you're interested, you can apply for beta tester from here. I'm also beta tester too.
http://www.matrixgames.com/beta/cnda.asp?gid=685
I cannot tell much due to NDA, but after several plays of beta version, here's my impressions:
1) Reminds me of Close Combat, Combat Mission, Steel Panthers, and Flashpoint Campaign, and I can sense little influence of Graviteam tactics and CMANO. It seems that developers of this game tried to merge other military game's pros, and build it as a RTS/WEGO style cold war wargame.
2) Quite realistic.
Devs tried to depict the realistic battlefield as much as possible under the limitation of source code: such as weather, storm, wind, realistic time flow and night/day expression, 4 seasons, ground condition, different types of munitions for artillery and vehicles, night vision and thermal sight, tree/field/building on fire, morale and fatigue, degree of training, command execution delay and etc, etc.... Yet, this game tried to abstract features as much as possible while keep the concept of realism, for the smooth gameplay experience.
3) It is more close to realism-focused wargame for wargame fans, rather than popular RTS game for general gamers.
This game's phase is slow. Due to command delay, all units in this game will not react to commander's unit immediately, rather will have some time to initiate the action. This command delay represents the radio communication time between commander and unit, and delay time depends on distance between HQ and unit, faction, and other factors. Anyway, due to this command delay and scale, any players will feel this game slower than famous RTS games. In addition, this game is based on 2D topview style, which is the same with classic Close Combat seiries. People who want to see 3D models like Eugen's Wargame would not like this graphic.
4) Unique map system.
This game offers 60km x 60km master map, and players can select any place to fight, up to 15km x 15km size. Based on point amount and map size, players can enjoy from company level battle to regiment level battle.
5) Dynamic AI
AI is impressive, they are aggressive and smart. But still, there are things to be corrected. Time to time, some individual units behave strangely without any tactical sense, when players ordered the platoon or company. Likewise, some features regarding AI need more work.
6) MP unavailable yet, and ELINT features are not described.
Devs are focusing on development of smart and competitive dynamic AI for the singleplay experience and campaign. MP is their long term goal but it will not be possible in near future. On top of that, several ELINT features are missing, and contents regarding radar, SEAD, EW are very abstracted at current state. This might be fixed later.
As a beta tester of current version, this game is really enjoyable even with current state, but still needs some improvements here and there. But I have good feeling about this one, and wish to see how the finished version looks like.