Anyone who’s been playing sims since "the old days" has heard about the original M1 Tank Platoon. It was released almost simultaneously with two other tank simulations: "Tank" by Spectrum Holobyte, and another – possibly by Activision. Out of these three games, M1TP earned a remarkable degree of respect from armor fans around the world, while the others faded into obscurity.

The namesake was SO well done, that it became the "gold standard" for all tank games up until fairly recently. Following up on a success like that is no easy task, but the pieces of a remarkable follow up are all in place in M1 Tank Platoon II.

This sequel is the proverbial "diamond in the rough" – it has quite a few significant bugs and flaws out of the box, but it shows remarkable potential. We’ll cover the game’s ups and downs, but before we go any further let’s preface the discussion with the awareness that Microprose has jumped straight to work to correct outstanding issues. We will soon benefit from that commitment in the form of a downloadable patch that will fix a number of things, add some requested enhancements, and add Direct 3D support.

Let’s talk for a bit about the graphics engine. M1TP2 has the best graphics engine ever put into a tank simulation – period. Looking at some static screenshots may not impress the socks off you, and the claim may seem exaggerated. However, watch the game in motion and you’ll see that not only does it LOOk great, it also does several things amazingly well.

First, it gives you eight kilometers of viewable terrain out to any direction. This distance is not arbitrarily assigned based on the designers whims. It is – amazingly enough – done to scale.

Second, is the readability of the terrain. It is very easy and intuitive to see where the slopes and crests of the terrain are. You can easily tell when you’re about to reach the top of the next rise – all the better to help you establish a hull-down position manually, or anticipate the next time you may be exposed to enemy fire. So perhaps you can spot a good avenue of retreat, or conversely, a nice little "wadi" that you can use to sneak your platoon undetected into the enemy’s rear.

Third is the sense of depth that you get in the graphics engine. This aspect is much easier to demonstrate than it is to explain. Suffice it to say that between the properly scaled distances, the particular way perspective projection is done, and the seamless way close terrain blends into distant terrain, one gets a real feeling of expansiveness. On a side note, it’s also worth mentioning that you do get quite an effective sense of speed when you’re blazing over the terrain at full power.

Overall the closest competitor to M1TP2 in the graphics engine department would be iM1A2 because of the 4km to-scale viewable maximum distance. But iM1A2 has clipping errors in the rendering engine, a mediocre sense of depth, and no terrain readability whatsoever. Armored Fist 2 has very good looking tanks, but the voxelspace terrain engine doesn’t seem suited for this kind of extreme-accuracy extreme-range rendering. M1TP2 beats both of them in functional looks and generally in frame rate.

The vehicles themselves are exquisitely detailed. For example, the M1 sports not only a visible CITV, but also the guns for the TC and loader, twin radio antennas, wind reference sensor, vision blocks, even a spare road wheel hanging from the rear of the turret. The track and road wheels are also very well animated, with the road wheel textures getting "dusty" as speed increases, tracks whose gaps seem to increase as they flip over the drive wheel.

As the vehicles drive over terrain, they undulate in a very realistic fashion, but the stabilized guns stay steady – only moving to face a target or recoil sharply back from firing a round. Bradley APC’s can even rotate their TOW launchers into firing positions and lower their ramps to deploy sprite-rendered infantry. All turreted vehicles have properly articulated models – even the mobile SAM and AAA units. Again, it’s all about a thoughtful attention to detail.

3dfx versions and software versions of the game look basically the same. The 3dfx version adds a solid framerate boost. While the game is meant to run well on a P133, I would still strongly recommend a P200 with a Voodoo1 card. Gamers used to the flight-sim business for a while know that you will struggle to score a "guns" kill without a glassy-smooth framerate, and with M1TP2 you will be on the gun exclusively – unless of course, you leave the actual shooting to your AI gunner and play the game from the TC position.

The graphics do have some anomalies and less-than-perfect implementations. Explosion artwork is extremely pixellated up close. The smoke artwork looks a little plain. Trees in the game are normally done as "tree-fences" which can normally be driven through – or "tree-boxes" which cannot. When using the "chase view", the frame rate drops drastically when large numbers of enemy vehicles – even if they are very far away.

Furthermore, the Low/High detail selection in the options screen is a little misleading. This does not change object detail, the viewable distance, or even the granularity of the terrain (which actually would be a very bad thing to change in a tank sim – see our "1998 Armor Survey" article for more details). Anyhow, what it changes is the total number of vehicles in a particular battle. Turn it down, and the game will scale back both your forces and the enemy forces to reduce CPU consumption. An unusual, if interesting, tradeoff.

The sound in the game is extremely impressive when considered properly. To ears perhaps too accustomed to THX movie theaters, battlefield sounds may seem kind of hollow and muffled – perhaps even distorted. However, the sounds are a remarkable reproduction of how the sound of weapons fire drift and echo across the battlefield.

Someone with a hunting or firearms background will quickly recognize that the battlefield sound effects either didn’t come from a sound stage and were recorded "on-site" or at least they were processed by a very talented sound engineer. Perhaps the biggest fault among the sound effects are in the engine sounds of the aircraft. The continuous sound is obviously looping and is a bit of a distraction.

Internal sounds are also good. Crewmen will call out targets and make several different status announcements in a terse, but effective, manner. It just seems odd that hearing "Direct hit!" might be the way your crew lets you know that they all just died. In fact, you can be commanding a completely dead tank for a little while before you realize any better. Perhaps having the sim switch to an exterior view of your "dead" tank might be a better – and clearer – disruption once you get nailed.

As for other internal sounds, the turbines have a nice – if perhaps a little weak sounding – whine to them. There are many incidental sounds that add nicely to atmosphere: loading the gun, clearing the breach, and hitting the switch to open the ammo blast doors. These particular sounds tend to have a bit of a "foley" feel to them, but overall it’s fair to say that suspension of disbelief is very good in the sound department.

Guns guns guns!! Let’s talk about them, shall we? Not only do you get the delicious Rhinemetall 120mm smoothbore to play with, but you get a 7.62 coaxial machine gun and the TC gets a .50 cal loaded with depleted uranium SLAP rounds that carry some serious punch.

Now if you’ve been playing the various M1 tank sims, you’ve probably noticed that gunnery for the main gun is rather strange. Each simulation seems to have a different interpretation of how the gunnery process works. The original M1 had a "lase and blaze" procedure – where the fire-control computer handled superelevation, but you still had to lead manually. iM1A2 uses a "lase-lase-blaze" procedure for shooting at moving targets. The computer would calculate lead on a moving target based on successive ranging lases and compensate accordingly.

M1TP2 uses the "lase-track-blaze" method. This method is easier than the original’s but harder than iM1A2’s. The way it works is that you lase the target for range, keep the sight centered on the target so the turret rotates at the exact same speed that the enemy unit is crossing your field of vision, perhaps add a second lase to refine the range estimate, then fire. Alternatively, you could simply both lase and track continuously. It works either way.

M1TP2’s method takes some getting used to. Getting your initial range estimate isn’t a big deal. The trick is keeping the sight perfectly centered on the moving target until you fire. If the sight drifts to the front or rear of the target, the shot will probably go wide. The way the joystick response is built into the game, tracking certain targets accurately can be very difficult. Having a customizable response curve similar to the one implemented in Jane’s F-15 would have a welcome addition.

However, Tim Goodlett from MPS informed us that the way joystick response was done is meant to model the real tracking characteristics and turret governor of the real thing. The real M1’s turret apparently has difficulty tracking laterally fast moving targets far away and up close, and this does indeed manifest itself in the gameplay for the gunner’s seat as well. (Ed: In spite of this, some kind of fix is on the way.

Aside from the technical aspects, the actual gameplay experience of working the gunner’s seat is very rewarding. The quality of the terrain engine in the game makes it easier to understand what is going on, and so far, no "flying tanks" have been discovered. Firing the gun causes the tube to recoil sharply back and momentarily obscure your vision from the smoke and blast, but afterwards you are greeted to the sight of the shell gracefully arcing its way towards the target. It will kick up a dust plume if it misses – and bonus again due to the way terrain is depicted, if you have a good view of the ground around the target you’ll be able to intuitively understand exactly where the shell landed in relation to your mark.

It can be very difficult to spot distant targets against the ground texture – although using the thermal sights are quite helpful here. A nice feature that helps you optimize your vision through the sights is that you can adjust the contrast of the sight as if you were passing various filters over it. If the targeting laser or computer gets damaged, range can be manually entered or you can switch to the auxiliary sight – which incidentally, has incredibly well done range estimation and bullet drop compensation stadia marks built into the sighting reticles – making it perhaps the most useful auxiliary sight put into a tank simulation. It’s extremely difficult to hit a moving target with it, but stationary targets are still fair game out to 3000 meters.

As is proper, sabot rounds fly quickly in a flat trajectory to the target, making them very forgiving against fast moving targets. HEAT rounds fly in a slow and high lobbed trajectory – meaning that at long range, the target really had better be stationary. STAFF rounds are modeled with a cool "lightning strike" effect – simulating the downward firing subprojectile striking down at the target’s top armor. (A mild annoyance here is that the animation for the subprojectile animation always looks like it’s detonating 10 meters **above** where you could clearly see the shell terminate it’s flight). Another nice touch is that MPAT rounds can be set to detonate in a proximity-fused method or by direct impact – depending on whether you’re after helicopters, ground vehicles, or infantry.

For the record, there are some minor problems with the gunner’s seat. With my test system’s Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback stick, the button assigned as the laser does not operate. The joystick’s button assigned to activate thermal vision rapidly flickers the view between thermal and visual sight. Also, under certain conditions, hull-down vehicles or helicopters cannot be ranged accurately with the laser even if you have a good line of sight – although this issue is much more subtle than in say, iM1A2 , it still hasn’t been completely eliminated.

Also, the laser seems completely unaffected by smoke in it’s current incarnation. Finally, if you switch out of the gunner’s seat for even a moment, the AI will take over and usually switch targets, change the loaded ammo type, and so on – which is a hassle if you only wanted to glance at something quickly in the TC’s position or chase view.

Damage modeling is convincing. If you strike the target just right, you’ll be rewarded with a nasty sounding **thump** and the sight of the target bursting into flames, flinging bits of debris, and wafting a column of smoke into the sky. These columns are visible for a very long distance, and after a big battle the field can look like quite a mess. Sometimes even the turret will be blown clear off of the hull.

In fact, as you drive by wrecked vehicles, you may be in for quite a shock as you’ll hear another explosion come from that direction – although it probably is nothing more than secondary explosions from ammo cooking off in the burning vehicle. In other, non-critical hits, the shell may have struck rounded turret face or glacis plate at an odd angle and merely deflected off in a flash of sparks – merely rocking the target by it’s impact (However, this "rocking under impact effect" is sometimes overdone – you can swing a tank back and forth by bouncing .50 cal bullets off of it’s armor.)

Where you hit the tank also makes a difference, both in distance and hit location. The game notes whether you’ve scored a hit on the hull or turret, and also notes what side they were hit on – this affects the amount of armor facing the shell as well as the potential for reactive armor to fling an armor plate directly back into the striking shell as a first-line defense. The behavior differences between the various ammunition types are modeled convincingly as well. Sabot rounds lose a lot of their kinetic energy – and therefore killing power – the further they fly downrange, so when you’re facing the front armor of a tank, you may find sabot useless distances over three kilometers.

Also, sabot ammo tends to punch straight through both sides of lightly armored vehicles such as APC’s without doing any terminal damage. It can kill APC’s easily - just not consistently - and the game shows it. HEAT rounds, on the other hand, are only marginally effective against the reactive armor on most Russian tanks, but are just as effective at any range, making them an interesting choice for flanking or rear sneak attacks, or effective APC/infantry stoppers.

The enemy of course, is trying to bag you as well, and they’ll work at that with a variety of weapons. If you keep the slanty side of your tank facing the enemy, no gun in their inventory seems to be able to knock out your Abrams at anything except very close range, but you still need to keep moving if you aren’t in a safe position so to protect your engine, tracks, and other vulnerable equipment. Your biggest threat comes from ATGM missiles launched through gun tubes, dismounted infantry, or APC’s.

These optically guided missiles are something else. When you hear the scream of a rocket launch, you’re likely to see a shower of smoke for a moment, then nothing more than a speck in the distance, but inexorably closing – wavering back and forth as the gunner tries to refine his optical lock on you. What’s very impressive is that you have several valid options of defeating the missile. You can drive evasively and make yourself a difficult target. You can turn on the smoke generators and back into your own smoke.

You can also pop smoke and change position behind the curtain it creates so the gunner aims at the wrong spot. Ducking behind a tree or ridgeline works. The "Nerves of Steel" set may race to try to kill the launching vehicle before the missile gets too close. Even just hosing down the enemy with some form of gunfire might distract him enough to cause a miss. This shows a really good depth and flexibility of gameplay considerations – and does indeed make it feel like a human gunner is trying to get you rather than "a missile has locked on and is tracking".

Now that we’ve looked so closely at the big gun, how about the others? When it comes to 7.62mm guns in the real M1, the gunner and the loader can have all the fun. In M1TP2, the gunner’s coaxial machine gun is heavily stocked with ammo, and is very effective at cleaning up wayward infantry. Since it’s inline with the main gun, getting a ranging with the laser seems to help superelevate the gun properly and rain bullets from pretty good distances – considering the tiny caliber of the weapon, anyhow.

One problem here is in switching between coax and the "carry round" (The round currently loaded in the main gun’s breech). Even if you switch back to the exact type of round as is in the breech, you hear the loader changing ammo types and have to wait for the whole loading process to complete. Also, since on the external tank model the loader clearly has a gun of his own, it would be nice to be able to tell him to use it when he’s not immediately needed for his other duties. The lack of it isn’t a detriment to gameplay, but it would have been nice to see, all the same.

The TC’s hatch-open gun is one heck of a lot of fun. You get a fully 3D polygonal Ma Deuce at your disposal. In a small concession to gameplay, Sgt. Dubose informed us that it is assumed that all the TC’s .50’s are armed with the heavy-hitting SLAP rounds, so that you have a better chance defending yourself against the heavily-armored Su-25 Frogfoot, which is a mean enough customer already.

Tank sims were traditionally very weak in implementing this gun, but in M1TP2, I guarantee that you will use it nearly every chance you get. The gun has a hefty sound to it, befitting the giant shells it fires. It kicks up a tremendous amount a dirt wherever it hits, making it easy and quite a lot of fun to walk your rounds right into that group of unwary BMP’s that you just surprised.

There are a few valid complaints about this position. First, you have no frame of reference for understanding which direction the gun is facing with respect to the hull or the turret, and since the gun doesn’t automatically align with the CITV or the main gun, it may take a good amount of rotation to bring this gun to bear – but how do you know when you’re facing the right way? It’s not as easy as it looks.

Furthermore, the manual promises binocular sights and night-vision sights, but neither one of these are present at this point, being relegated to the patch. Finally, it’s really hard to make out any units on the battlefield from this position. You have this narrow strip of horizon where enemy vehicles may appear, and you’re in 640x480 resolution. Most likely any enemy vehicle will be only a few pixels unless it’s very close. Fortunately, all these issues will be addressed in some fashion or other by the patch the M1TP2 team is working on, and the "coolness potential" of the TC’s gun will be fully realized.

Download Saitek configuration files for M1TP2 compliments of Eric Tripke.
Download Thrustmaster configuration files for M1TP2 compliments of Cowboy.

Now the commander’s chair is perhaps the most frustrating part of the game. Nobody has ever really done a good job simulating the function and behavior of the CITV before (although Spearhead may do well in this area). M1TP2 shows the most potential of all the released tank sims to do a proper job of modeling the tank commander’s station, but instead of actually commanding the tank here, it seems more like you’re just along for the ride.

The controls and general use of the CITV are pretty good. The display quality is decent, despite the fact that it is only a few inches across on your screen. The controls seem to be a good simulation of CITV functions. You can set the sight to automatically pan back and forth 45 degrees. You can slave the CITV to the GPS, hunt for new targets while the gunner is working on his current target, or even override the gunner’s controls and service the target yourself. The drawback with shooting from here is that the joystick response for the CITV panning is such that it’s very hard to accurately line up with a target without constantly overcontrolling, and basically impossible to track a moving target accurately enough to give the right lead data to the computer.

The "turret clock" in the CITV (the device used for giving you a reference as to what direction the CITV and main gun are pointing with relation to the hull) is also difficult to read. As far as the IVIS goes, even using the largest non-fullscreen view (the 4km setting) hardly lets you appraise 1300 meters of the battlefield to the north and south of you. In practice, it means that by the time you see a target in the IVIS in the commander’s chair, you probably are too close to do much planning. Better to just switch to the fullscreen view as often as possible, (or maybe fight on the east-west axis more) but it isn’t the ideal solution.

The whole voice communications in this section could use a little more refinement. It’s not that the voice acting is bad – it’s actually quite good. But there are some problems. First off, much like the issue with the flickering thermal vision (in the gunner’s sight) pulling the trigger to designate a target finds you announcing "Gunner, Tank. Designate." about 10 times a second – it sounds like echoing in a tunnel. Fortunately using the keyboard designation key doesn’t cause this problem.

However, the plot thickens. Every time you command a designation, the TC’s voice says the same thing over and over again, in the same intonation – "Gunner, Tank. Designate." He’ll say it if you designate a tank. He’ll say it if you designate an APC. He’ll even say it if you designate troops, helicopters, buildings, shrubs, hillsides, or empty sky. What would be better is if he would change inflection a little every so often and perhaps include a larger vocabulary. Things like "Gunner, Bimp. Designate", or "Gunner, Helo. Designate" and so on - perhaps even not saying a thing if you just designate empty space. As it currently stands, it feels rather contrived.

The smoke grenade controls are a bit off of spec as well. The manual says that you need to hit SHIFT-BACKSPACE to arm the grenades before firing. No problem, but the grenades are pre-armed at the start of every mission! Furthermore, it doesn’t seem possible to safety the grenade launchers either. This isn’t exactly a "gameplay-killer" kind of problem, but it does illustrate the kind of various little problems and inconsistencies that can prove to be annoyances in the game.

Some of the frustration of the commander’s position is in the "TC’s vision blocks" screen. This is a pretty good idea to help simulate the poor situational awareness that real TC’s suffer. The problem is the same as the TC’s open-hatch view. You have no point of reference to know which direction you’re looking with respect to the hull. However, the panning is thankfully much more controllable than with the chase view – you can control the vision blocks view with either the mouse or the joystick – it’s your choice. The thing with the "chase view" is that if your mouse isn’t quite "centered" when you select it, you’re suddenly whirling around and around like a top. Who says an M1 isn’t like a piñata party?

The gunner and loader aren’t particularly fond of following orders when you’re commanding, either. The manual says that if you designate a target, the gunner will service your target right after he eliminates his. Unfortunately, in my various testing, the gunner seems to pick whatever targets he feels like and only gets around to yours when he’s feeling good and ready. It makes you wonder what’s the point of having such a nice CITV display. The loader usually ignores whatever ammo you tell him to put in for the gunner, as well. Seems like you’ve got an insubordinate crew on board.

A couple things would go further to help improve the crew coordination, both between the crew of the same tank, and the crews of the platoon. Having the gunner yell, "IDENTIFIED!" when he lays the gun on your designated target would be a nice touch. Being able to order your platoon to engage the designated targets with things like a "Engage Left Target First" or "Engage Outside Targets First" verbal command would enhance the degree of control you have over the platoon. It would also help expand the in-game vocabulary to something better approaching the real thing.

As mentioned before, these issues are getting the attention of the folks at MPS, and a patch to help straighten out the situation is being worked on. The loader and gunner are being sternly reprimanded and we expect them to follow your orders faithfully after the patch. The "spinning views" problem will be addressed by allowing you to choose between mouse and joystick panning. Several possible solutions are being worked on to improve direction references in the vision blocks.

The CITV turret clock will be adjusted for easier visibility. We’ve even heard that some work on the joystick responsiveness has happened. So while it hasn’t been exactly smooth sailing so far, we can look forward to a much more useful commander’s station soon. Keep an eye on our Armor forum here for details, and we’ll be sure to post an update after the patch arrives.

Download Saitek configuration files for M1TP2 compliments of Eric Tripke.

Download Thrustmaster configuration files for M1TP2 compliments of Cowboy.

So far we've covered a lot of ground in M1 Tank Platoon II, a simulation that has more depth than anything we have yet seen in this genre, especially because it integrates action and intelligence never yet attempted in an armor simulation. The integration of troop control and the tactical dimension of troops and artillery and air support is quite well done. And graphically, while weak in a few areas, its very involving.

However, we haven't yet RATED the game. We decided to take the unusual step of waiting because Microprose got on the bit immediately with work on a patch, and have also taken unusual care in communicating with waiting gamers on the development of that patch. We really want to applaud their responsible and rapid response. The bugs that are present are annoying, to be sure, but Microprose had not only promised to kill them in short order, they have also added some highly requested features. We will post an update on the patch mid week and we will also rate this game along our established scale. Now back to the review!

In addition to the areas mentioned to date nnother area that is disappointing is the driver’s position – or more precisely, the total lack of a driver’s position. Microprose seems to have decided that since the real action is between the TC and gunner, the driving is best left to the AI whenever possible and they have simplified the manual driving options. In all fairness, the AI driver is relatively competent at finding positions to place itself in, but tends to temporarily face your rear armor towards the enemy more often than a commander would normally do, and naturally the AI can’t quite guess your intentions. What do you do?

Your other option is to drive the tank manually, but unfortunately, manual steering is done in 30 degree increments. This aspect isn’t a deal-breaker, but some players will certainly miss the direct control and entertainment value of manual driving. (I mean, how much fun is it to try to run over enemy infantry by shouting "Turn Right! Turn Left! at your driver?") Seriously though, a good terrain engine like this deserves giving the player the option of hopping in the driver’s seat if he so chooses.

Speaking of options, M1TP2 is surprisingly short on them. In most of the favored sims these days, you have a tremendous degree of latitude as to exactly how you want things to work – to really customize the game to your taste. When you consider that M1TP2 was released simultaneously with Jane’s F-15, the amount that you can personalize the game is unbelievably limited by comparison. As I mentioned before, you shouldn’t be able to change the terrain detail in a tank sim, but perhaps giving the player’s choices on things like, say - whether or not you get to have SLAP ammo in the TC’s guns and whether or not your units will engage soft targets with the main gun at close range - would be nice in letting the players have more say in the behavior of their game.

The strategy map is very potent, but it seems to take the hands of a surgeon to use it most effectively. Here you can control any unit’s or platoon’s standing orders, call in support strikes, plan your moves, or just take a quick look at your overall situation. The options here are actually very good – better than any previous game of the genre by quite a bit. You can assign waypoints, formations, standing orders, engagement procedures, assembly areas, and even what direction the units should face to watch for the enemy.

The trick is that it’s much too easy to accidentally muck up your previous waypoints in the heat of battle and have an entire platoon turn exactly the wrong way at the wrong time. You have to have a steady hand to make the right mouse clicks – something you really don’t have time for if you’re trying to keep your own platoon safe in the middle of a pitched battle.

Perhaps some simple keyboard shortcuts in the planner or the ability to radio orders to the other platoons without using the planner would help. Even a Jane’s F-15 style "plan while paused" mode could help prevent a mis-click from spelling disaster. Having said that, the great flexibility of the strategic map is very much a welcome feature.

The campaign system is very reminiscent of iM1A2’s pseudo-dynamic campaign. All the missions fall under one of several generic categories, but generally tend to play out more or less the same way – the main difference is whether the enemy will wait for you to come to them or if they’ll aggressively hunt for you. Your success or failure will move the local battlefront forward or back.

The advantage here is the lack of canned missions that get old so easily. The downside is that there really isn’t much variety to the missions at all. The makeup of your forces, enemy forces, and supporting units will all change, but it basically boils down to "kill the enemy armor with minimal casualties". It would have been much nicer to design in a greater variety of missions – things like attacking entrenched infantry, assaulting a defended airport, perhaps even clashes that require infantry platoons such as urban combat or extreme terrain.

Nevertheless, the existing campaign is far better than a series of canned missions in offering replayability, and the different terrain types in the various campaign areas helps change strategies, as well.

So what is the deal with the infantry? Well, simply put, M1TP2 has the best infantry put into an armored combat sim to date. iM1A2 represented infantry in a fairly comical way by having them represented as a cardboard-cutout sign that tips over when you shoot it.

Fortunately, M1TP2 does an infinitely better job. At the stopping point, APC’s will open their loading doors, and a five or six man unit will disembark and form a firing line alongside their vehicle – usually four riflemen and someone with a shoulder mounted SAM or ATGM.

Each man is individually animated, and the way they embark, disembark, or go prone is pretty impressive – especially when viewing from few kilometers away through magnification. As is appropriate, infantry are difficult to see, unless the APC next to them tips you off to their position. I’ve lost a platoon to infantry that – by coincidence or by design – were hiding among the buildings of a village without any enemy vehicles around to give away their presence.

Click for a larger image.

You have to wonder what the value of plain old riflemen is, though. They can’t be expected to damage hardly anything except other infantry. They can’t get close enough to enemy mechanized infantry without getting cut to pieces by the APC’s autocannon or an artillery strike, and with the exception of that one previously mentioned event, I haven’t seen enemy infantry without an APC escort.

I’ve heard that they are useful as forward observers as the enemy is less likely to spot infantry units. If for no other reason, it seems that riflemen are present for the sake of authenticity, which is well and good, but it would be nicer if there were scenarios in which they could be put to better use than as expendable scouts. In the meantime, any soldier toting a missile is a genuine threat.

The AI is a weird mix of very good and not so good. The game states that the Russian (or Russian-trained) forces follow their particular military doctrine of maneuver warfare. Indeed, it does seem that way. You will find that the longer you stay in one place, the more organized and effective enemy units become – to the point where avoiding getting flanked becomes nearly impossible.

There is some degree of self-preservation AI built into the system. If you start accurately raining shells onto an enemy platoon the survivors will sometimes pack up and get the heck out of there before you come up with their number. Even enemy AAA vehicles will fire on you relentlessly, if only to buy time for other units to retaliate. Eventually you learn that the best method of survival is to not give the enemy time to coordinate their attacks, which makes perfect sense. You end up playing a kind of hit-and-run game, which if done properly, can ruin any well-laid plan.

One nice feature of the AI is that it’s not omniscient. In far too many games to count, the enemy always knows where you are by merely sneaking a peek at the computer’s records of your coordinates. Those AI systems literally cheat. M1TP2’s AI is much more human than that. It bases its estimates of your location based on where you were last seen. For example, in one mission I was holed up trying to simply face off with any unit that approached – and I was paying the price for it. I finally took my two remaining tanks and skedaddled forward through a depression that hid us from view, then eventually I made an abrupt left.

As soon as I crested the rise, what did I see but at least three full platoons of mechanized infantry all disembarked – all guns and firing lines facing my old position – about 90 degrees the wrong way! Suddenly, the gunner on a BMP spots me, and his turret rotates to face us.

Too late – we both commenced rapid fire and the scene before us broke in total chaos as some units tried to redeploy, other units tried to engage us directly, and yet others just turned around and ran. Just an incredible massacre, but everything that happened made good sense, which is far more intriguing than artificially skilled or cheating enemies. It has the human element to it. Speaking of which, don’t get too close to the coordinates where you call in an airstrike. Fratricide is entirely possible if you get sloppy!

The downside of the AI is that it’s not always making good sense. Sometimes units will engage with the wrong weapon. I stumbled into three platoons of enemy tanks who all had me by surprise, but they simply refused to engage with anything other than their machine guns. Sometimes the enemy simply won’t fire on you when you know they should be. The other tanks in your platoon frequently waste precious main gun ammunition when they could just as effectively use the commander’s .50 or even the coaxial machine gun. The system which gunners and loaders employ to choose what ammo to use is based on range – when perhaps the appropriateness of the target type would be a better choice.

As it is you have to order tank platoons to hold fire if you don’t want them wasting STAFF and MPAT rounds at long range, especially when you might need them later for particularly difficult tanks or helicopters. (The best workaround for this is simply to wait until you get to a closer range before clearing your platoon to fire – but the ideal solution would have been to develop some way of setting the policy for what kind of conditions merit using what kind of ammo.)

So how does it all boil down into gameplay? As long as you stay out of the TC’s seat and can forgive the other bugs (at least until the patch arrives), M1TP2 is the best tank simulation ever made for a home computer. Take the beautifully detailed units, the stunning terrain engine, the thoughtful sound effects, the flexible strategy map, the good parts of the enemy AI, and the quality gunnery model and what you have is nothing less than a step forward in the evolution of armored combat simulations.

This is not to disregard the seriousness of the bugs in the game. They are a real problem. However, Microprose’s willingness to take responsibility for the problems and responsiveness in developing a patch to fix them makes this writer willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt. Whether this faith was indeed justified will be seen after we get the patch, when we’ll post an update and our final ratings.

Go to the Patch Update