Tank Operations: European Campaign Review

Tank Operations: European Campaign is a hex-based, turn-based, WWII strategy game that immediately invokes memories of the Panzer General series. Of course, following in the footsteps of such a revered, hardcore, strategy title will present something of a mountain to climb, and the question is: how will Tank Operations rise to the challenge?

Problems begin almost immediately.

To start, before even getting past the menu screen, I found I was unable to change my screen resolution; I was locked at 1080p, having wanted to drop to 720p to make the text more readable on a widescreen TV. Unfortunately, this poor start proved to be the least of my problems.

Two separate game-breaking bugs were encountered during the game's tutorials. First, mouse tracking went haywire and the cursor ended up roughly three hexes away from the visible pointer, making controlling matters next to impossible and requiring a game restart. Second time around the game froze indefinitely on the opposing side's turn, an interesting factor given that there was no opposing side in this tutorial. This required a forced restart via task manager.

Sadly, such issues continued to plague the game outside of the tutorial, and a quick look at the Steam forums made it clear that I was not the only one affected by bugs. In their defense, the developers seem quick to respond and patches are regular, but that does not excuse releasing the game in this condition.

Gameplay is rather simple on the surface and easy to drop into after whizzing through the tutorials, which serve their purpose well in teaching you the ropes (when they work). Units are recruited either at established bases, or via warships off the coast of the battlefield. Each recruitment station handles either aircraft or ground units.

One of the strengths of the game is the sheer number of unit types available, as there is a wide variety of tanks, armoured vehicles, aircraft, infantry, anti-air and specialist units available for purchase. Basic information is given: weapon types, weapon range, damage values, movement points, hit points etc. What is not explored is the relationship between units, in terms of what units work well against others. Anyone with a background in WWII strategy should get the basics, but newer players will be forced to experiment to learn what units are effective (and ineffective) in certain situations.

Possibly the most interesting feature in Tank Operations is that all the vehicles consume fuel as they move and ammo as they fire, and if they run out they will be rendered inoperable or harmless. Vehicles can refuel and rearm by returning to base, or fuel and ammo trucks can be dispatched to resupply units in the field. It's not a unique system, having been used in titles such as the Advance Wars series, but it does add an extra layer of strategy to proceedings in the need to maintain efficient and secure supply lines.

In terms of presentation, the graphics are fairly underdeveloped. While the units themselves are nicely drawn there are no animations to speak of, save explosions and a bit of smoke here and there, and the environments are bland and uninspired. The musical score is equally bare-bones, with a soundtrack that sounds like it was prepared on a cheap software synthesizer, and is neither epic or emotive enough to fit the setting.

Unfortunately, the failings in Tank Operations go beyond mere presentation, and their are several aspects of the gameplay that are underwhelming at best, and game-breaking at worst.

Your warships and aircraft carriers are the most powerful units on the field, capable of absorbing large amounts of damage, and dishing out strong bombardment attacks. However, in contrast to their purpose they are entirely stationary and cannot be moved at all during a campaign battle. This artificial restriction spoils the immersion by closing off seemingly legitimate tactics and restricting the player in a way that makes little sense, limiting them to static recruitment points and only able to attack units foolish enough to wander into their line of fire. It’s may seem like a small point, but it has a big impact.

There will still be plenty of targets though, as the AI behaviour is erratic at best. While the computer opponent does a decent job of countering your moves, by drafting units that are well suited to combat the troop types you have been fielding, its use of its assets is not particularly effective. The computer will often make bizarre moves, such as attacking an aircraft carrier with a single plane, leaving a poorly-armoured tank destroyer within easy range of a devastating counter attack, and frequently drifting into range of your warships - despite the fact that they should know they are vulnerable, since the ships never move!

As in many turn-based strategy games, single units of the same type can be stacked, so a group of 10 tanks can be placed together into a single 'unit', substantially increasing both firepower and durability. However, in an utterly baffling move, once put in a stack, individual units can NEVER be separated. This leads to some utterly game breaking moments, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, units are automatically stacked when in a base. It takes one turn to build a unit - any unit at all - so if you construct more than one of a single type of unit, the resulting troops that appear on the next turn will automatically be a 'stack', and stuck together forever. This means they can never be split up to attack or defend multiple fronts simultaneously, unless you artificially draw out the recruiting process by intentionally limiting the number of units you recruit on each turn.

This doesn't just go for recruitment. Say, for example, you were to send three separate tank units back to base to refuel at the same time. Boom, they would merge into a stack and would be stuck with one, albeit more powerful, unit from then on.

To give a practical example, let’s imagine you have three vehicles that are running low on fuel at different areas of the map with a nearby base in the middle. The logical solution would be to build three fuel trucks at the base, then send them out to resupply the vehicles. Unfortunately, if you build three fuel trucks they will stack, and can only move together towards one of the stricken units. The only solution is to build one truck per turn, and send it out before the next is constructed, meaning it will take three turns before you can get underway properly. And of course, once you are done, you can’t send the fuel trucks back to base together, or they will stack and you might as well only have one truck again. You get the idea.

Perhaps the worst effect of this is realised in attempting to capture cities, which is required to gain the income necessary to recruit further units. Large cities cover several tiles of the game map, and in order to capture a city you must have one unit on each tile.

First, let’s imagine you have a city covering five tiles, and you have five individual units of one tank each. No problem, you can capture the city easily and add a significant boost to your financial reserves.

Now, let’s imagine you have four unit stacks of 10 tanks each. You have eight times the number of units as in the previous example, but despite this you will never, ever, be able to take the city, as you can only cover four, of the required five, tiles.

It's such a simple thing, such a bizarre design decision, and the fact that the refueling and recruitment systems make it difficult to prevent units stacking, once again cuts the player off from utilising entirely legitimate strategies by restricting them in a very artificial manner.

Once again, I dove into the Steam forums on this issue, which I had assumed was a bug (it’s not). It was here I discovered numerous posts on this point, and others, in which the community and the development team actively discussed the current state of the game, balancing issues, noted omissions and suggested improvements, which did indicate that the makers are keen to improve the product in line with feedback.

This is where the problem lies. Everything about this game feels like an 'Early Access' title. The graphics and sound feel like placeholders, the bugs make it seem unfinished, and the game plays like it’s strippped down, with several important features yet to be added. But this is not Early Access, this is not a game reported to be in Alpha, or even Beta, state. This is a game that is being marketed and sold as a completed product. Frankly, it isn’t, and right now Tank Operations: European Campaign feels like a half-finished product.