Platoon Commander is a Real-Time Strategy game focused on the German advance toward Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941. It combines real-time tactical battles with a turn-based campaign map.
First Impressions of Platoon Commander from Slitherine Games
It looks to have a lot of detail, has some nice graphics (though again, a first person view or something akin to it would be really nice here, when zoomed all the way in), and the promise of managing your army through several missions in a campaign has a lot of promise. I will keep my eye on this one and look forward to the full release.
Tried the demo and I would second the Armchair Dragoon post above about a 1st person view. I found the camera navigation needs improvement with more zoom levels and maybe an overview. Taking Combat Mission as an example you can zoom down to ground level to get an idea of the terrain contours and line of sight. It would be nice to have a map to look at from the platoon leader's perspective. When I was a tank platoon leader, we always plotted our movements on paper maps, which was also the case in WWII.
It was very difficult to get a good view at longer ranges, such as for AT/Tank fire. You should be able to get a better view of where the enemy is located once they start firing and are spotted.
Overall I like the concept even though I am more of a turn based player.
I gave this a try, but the game is clearly not for me. Thus any comments I give will probably be biased from a perspective of a turn-based strategy player, but a few things came to mind immediately:
1. Quite slow pacing until you get to the action. Not necessarily an issue, it keeps you on the edge and contently vigilant, but given how units take their time to move, it can lead to larger periods when nothing is happening. Scenarios will require very smart enemy placement to not get into pacing issues.
2. As commented by people already, line of sight is a problem. It does not need to be an exact indicator with full accuracy to each millimeter, but I was really struggling at understanding if a specific location will be visible or not.
3. Too little UI feedback about what's going on. I got notification about enemies being spotted, but could not pinpoint them on the map even with active pause easily, it took way much time that I would hope for.
You and the rest, you forgot the first rule of the fanatic: When you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy. Jeffrey Sinclair, "Infection", Babylon 5
the pacing is slow enough to make you question your life choices and the line of sight is as accurate as my last attempt to draw a straight line after 3 beers but hey, at least the concept sounds cool, right? maybe when it’s fully released...
but hey, at least the concept sounds cool, right? maybe when it’s fully released...