The game’s menu can fool you to believe it is going to a funky little FPS if you have not been a fan of the series. The last time a Panzer game was out was way back in 2000, meaning it has missed a generation of player grabbing fans. However, when you start the game you discover the slightly unfortunate truth that it is a card-based game.

 

The rules are as followed, you roll a dice, and if it roles 1 you get to play first. This involves playing 3 cards onto a board. Your rivals do the same, and in the next round you start moving your enemies around the board. At one point, you will clash with your enemy and a miniature fight endures. What would have been great here would be to have a mini-game related to this, but AI takes over and you get no control over the outcome. What may seem quite simple on the surface is incredibly complicated and daunting underneath to the casual player.

 

 

Graphically the game does look very good. The board and characters all look very realistic, even reaching Battlefield 1943 levels on some scenes. There are no big explosions or dramatic tornadoes, but you can see the action come to life without having to squint. There is a full 360 camera around the whole arena without any lag which also adds to the drama of an otherwise boring board game.

 

The soundtrack also increases in tension as the action on the board heightens. Luckily it isn’t anything cheesy, and works very well in keeping with the tone, it is a board game after all and not a FPS action game. The voiceovers however, are considerably weaker. They are very rarely heard apart from gunfire action, but they have simply been recorded in tiny fragments like GTA 3 when Claude fell off a wall…deeply unrealistic.

 

The game has a story mode and a multiplayer mode. The story mode only clocks in around an hour which is good because after a while of moving characters around a board it can be tiresome. Multiplayer simply means you can play through it all again but your enemy is no longer AI, meaning the game is considerably harder than before…if your characters are skilled in the game. Unfortunately there is a little lag in each game which can dumb the experience slightly.

 

Panzer General is not a bad game it’s just not an entertaining one. For anyone not aware that it’s a board game, you can feel quite short changed. Hopefully in the future Ubisoft will invest in a XBLA FPS game around this theme, or invent a mini-game for it just to add to the design. As it stands though, it’s just about passable.