Steel Fury: Kharkov 1942, A Promising Tank Simulator

How many good tank simulators have there been lately? One? Two perhaps? Nah, I'm exaggerating already... Let's face it: hardcore military simulators aren't what they used to be, back when Novalogic was working its voxel magic. So when a game like Steel Fury comes along, fans of the genre are bound to enter a Pavlovian state of sustained drooling. And by all means, they should.

I would be so bold as to say that right now, when it comes to war simulators, European developers outright pwn! We owe them such wargames as Operation Flashpoint, Battlefield (the old one), IL-2 Sturmovik and Silent Hunter III (though the list could go on). And we will soon owe them a new WWII tank simulator, called Steel Fury: Kharkov 1942. Here's what the Russian publisher Discus Games has to say about it:

"Events in the game are based on the little-known offensive operation, conducted by the Red Army from May 12 to 28, 1942. In the course of German counterattack, begun 17 May 1942, three Soviet Armies were surrounded and forced through fierce fighting to leave from the "meat grinder" Of The "Barvenkovskiy Kotel".

These events seize the player and keep him engaged to the very end of the game. Bitterness from the loss of his combat comrades and happiness of victories, the monstrous roar of tanks and military vehicles and the sounds of war armadas, the torn eardrums from the eternal cannonades of projectiles and roar of bullets, fear and fury - all this will turn any player into rabid excitement. No time to the reflections - only battle! And in this entire devil's sabbath of the war horror the player will have only one human desire - to SURVIVE!!!"

Steel Fury will feature realistic physics and ballistics, destroyable objects ("Everything, which will be encountered on the way of tank or projectile, can be destroyed, without exceptions"), deformable landscape, dynamic weather conditions and illumination (night missions included), historical authenticity, as well as an editor for creating MODs. If this game delivers, it should be one to remember!

We only have a handful of screenshots in our Steel Fury gallery so far, and to be quite frank, they're not that impressive. But we also have a trailer up and running, and it looks a lot more promising. Those environments are simply huge! Or at least they look that way...

It's clearly not going to be a perfect game, and people naturally tend to get suspicious when hearing about Ukranian game developers (Graviteam) - they do have a rather mixed reputation. But by the looks of it, Steel Fury has a lot of potential, and we can only hope for the best. It will be out in Russia early next year, and it should be ready for its Western debut a couple of months later.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)