After the debacle at Stalingrad and an aggressive pursuit by the Red Army, German high command attempted to salvage the situation on the southern flank by launching a desperate counterattack against overextended Soviet armies. The ensuing Third Battle of Kharkov, the subject of Achtung Panzer: Kharkov 1943, was a bitter struggle between two exhausted combatants, using whatever was left to salvage whatever they could.
The Top 10 Pre-Order and Digital Order PC Games for January 2012, and the Top 10 Gamer-Rated PC Digitally Distributed Titles for January 2012 on GamersGate.
Achtung Panzer: Kharkov 1943 is a single player, second world war, turn-based strategy game. An extremely well researched military command operation, that gives you the God-like ability to command and view your troops based on actual archival material, even to the point of eye witness reports and on the field testimonials, incredible to say the least. The battle of Kharkov was a series of operations on the Eastern front back in 1943, involving the German Army and the Red Army. Needless to say, it wasn't one of history's finest endeavours. I won't get into the history of the battle here, if you want to know more, wiki it, it makes a very sobering read.
After some casting about, I happened across Graviteam’s Achtung Panzer: Kharkov 1943. Immediately the game appealed to me with its respectable graphics and an interface that, while not completely intuitive, was largely a point-and-click affair. The game also boasted a lot of historical authenticity. This was, as far as I am concerned, the perfection of modern wargaming: tolerable realism combined with a relatively modest learning curve.
Initially I was going to review this title, but seeing that it came out in early 2010, I didn’t really see the point. Instead, how about a play-by-play after action review (an ‘AAR’ in grog-speak)?
