14 DAY TRIAL // What we know:
Wargame – European Escalation is a strategy video game that is being developed by Eugen Systems and that will allow players to take charge of bitter Cold War enemies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact, as they duke it out on battlefields all over Europe.
This is obviously an alternate history scenario and the developers have chosen hardware and tactics taken from the period between 1975 and 1985, when new fighting vehicles and new tactics were being introduced, some of them still in use today.
Wargame will deliver both NATO and Warsaw Pact campaigns, apparently each about 10 missions long, and gamers will also be able to engage in multiplayer battles.
The game engine of Wargame is the one which Eugen Systems has also used on R.U.S.E. in 2010, but major changes have been made, including the ability to render more objects at the same time and a better zoom in function.
Players will have the option to get out of the action in order to evaluate the overall tactical situation, but they will also be able to get into the actual firefights and do some crucial micro-management.
Wargame will try to deliver a lot of detail on units, with the player-given information like armor thickness, morale and ammo level for all units and logistics requiring a lot of close management in order to deliver peak performance.
Wargame – European Escalation should be out on the PC before the end of the year.
Why it matters:
R.U.S.E. was a good attempt to create a hybrid strategic and tactical experience that could work on home console as well as on the PC and the results were good although not perfect.
The move from World War II to the much more appealing Cold War might make Eugen Systems the star strategy developers of the year.
The full Incoming 2012 series of articles can be read on Softpedia right here.