"Driver, Slow down", the tank slows to a crawl as we approach the crest of the ridgeline. I've got the cannon at full depression so I'll be able to cover the far side of the valley below while exposing as little of the tank as possible.

"Stop!", the commander's order stops us in a "turret down" position, the only exposed part of the tank is the commander's cupola providing the ability to search for targets with a very low chance of being spotted by the enemy. Our T-55 that has been scavenged from the battlefield lacks a laser range finder so accurate shooting takes a little while longer than it would if we were fully equipped. The commander barks, "Target, MTLB, azimuth 1-8-5, range thousand plus". I switch on the manual ranging and set the cannon elevation for 1100 meters before ordering the tank forward into a hull down position to take the shot. The MTLB can be a nasty opponent when kitted out as a tank killer with its 9M114 super-sonic ATGM so I need to kill him before he sees us. On the modern battlefield to be seen first is usually to be killed first with the high lethality of today’s weapons systems.

The turret is turned to the target azimuth as the cannon crests the hill and through the dense fog and rain I make out the shape of the MTLB, quickly I use the range scale in the gun sight and decide my target is somewhere between 1200 and 1300 meters away. Making an adjustment to the cannon, I'm watching the missile launcher on the back of my target, it's still pointed away from us and we haven't been spotted. A quick punch of the GPO button uses compressed air to blow the water droplets off my sight, and I make the final adjustment to my aim.

The thundering crash from the cannon and the dust cloud from the shockwave alert everyone in the valley to our presence but before the dust can even clear from my sight I see the fiery explosion as the armor piercing sabot round rips through the MTLB's hull and the molten metal and over pressurized gas cause fire to spurt from every opening on the vehicle. Two crewmembers leap from the vehicle on fire and do a grisly dance of death before collapsing to the ground. "Reverse!” the tank rolls backwards down the hill, safe from enemy fire as we prepare to move to a new battle position and engage the enemy yet again.

Installation:
Balkans on Fire is currently only available from Battlefront's web store as a mail order item. Mine arrived a scant 3 days after shipping in a padded envelope containing a 74 page "Tank Combat Manual" and two CDs shrink wrapped together.

Installation went smoothly and about five minutes after opening the envelope I was ready to experience a little tank combat. After a short intro movie the game presents you with a minor scare as it drops back to the desktop for a second before loading the menu system. Whenever T-72 switches "modes" it drops back to the desktop for a second before it loads it's next module, this happens when entering missions, leaving missions, entering the encyclopedia or the diary. While it's not an issue per say, it can give you a little scare the first couple times it happens.

The menu system greets you with a nice rendered background of battered steel and some animating parts, and looks good overall. There are selections for Game, Settings, Network and you can view the Credits. Most of these bring up more options in a window on the right side of the screen; the menu is easy to navigate and most everything in it is self-explanatory. The setup in game consists of resolution, color depth, texture and effects quality, and an option to adjust the games realism.

The realism options are quite extensive so T-72 should be fun for someone who just wants some quick action and can be cranked up to simulate the danger on driving a tank in combat. Audio settings consist of a volume sliders for music, effects, speech and overall volume and checkboxes to disable sound or use hardware acceleration.

Controls can also be reassigned but beware, there is no reset to default button so pay attention to the changes you make. From your start menu you can also launch a much more detailed configuration program where you can tweak the sim until your heart, or computer, is content with numerous options for textures, realism, effects, sounds and such. Each of these is explained in the game's manual.

Battlefront is one of the few publishers left that understands that simmers like manuals; the more detailed the better. The 74-page manual that ships with Balkans on Fire does a fine job of explaining the different positions available to you in the game, the highly detailed damage model and each vehicle you will either command or encounter. It also includes sections on trouble-shooting, a short FAQ, the afore-mentioned setup section, a glossary of the acronyms (a sim isn't a sim without a healthy serving of alphabet soup) and notes on setting up a multiplayer game.

What it doesn't contain, however, is any section on the tactics of tank warfare. There is a key to have the driver search for a hull down position but without knowing what that is or other tanking fundamentals like not driving over the top of hills or ridgelines or "driving as the water flows" will surely have someone new to armored combat getting his or her tank destroyed more often than with a little primer on the art of armored combat. It may be a 40-ton hunk of steel and guns but it's far from invincible even against a group of infantry if they are equipped with anti-tank weaponry.

The keyboard chart is on the inside front and back cover of the manual and is also explained within but there is no separate keycard included with the game. Battlefront has provided a printable version in Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF format on their website to account for this.

Gameplay, Graphics and Sounds :
The game ships with two tutorial missions, the first a driving mission where you drive the tank through a series of waypoints around an obstacle course. Here you will get your first taste of Balkans on Fire's excellent terrain engine. The maps are vast with visibility distances over 2000 meters and height differences of up to 800 meters. This is tank friendly terrain with lots of hills, ridges and bumps to hide behind and dash between as you engage in the fine art of armored combat. The terrain is fully deformable and you'll see this at the start of this mission as a BTM-3 Fast Entrenching Vehicle carves up the landscape with it's rotating shovel.

Fire the ignition, feed in the accelerator, release the mountain brake then select first gear and off you go on your first mission in a T-72. There is an automatic transmission for road use but you'll need to operate the gear shift yourself to get over rough terrain and ford streams and rivers. There is an easy start and auto tranny available in the realism options if you want to make the T-72 a bit closer to your Grandma's Buick.

The vehicle physics feel quite real as the tank rumbles across the landscape, bouncing over ruts and bumps and crashing through the brush on your way to each waypoint. Here you will also get an idea of just how demanding the graphics engine is as well, with the grass draw distance down low enough for acceptable frame rates on my machine there was an extremely high amount of pop-up as the grass is constantly drawn in 30 meters ahead of my tank. When running through the grass this isn't much of an issue as you can't see but a few meters in front of the tank from the driver's position but when moving down a road where visibility extends to the limit you will see the grass being drawn in on the sides of the road. If this is too much of a bother the grass can be shut off with the configuration program.

The system requirements in the manual are rather dubious as my computer, while not the bleeding edge, is a powerful gaming machine and I can bring it to it's knees with the graphic options turned up relatively high in any T-72 mission with more than a couple vehicles.  

The next tutorial mission is a shooting range mission where you'll command the AI driver from the tank commander and gunner positions and take shots at multiple targets with the game's namesake tank. The two times I tried it the AI driver drove up on the wall of the first battle position where I couldn't get the gun on the target and I had to maneuver the tank myself or tell the driver to stop before he normally would have if left on his own.

I will advise those of you who buy the game to get some manual gunnery practice in on the range as I'm six missions into the campaign and I've yet to get a tank with a working range finder. Your army is scavenging tanks from the battlefield and not all your systems are going to be working in your tanks, unfortunately this didn’t make it into the mission briefing but Battlefront is aware of this. The manual gunnery is well done so this isn't a big issue but you'll want to be comfortable with setting ranges with the manual range scales before venturing off in the early campaign missions.

The first time you fire the main gun in Balkans on Fire is quite an experience, turn your speakers or headphones up to get the full brunt of it. The 125mm smooth bore cannon goes off with a thunderous bang and dust is kicked up everywhere, obscuring your vision. The tank rocks from the immense power and if your aim is true you'll be able to make out the bright flash from a connecting shot through the dust and smoke. It all combines to good effect.

Aiming with a joystick is another matter. If the T-72's real gun controls operate this way I will take my serving of crow but the vertical movement of the gun is counter-intuitive. In every other tank sim I've tried, the gun pitches up and down like an airplane; pull back to raise the cannon, push forward to lower it. In Balkans on Fire the Y-axis is reversed, I found myself saying "Forward is up, Back is Down." over and over again to get where I could aim the gun. After doing it for a while I've got it but it definitely would have been nice to have a reverse axis feature in the game configuration.

Along with the cannon, most of the other sounds in the game are well done. The diesel engine rumbles, the running gear rattles and squeaks nicely and when the engine is off you will hear that there are some good environmental sounds. Birds are chirping, insects buzz, dogs bark and wolves even howl on the evening missions. It all helps with immersion into T-72's world.

The voice acting in the game leaves a lot to be desired, it's all clear and easy to understand but it is delivered with as much personality as your average fencepost. When you install the game you are given the choice between Russian voices and English that is spoken in a Russian accent. I chose the English when I installed and I don't see a way to swap to the Russian voices once the game is installed so I may go back and reinstall it to try the Russian voices after the review is done. I know what the keys do now so it won't take long to learn what the phrases sound like for each command.

The infantry outside your tank are very talkative, in external view or with the engine off you will hear them repeating a bunch of phrases over and over, the files you can remove to stop this are posted on Battlefront's forums but I haven't tried this as the voices don't bother me that much.

Once you have completed the two training missions there are five more single missions available for you to practice your tanking skills. You will get to experience the other two tanks featured in the game for the first time in these missions.

The T-34-85 is a World War II era main battle tank but it has a few upgrades in this more modern setting. There is no laser range finder or thermal vision in this one and no turret or gun stabilization so stopping before firing is a must in the T-34. The T-55 represents the era between the T-34 and the T-72 in Soviet tanking. It has vertical stabilization for the gun, a laser range finder and thermal optics but it is still not as effective a weapon as the T-72.

These missions ramp up nicely in difficulty and will get you prepared to start on the campaign. The 18-mission campaign finds you as a Russian tanker volunteering to fight on the Serbian side in the war. The mission briefings and back-story are done in a diary format and it will fill up with photos, briefings, personal commentary and combat statistics as you progress through campaign missions. You will start off stealing your first tank, a T-34, and continue on from there acquiring better tanks and weapons.

Missions occur at different times of day and in changing weather. Fog will hamper visibility and rain will get on your optics forcing you to clean them with a jet of compressed air from the hydraulic pneumatic cleaning system or GPO. I’m six missions into the campaign as of this review and so far have had a variety of offensive, defensive and escort missions.

After a mission you will be taken to a very thorough debriefing section where you will get to see Balkans on Fire’s excellent armor penetration model. The visual damage model isn’t anything special but the shell’s path is modeled on its entire trip through the target. Hits are shown with vector lines that are color coded for shell type, amount of penetration and whether or not it was the killing blow. The time of the hit and who was responsible is also shown and clicking on this will move the camera to the weapon responsible for the damage.

A statistics screen can be brought up for each vehicle that shows how many and what kind of hits it took and/or dealt out. Kudos should definitely go out to Crazy House for their excellent debriefing scheme in T-72.  

Overall, the graphics for the game look great. They are not up to par with modern titles like Battlefield 2 but we are looking at a much smaller development team and rendering engagement distances of over a mile instead of a few hundred yards. I’ve seen the occasional flashing texture and strange things like the animation of a soldier has to complete before it can start another. So, if you shoot a soldier in the middle of his run cycle he will finish that run cycle then start the death animation, this can cause you to waste some ammo but it’s not all that bothersome.

Other than the wooden voice acting the sounds for the game are top-notch. The tanks rumble and creak with authenticity and the cannon effect never gets tiresome.

The AI:
Artificial Intelligence can make or break a game, especially when it has no multiplayer component. The AI in T-72 is for the most part well done but shortcomings arise in path finding and in control over attached AI units.

The enemy AI is a good and sometimes-crafty opponent, they are not the omnipotent bad guys found in some games, you can sneak up them and get the first shot off. Once you have alerted them to your presence they will come after you with a variety of tanks, tank destroyers, ATGM armed infantry fighting vehicles and RPG equipped foot soldiers. While you are waiting for the enemy T-55 you spotted to crest a ridgeline you may get killed by the SU-100 Tank Destroyer that has snuck up on your flank.

The path finding and driving AI isn’t on the same level. I’ve seen plenty of vehicles roll from poor path choices, I’ve seen tanks running into one another while trying to sort out a formation and I’ve had my AI driver get me killed when he drives the tank up onto a hill and silhouettes me against the skyline. Driving the tank yourself to the battle area is probably the best idea then using the forward, reverse and turn orders from the gunner or commander’s positions once the combat starts.

Ordering AI units attached to you involves using a map screen. The map itself is well done and the topography is easy to read. Your attached units can be ordered into a variety of formations but noticeably absent is the classic echelon formation, which provides good firepower to the front and one flank of your group.

You can order attached troops to mount vehicles and they will jump into APCs or sit on tanks to catch a ride to the combat zone. Setting a waypoint on the map and deciding the speed and whether they should attempt to travel on-road or off controls movement for the AI. It is only possible to set one waypoint at a time so complex paths require a lot of back-and-forth with the map screen.

There is also no “follow me” command so you will be micromanaging your computer controlled allies throughout the mission unless you just set them in a defensive position or send them on a suicide mission. A few things the developers should consider in an upcoming patch would be a follow command, an ability to set a waypoint from the tank commander’s position and the ability to order formation changes or defensive positions from the 3D view.

Stability:
I’ve played the game for two weeks and not had a single lock-up, crash, blue screen or any problems with the game’s stability. There are, however, a lot of people on the Battlefront forum experiencing a problem with the graphics of the game freezing that requires task switching and killing the program to get out. It’s not a problem I’ve experienced but it seems widespread enough that I should include it here. There is a demo available at the Battlefront site so you can test it on your system.

Multiplayer:
Right now the only multiplayer available for Balkans on Fire is via LAN, there is no Internet multiplayer in the game. Battlefront has announced a multiplayer add-on that may include another crewable tank that will be out sometime in the future and will contribute a lot to the games longevity. I have been unable to try the LAN aspect of the game so I cannot comment on it in this review, I will revisit T-72 multiplayer when the add-on becomes available.  

Review System
AMD Athlon 64 3200 939 pin
1.5 Gigabytes PC 3200 DDR RAM
Asus A8V Deluxe
BFG GeForce 6800 GT/OC
SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer
Saitek X-45 HOTAS