It's hard not to notice that 2017 has seen a resurgence in World War Two films and video games alike. Just during summer, Blitzkrieg 3 and Sudden Strike 4 were released while the game I’m writing about today, launched at the end of May. “Dunkirk” opened in cinemas as a true summer blockbuster. You get my point, WW2 is back in the saddle. Even the upcoming Call of Duty, shall be a well deserved return to the series’ historic roots. Not a moment too soon. I first heard of the developer, Eugen Systems when I played their Act of War: Direct Action, close to 12 years ago.

I was impressed by the amount of details and information poured into a strategy game, in a time when RTS titles were emphasizing on generic base building mechanics, churning equally generic units. In 2009, R.U.S.E. (no longer on Steam, sadly) introduced the developer’s signature style & proprietary graphics engine, IRISZOOM to the delight of most armchair generals wishing for a quality compromise between eye candy and in-depth strategy. Steel Division: Normandy 44 is proudly carrying the torch of its spiritual and technical predecessors. In more ways than one, it has surpassed them all.

Steel Division: Normandy 44 as its name suggests, focuses on a very specific WW2 campaign. The turning point for the entire war and the event which truly signaled, the inevitable end of the Third Reich. The Invasion of Normandy, D-Day, Operation Overlord, The Normandy Landings. Many names, a single great event in human history. The greatest seaborne invasion, in fact and Nazi Germany would slowly begin to crumble once the second, Western front would open in war-torn Europe. Steel Division features three distinct singleplayer campaigns for the United States of America, Third Reich and the United Kingdom. In that order, based on the difficulty rating of the missions themselves. More on that below, but for now I shall focus on the raw numbers.

There are four missions for each aforementioned nation. I have to agree that they seem like quite a few, even if the amount of planning they involved, is visible even to the untrained eye. Everything from historically accurate maps, unit placement and sheer amount of intel, all point out towards the developer’s efforts in creating a D-Day video game unlike anything which came before it. I should know, since I’ve been an avid Osprey Publishing reader long before I even owned a gaming-capable PC or knew about the existence of Wikipedia. Ironically, for someone who pretty much abhors warfare and its innate violence, I like to keep myself informed about anything from tactics, to seemingly “useless trivia” about caliber sizes and off road speeds of tanks from many decades ago. We all have our quirks, right?

Don’t expect a story. You get full interaction with history, in a title which brings the stress of managing a war room, back to life. And the rewarding aspects of it all, should your plans come to fruition. Saving the lives of your troops and hopefully forcing the enemy to surrender lest they suffer total annihilation. The US and UK campaigns are deeply imbedded into historical facts, names and places, while the German missions take some minor artistic liberties. So, you shall first take full command of the US 82nd Airborne Division, providing support from behind enemy lines, in what Steel Division: Normandy 44 deems as the “Normal” difficulty of Mission Boston. I can assure you though, that pitting paratroopers against machine gun nests and light tanks, is anything but normal in terms of actual difficulty.

The “Hard” ones, within Atlantikwall, are from Germany’s 21st Panzer Division (veterans of Afrika Korps), which the game wishes to debate and imagine as a swift response from Field Marshall Erwin Rommel to the D-Day landings. A true “what if” the elite German units would have managed to counter-attack the Allies instead of failing to even predict the location or scale of the invasion. Almost as expected, leave it to the Scots, to face and overcome insurmountable odds. The “Very Hard” campaign missions in Steel Division: Normandy 44, focus on the heroic exploits of the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division in Operation Epsom and the bloodbath which ensued around German-occupied Caen before its subsequent liberation.

Powered by the developer’s own graphics engine, Steel Division: Normandy 44 looks better than any title in the Close Combat series or similar and recently released WW2-focused RTS. The engine itself would be regarded as IRISZOOM V5 since it was called V4 in the latest Wargame iteration, 2014’s Red Dragon. Eugen Systems specialized in offering battle maps which shine both in a bird's eye view and zoomed in perspectives. To put it in contemporary terms, it would resemble the support offered nowadays by UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as “drones”) and convert that accurate, real time intel into the technology available 70 years ago. Keep in mind that even long-range and portable radio communication wasn’t available to the military until the Vietnam War, some 20 years after WW2 ended.

Steel Division: Normandy 44 leaves very few details amiss. Apart from the resource-hungry graphical details, which I could only run maxed out at 2K resolution if I wanted close to 50fps, the players get access to a whole lot of information, relating to the units and the divisions present in-game along with short biographies for their commanders. How can I not love and respect strategy games, when they taught and piqued my interest in history back when school was doing the exact opposite? Stability through constant 60 frames per second can be achieved at 1080p, in case you’re wondering. No RTS game should be played at 30fps or less.

I’ve always been fond of the soundtracks from the strategic titles I’ve played over the years. From Age of Empires and Cossacks/American Conquest, to Company of Heroes and Blitzkrieg 2. Steel Division doesn’t disappoint with its audio assets. Voice acting is present in briefings and throughout the missions themselves while the units don’t suffer from repetitive spoken lines, a sin that was more prevalent in past RTS’. Sound effects are adequate and I really can’t think of another method in which all that shooting and engine noises, could have been rendered better. The OST has yet to surface online as separate songs, but I shall still link below a small audio sample which I prefer regarding as the game’s main theme since it’s also featured in Steel Division: Normandy 44’s Main Menu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeejd4vm46M

[h1]Introduction[/h1] It's hard not to notice that 2017 has seen a resurgence in World War Two films and video games alike. Just during summer, Blitzkrieg 3 and Sudden Strike 4 were released while the game I’m writing about today, launched at the end of May. “Dunkirk” opened in cinemas as a true summer blockbuster. You get my point, WW2 is back in the saddle. Even the upcoming Call of Duty, shall be a well deserved return to the series’ historic roots. Not a moment too soon. I first heard of the developer, Eugen Systems when I played their Act of War: Direct Action, close to 12 years ago. I was impressed by the amount of details and information poured into a strategy game, in a time when RTS titles were emphasizing on generic base building mechanics, churning equally generic units. In 2009, R.U.S.E. (no longer on Steam, sadly) introduced the developer’s signature style & proprietary graphics engine, IRISZOOM to the delight of most armchair generals wishing for a quality compromise between eye candy and in-depth strategy. Steel Division: Normandy 44 is proudly carrying the torch of its spiritual and technical predecessors. In more ways than one, it has surpassed them all. [h1]Story [/h1] Steel Division: Normandy 44 as its name suggests, focuses on a very specific WW2 campaign. The turning point for the entire war and the event which truly signaled, the inevitable end of the Third Reich. The Invasion of Normandy, D-Day, Operation Overlord, The Normandy Landings. Many names, a single great event in human history. The greatest seaborne invasion, in fact and Nazi Germany would slowly begin to crumble once the second, Western front would open in war-torn Europe. Steel Division features three distinct singleplayer campaigns for the United States of America, Third Reich and the United Kingdom. In that order, based on the difficulty rating of the missions themselves. More on that below, but for now I shall focus on the raw numbers. There are four missions for each aforementioned nation. I have to agree that they seem like quite a few, even if the amount of planning they involved, is visible even to the untrained eye. Everything from historically accurate maps, unit placement and sheer amount of intel, all point out towards the developer’s efforts in creating a D-Day video game unlike anything which came before it. I should know, since I’ve been an avid Osprey Publishing reader long before I even owned a gaming-capable PC or knew about the existence of Wikipedia. Ironically, for someone who pretty much abhors warfare and its innate violence, I like to keep myself informed about anything from tactics, to seemingly “useless trivia” about caliber sizes and off road speeds of tanks from many decades ago. We all have our quirks, right? Don’t expect a story. You get full interaction with history, in a title which brings the stress of managing a war room, back to life. And the rewarding aspects of it all, should your plans come to fruition. Saving the lives of your troops and hopefully forcing the enemy to surrender lest they suffer total annihilation. The US and UK campaigns are deeply imbedded into historical facts, names and places, while the German missions take some minor artistic liberties. So, you shall first take full command of the US 82nd Airborne Division, providing support from behind enemy lines, in what Steel Division: Normandy 44 deems as the “Normal” difficulty of Mission Boston. I can assure you though, that pitting paratroopers against machine gun nests and light tanks, is anything but normal in terms of actual difficulty. The “Hard” ones, within Atlantikwall, are from Germany’s 21st Panzer Division (veterans of Afrika Korps), which the game wishes to debate and imagine as a swift response from Field Marshall Erwin Rommel to the D-Day landings. A true “what if” the elite German units would have managed to counter-attack the Allies instead of failing to even predict the location or scale of the invasion. Almost as expected, leave it to the Scots, to face and overcome insurmountable odds. The “Very Hard” campaign missions in Steel Division: Normandy 44, focus on the heroic exploits of the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division in Operation Epsom and the bloodbath which ensued around German-occupied Caen before its subsequent liberation. [h1]Graphics[/h1] Powered by the developer’s own graphics engine, Steel Division: Normandy 44 looks better than any title in the Close Combat series or similar and recently released WW2-focused RTS. The engine itself would be regarded as IRISZOOM V5 since it was called V4 in the latest Wargame iteration, 2014’s Red Dragon. Eugen Systems specialized in offering battle maps which shine both in a bird's eye view and zoomed in perspectives. To put it in contemporary terms, it would resemble the support offered nowadays by UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as “drones”) and convert that accurate, real time intel into the technology available 70 years ago. Keep in mind that even long-range and portable radio communication wasn’t available to the military until the Vietnam War, some 20 years after WW2 ended. Steel Division: Normandy 44 leaves very few details amiss. Apart from the resource-hungry graphical details, which I could only run maxed out at 2K resolution if I wanted close to 50fps, the players get access to a whole lot of information, relating to the units and the divisions present in-game along with short biographies for their commanders. How can I not love and respect strategy games, when they taught and piqued my interest in history back when school was doing the exact opposite? Stability through constant 60 frames per second can be achieved at 1080p, in case you’re wondering. No RTS game should be played at 30fps or less. [h1]Audio[/h1] I’ve always been fond of the soundtracks from the strategic titles I’ve played over the years. From Age of Empires and Cossacks/American Conquest, to Company of Heroes and Blitzkrieg 2. Steel Division doesn’t disappoint with its audio assets. Voice acting is present in briefings and throughout the missions themselves while the units don’t suffer from repetitive spoken lines, a sin that was more prevalent in past RTS’. Sound effects are adequate and I really can’t think of another method in which all that shooting and engine noises, could have been rendered better. The OST has yet to surface online as separate songs, but I shall still link below a small audio sample which I prefer regarding as the game’s main theme since it’s also featured in Steel Division: Normandy 44’s Main Menu. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeejd4vm46M [h1]Gameplay, Verdict, Summary & Rating are below in the Comment Section.[/h1]