Tank Battle: East Front 1942

For many, the titanic armoured battles on the Eastern Front in World War II shaped the remainder of the 20th century.

In fact, the military confrontations that took place during this theatre of conflict continue to resonate today.

It's not hard to see why it remains such a source of fascination for strategy gamers. And why Hunted Cow Studio has muscled in on the act with Tank Battle: East Front 1942, the sequel to, erm, Tank Battle: East Front 1941.

All of Hunted Cow's games, including previous American Civil War titles 1863 and 1862, run on the same engine. Given that World War II and the US Civil War were radically different conflicts, though, is it a wise move for the studio to base this new game on the same framework?

Here, it largely pays off. While retaining the same simple touch and move interface and easy to understand unit strength and terrain rules, the new unit types face off well against each other to spark some interesting strategy.

Tanks are naturally the meat of the game, but there are tank hunters and mobile artillery too, which can be devastating if used correctly. Field guns and anti-tank guns are in the mix too, with the ability to load on and off trucks for added manoeuvrability at the cost of firepower. There are even aeroplanes.

The only thing that doesn't work too well are the poor bloody infantry, who can inflict some nasty damage if they get close enough but have usually been chewed up by pretty much everything else on the battlefield before they get the chance.

The flanking system originally added in 1862 remains here, with added nuance in modelling turreted versus fixed weapons. Sadly many of the battlefields are a bit too small to properly exploit the strategic depth it offers, but it's nice to have.

All in all it's a marked improvement over the fairly two dimensional selection of units in previous offerings. And their additional mobility gives the game a much more pacey and engaging feel that suits the light strategy genre well.

There's also a good mixture of scenarios, from all-out assaults on defended positions, through meeting engagements, flanking actions and puzzle-like terrain mazes to navigate, with the added pleasure of rooting out hidden tanks.

The AI remains a very mixed bag, occasionally dazzling you with surprising subtlety, but more often blundering around like an incompetent general. It's particularly bad on the defensive, showing a marked tendency to rush out of its prepared positions to engage you in the open.

Still, there's enough interest here to play through the two campaigns provided. There are allegedly two more, but one is little more than an extended tutorial and the other is labelled as "coming soon". History buffs will be a little disappointed that no effort has been made to tally the campaigns with actual events.

Once you've done with the single player game, there's a workable multi-player interface to test your skills against other human beings, and the "I go, you go" turn structure lends itself well to asynchronous play.

There's not an awful lot of detail or depth in Tank Battle: East Front 1942, in spite of pretensions otherwise with it's long-winded name and detailed stat screens, but it's fast and fun, and challenging enough that you can't just romp in with all guns blazing and expect to win. At least not in all the scenarios.

Plus, the presentation and accessibility should please casual strategy gamers looking for a quick bite.

That makes it a little unusual: in an app store swamped in Second World War Games, it strike a nice balance between action-oriented titles and more hardcore strategy games.

The limited range of scenarios and often misfiring AI are a little disappointing, but the primeval appeal of driving armoured monsters across a snowscape and blowing stuff up wins through in the end.