Spearhead

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Review: Spearhead

Although you can hop about within the tank-moving from the gunner's position to the driver's station and from the loader's position to the tank-commander's cupola-you never get the sense you're truly operating a mammoth 70-ton war-wagon. Curiously, you not only fire the weapons-manning the guns from either the gunner's position or the commander's station using the Commander's Independent Thermal-Viewer (CITV)-but you also drive the vehicle, identify targets, and decide which of two ammo types to load.

As far as premises go, the Tunisian theatre of operations serves as the backdrop for yet another desert conflict set sometime in the not-too-distant future. US forces led by the 3rd Armored Division serve alongside various Tunisian armed forces as they desperately attempt to ward off an invading Lybian army that's pushing headlong toward Tunis. As the commander of a US armored contingent, your objective is to halt the enemy's advance, protect certain vital interests, and finally drive the enemy back to the Tunisian/Lybian border. The enemy is equipped with lethal T-80 tanks shielded by reactive armor cells. As a result, the enemy puts up a stubborn fight, although the M1A2 still outclasses the T-80 by a long shot.

Spearhead purportedly incorporates SIMNET technology, a low-end version of what the Department of Defense uses to help train its tankers. To this end, the game has been designed from the ground up to be multiplayer-compliant (LAN, modem, Internet) and features dynamically constructed single-player missions that randomly relocate the enemy's initial starting position. However, despite its origins, many of the sophisticated digital systems and other instrumentation developed for the M1A2 have been dispensed with, evidently in an effort to cut down on your workload. Some data-such as turret and tank facing, the vehicle's speed rate, and relative compass heading-are even superimposed at the top of each crewmember's screen to serve as orientation and navigational aids rather than authentic devices. What's more, you can't preset or change the platoon's formation, although you can redeploy each combat unit on the simplified Inter Vehicular Information System.

Apparently, the designers felt it was more important to stress action over realism, making several important design concessions that place the game more on a par with Armored Fist 2.

Aesthetically, Spearhead's terrain and effects are no match for M1 Tank Platoon II's. The different terrain sets are bland and featureless. While certain pyrotechnic effects (exploding tanks and eerie light-amplification gear) are especially well handled, others (tank-generated smoke grenades) seem to have been halfheartedly rendered. And although the game uses radio chatter derived from actual SIMNET exercises, its effects are limited to enhancing atmosphere.

When you get right down to it, Spearhead begs the question "Why?" M1 Tank Platoon II is clearly the superior sim, outclassing Spearhead in virtually every conceivable category. Despite its genesis, this is one oversimplified war casualty perhaps best left for dead on the battlefield.-- Marc Dultz / GamePro