The asynchronous multiplayer is faster paced. With synchronous play, where one player battled another in real time, the matches lasted too long and became boring, Orlovskiy said. By contrast, a player can play several asynchronous battles in the time it takes to do one synchronous match. “The trend toward asynchronous player-versus-player is huge, and it’s a really good fit with real-time strategy,” Orlovskiy said. “We’ve taken 10 years to do another title because there was no innovation in this segment. We feel asynchronous is the next big step.” We didn’t want to do the same game again. In the game, you view the 3D battlefield from a fixed point above the map. The artwork is extremely realistic and detailed. You can see the grass swaying in the wind, and the leaves shimmering on trees. When a tank runs over a tree, it is uprooted and falls.

And the fires and explosions from tank bursts look like the real thing. Some of the movement is a little too fast, but I didn’t feel like that ruined the realism. Nival has paid a lot of attention to detail, much like Relic Entertainment did with last year’s Company of Heroes 2 real-time strategy game. That World War II game focused much more on squad combat and a narrative story. You could zoom in more on what each soldier was doing, and even click on them to toss grenades at targets. By contrast, you don’t micromanage your soldiers in Blitzkrieg 3. And the game is much more like an open sandbox, where just about anything can happen on a map. In Blitzkrieg 3, the camera is set a little higher, giving you a view of a wider section of the battlefield so you can control more units from a distance. It feels like Nival has gotten the proportions right. In Company of Heroes 2, the action is too concentrated in a series of close combat battles. With the huge Blitzkrieg maps, there’s a lot more room to maneuver. You also control more units and feel you’re more like a general, rather than a low-level commander, Orlovskiy said. “We are pretty far from the gameplay of Company of Heroes,” he said. “You have a bigger army, and you have to set up your defense to deal with attacks from different directions. We aren’t movie makers, so we focus more on simulation.” They are cinematic and focus more on Hollywood.

Blitzkrieg 3 for mac