Armored Fist

The Good
Armored Fist offers pretty much what you're looking for in a tank game: a good blend of realism with some fast-paced arcade-style action. With a great variety of combat environments, you can find pretty much any place you might think of to do armored combat, including the desert, a frozen tundra and more. Some missions allow you to command multiple platoons, while some pit you against LOTS of enemies with your one lil' ole tank. The mission editor is a blast to use....stirring up your creative juices! A good game, with only a few minor flaws.

The Bad
The target lock can be extremely frustrating: there you sit, being pelted by a BMP that's 40 meters away, while your target-lock system is just IN LOVE with a satellite dish that's 700 meters away. WHAT THE HECK????? I suppose the designers did this to make the game more challenging......maybe, I'm not sure. Also, I think even for it's time, there should've been an in-game volume control for sound/music, but there're only a couple of buttons, that don't do much to adjust the volume or quality.

The Bottom Line
A frantic, fast-paced armored combat sim, that's fun to play.

The Good
One can do away with the unrealistic "target lock" function on the joystick and instead use the "hat" switch to target enemy tanks & bunkers. There's a hidden east side only cheat (undocumented anywhere) that allows T-80s to immediately reload main gun rounds when the Armored Fist player toggles on the keyboard between the main gun and machine guns while firing . The Armored Fist player can wipe out an enemy platoon in no time with a T-80!

CTRL+ALT+C adds color to the spin map in the cockpit (undocumented) & centers your tank on the map in the CCV (documented in the Prima strategy guide only.)

The Bad
I suspect this game was going to be expanded much like Comanche but, it wasn't successful enough. More enemy and friendly vehicles and helicopters would have been great. There's blank space (for future missions, I suspect) on the menu.

There's a patch (AFCD14.exe) needed on some computers to get sound effects to play which causes erratic gameplay in the advanced missions.

The Bottom Line
This is a classic, though underrated simulation. It's the only game ever to simulate the M-3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Soviet BMP Fighting Vehicle, & T-80 as well as the M-1 Abrams.