Steel Beasts

Steel Beasts was created with the ambition of offering a maximally faithful model of modern tank combat, so much so that the game was later adopted as a training tool by real army units, which is exceptional among domestic simulators of the nineties. The player could pilot modern main battle tanks, monitor crew behavior, work with a thermal sight, rangefinder, and various types of ammunition, and take part in large-scale scenarios in which they cooperated with other vehicles and infantry against enemy forces on an open, terrain-varied battlefield.

The game calmly built on an elaborate model of ballistics, visibility, and target recognition, where the player had to correctly identify the type of enemy vehicle before choosing the appropriate ammunition and firing, and an error in estimating distance or terrain slope could mean a miss even on what seemed like an easy shot. The graphical presentation was functional and clear, emphasizing the readability of the battlefield and the tank's instruments over flashy visual detail, and the audio, with the rumble of the engine, the turning of the turret, and the deep sound of the main gun firing, nicely conveyed the ponderous yet powerful presence of armored vehicles on the battlefield.

Steel Beasts is still remembered today as one of the most authentic tank simulators ever made for personal computers, and its continued development and professional use by armed forces prove that the game's basic model has held up even after many years. For fans of truly thorough armor simulation, the game remains nearly unrivaled, even though its austere controls and technically oriented interface require newcomers to put in considerable effort to learn them. The fact that a domestic simulator gradually evolved into a tool used even in the training of real tank units is quite exceptional among games of this period and lends the title a special historical weight.

Why play it: For fans of truly thorough armor simulation, this is a nearly unrivaled title, whose later professional use by armed forces lends it special historical weight, even though its austere interface requires considerable effort to learn.