The cold war and real-time strategy can be infrequently seen courting over the last decade’s worth of PC games – the Red Alert series to name the highest profile series of its kind. Nazis are still being justly persecuted by every conceivable genre, but at least with Stormregion at the helm we get to fight hand-in-hand with the Germans, against the Russians on Moscow’s doorstep. Ironically, in sympathy with the historical cold war era, Codename: Panzers – Cold War almost never happened itself, after publisher 10tacle Studios went bust and development was left in limbo, before Atari came to the rescue.

Unlike the wildly kisch sci-fi of Red Alert 3's cold war and the far-fetched alternate reality of World In Conflict's Red invasion on US soil, Cold War bases itself on a more realistic scenario: a simple mid-air collision between an Allied transporter and a Russian fighter dubbed the Templehof incident, which proved the spark that lit the touch paper in 1949 for a deadly conflict between east and west. The main gameplay mechanic is based around capturing strategic POI’s (points of interest) that endow you with a steady stream of prestige points, or give you control over useful technologies like radar or a helipad for dropping troops. There's no base building or construction yard, plus there's a maximum unit cap for each mission and few opportunities to order in reinforcements, so you'll often have to stretch your tanks, troops and carriers to the wire. But at the cost of some prestige, you can equip your vehicles and infantry with different weapons and equipment, allowing you to switch back and forth, changing the tactics of your small group on the fly according to your needs. It's a refreshingly re-jigged take on the classic construct, explore, expand and conquer dynamic of a typical strategy game, and has a lot in common with Company Of Heroes.

Stormregion's Gepard 3 engine is quite demanding, but justifiably so as the terrain is massively destructible. So if you have anywhere near the taste for carnage that we do you'll enjoy revelling in flattening everything. For a game that nearly didn’t make it, it’s a thoroughly rewarding experience that deserves some love beyond its hardcore fanbase.