Tank sims are niche products. You don’t see many of them around, and the few ones that do pop up are heavily scrutinized. Steel Beasts deserves scrutiny because it’s so damn good, and what’s more amazing is that it comes from a repetitively obscure developer.

The game gives you access to the U.S. M1A1 Abrams and the German Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks. Both tanks are fully simulated, down to some of the best internal “environmental” sounds a tank sim has ever had.

Bricscad license key serial. SB Pro PE 3.0 has been released, and is available for download here. It is available as a bit torrent (please keep seeding!), and from two download mirrors. Please check the various “sticky” posts in the forum at SteelBeasts.com. ESimGames – Steel Beasts Pro PE – New version SimReviewsHouse on SB Pro PE 3.028.

The differences in the tanks are nicely captured and are distinct. Both tanks let you play in either the commander or gunner positions. While you can’t specifically occupy the driver position, you can use keyboard commands to issue commands to the computer driver (some of these commands allow fine enough control to pretty much let you do the driving).

Perhaps one of the best of these commands is the one that lets you, as the commander, basically “point” to any area of the visible terrain and order your tank to move there-an elegant way of solving the problem of how to give detailed instructions (“move halfway up the hill a mile away on our left”) without a complicated interface. The M1A1, while quite a monster, doesn’t have the newest commander-position electronics that make the M1A2 such a world-beater.

If you want to play the commander, you’ll find your job a bit easier in the Leopard (which gives you a periscope, a less-capable version of the M1A2’s “commander’s independent thermal viewer”). If you’re into gunnery, however, your job’s a tad easier if you sit in an M1A1, at least in terms of actually laying your gun on target and taking the shot. Both tanks get a detailed set of tutorials, which are surprisingly helpful. While they don’t actually lead you through any steps in the game (tutorial text is presented in a “pre-mission” briefing), each specific tutorial covers a small enough slice that you never feel lost. A nice touch is that tutorials that are identical for each tank (such as the driving tutorials) are generic, so you don’t have to replay them when you learn a new tank. Working through the tutorials (and reading the manual) really does ease you into the gameplay nicely, but don’t be fooled-while the game is easy to play, it’s very hard to play well.