This weekend past, at the hurried insistence of a close friend, I downloaded and installed Cross Fire.

After registering online for this free first-person shooter, and duly committing myself to several rounds (one of which included witnessing a cheater using a speed hack) I quietly resigned myself to the fact that this probably wasn't ever going to captivate me in a way that Counter-Strike or the Call of Duty series did.

It's not that Cross Fire is necessarily bad, or inherently broken in any dramatic way. It's certainly aligned itself to a price bracket that I feel endeared towards. It's just that there's nothing really captivating or particularly innovative about the game that makes it stand above any other of the dozens of either paid, or free-to-play military FPS titles on the market.

In a very similar way, Codename Panzers: Cold War fails to distinguish itself amongst other worthy titles currently vying for your attention. Cold War is the third game in the Codename Panzers series, and where its brethren managed to captivate a loyal fanbase, it's hard to imagine this latest iteration breaking any sales records.

Perhaps, however, you're sick of World War II titles? Or sick of waiting for any developer to make a compelling World War One game? You're in luck. Cold War is set in an alternate timeline where NATO got all scared and decided to sit on their nuclear weapons rather than hurl them in the direction of Stalin's encroaching Red horde. The result is a continuation of the Second World War, although this time largely in reverse as The Warsaw Pact seeks to push NATO forces back across the Rhine and into Nazi-less Europe.

Throughout the eighteen campaigns on offer, you'll be kept company by a tight yet detailed range of units that have a relatively simple upgrade path. This mechanic forms the core of the game, as often the outcome of battles are dictated by what weaponry you've chosen to equip rather than any particularly clever tactical decision you may have made. Admittedly watching the massive Mi-26's swooping around whilst equipping your tanks with flame-throwers is pretty exciting the first time through, but once you've experimented with the vehicular weapons in half a dozen campaigns or so, you'll probably just settle for what you're used to.

Infantry units, whilst highly customizable and able to perform dedicated combat engineering tasks such as laying mines or setting up hospital stations, are weak in the face of the enemies mechanised units. Fortunately, the AI doesn't always know which is the most important unit to target, so large battles tend to balance out in a somewhat Pyrrhic manner. Only by holding your larger artillery units back can you generally escape unharmed, however the resulting victory under these conditions tends to feel hollow.

Perhaps most impressive of all is the attention lavished on the terrain and accompanying environmental objects. Architecturally accurate buildings crumble as you would expect, and there's plenty of one-time physics sequences that you wish weren't quite so scripted. The new Gepard 3 game engine is a delight to behold, although it's a pity it's largely wasted on watching two tanks pound each other from five metres away in a race to deplete their respective health bars. Sound, too, is adequate, in a similar way that elevator music keeps you adequately entertained on long vertical trips.

We took a look at Cold War back in late January, and despite lacking in a few areas it showed promise. Unfortunately for developers Stormregion (and rather fortunately for everyone else) the excellent Empire Total War was released just prior to Cold War, and that's not a title anyone should be forced to compete with.

If Cold War needed any further competition (which it most definitely does not) it would come in the form of World in Conflict, the remarkable similarities between the two titles making a comparison all but impossible to avoid. Perhaps the most telling outcome of this is that Cold War doesn't really offer anything to entice a runaway defection from the battle-hardened ranks of WIC fans out there. Not that each title should necessarily be mutually exclusive, but RTS gamers will inevitably adopt a favourite.

I wanted to like Cold War a lot more than I did. If it wasn't for the occasional bugs and generally unfinished nature of the game, perhaps I could have. But much like the weary and broken inhabitants of Europe at the fall of the Nazi regime, I've seen the future, and this ain't it.