Panzer Elite is a tank combat simulation game set in World War II's Western Front.  Players can man tanks from the American or German arsenal in three theaters of operation: North Africa, Italy, and Normandy.  The American tanks that are playable are eight different variants of the M4, while the playable German tanks are twelve variants of the Pz. IV, Tiger, and Panther tanks.  A wide variety of other vehicles appear in the game, but they are not directly controllable by the player.

The game comes with six campaigns - one for each side in each of the theaters.  In the campaign game, players command a platoon of tanks through a series of missions.  In between missions, players must manage their available supplies and upgrades, deciding how they should be allocated to the tanks in the platoon.  Players must also manage personnel, and man the tanks from the pool of available tank specialists - drivers, loaders, gunners, radio operators, and tank commanders.

In addition to the campaigns, players can play any of the individual missions from the campaigns, or jump right in to instant action missions.  For these latter missions, players select the tank they wish to command, the tanks used by their platoon, and the theater of combat, and then are taken right to battle.  The opposing forces in the instant action games always start in relatively close proximity to each other, so players will not have to wait long before the combat begins to heat up.

The one game type that is missing from Panzer Elite is a tutorial.  The game is desperately in need of one since the manual is very inadequate.  The manual mostly consists of historical information on tank warfare, and what little part is dedicated to playing the game consists mostly of a hotkey reference.  It is pretty much impossible to jump right into the game and be able to properly manage a tank, and the game's learning curve is made even steeper by the lack of a tutorial.  This is especially the case when it comes to gunnery.  There is an array of various sites and controls, and unless a person has had some tank training, he/she will be left bewildered as to their meaning.  To make matters worse, it is hard to determine where shots land when a target is missed, which further hampers successfully striking a target.  Luckily the game does provide an option where the player merely has to designate the target and then can let the AI handle the shooting.

Speaking of options, Panzer Elite comes with numerous options to adjust the game's level of realism.  The game can be played from a third-person view outside the tank, with full freedom of vision and automatic targeting at the lowest settings.  At the highest levels, players can command the tank from the inside, and contend with manual transmissions and realistic gun physics.  Tanks can be controlled with a joystick or with a keyboard/mouse combination.  That latter option works quite well, and those who are more used to action-oriented games may find it more intuitive than the more traditional joystick control.  

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