March of the Penguins, the phenomenal 2005 nature documentary, is one of the best things you can watch on any day in any year. But one of best things you can watch today is new footage for Brilliant Game Studios' Epic Battle Simulator, in which 11,000 penguins march on 4,000 Santa Clauses over a wintry wonderland.Epic Battle Simulator is currently up on Steam Greenlight, where users are voting to decide whether it's worthy of being included in Steam's official catalog. Santas and penguins are apparently but a small sample of what it can do. EBS's Steam page showcases several other faceoffs, such as a mass of Roman soldiers advancing on seas of chickens and orcs while shouting "For the glory of Rome!" Elsewhere, mounted knights run down zombies and modern troops riddle armored knights with bullets. "There are no limits," or so the main trailer says.Already several users have noted its somewhat uncomfortable similarities to the upcoming Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, which has a similar ideas but much simpler graphics. That may still be the better game for players without hot-rod PCs. The Unity-powered Epic Battle Simulator, with its hundreds of highly detailed units rushing over fields and sometimes (bizarrely) over cliffs, looks like the kind of thing that could murder an average CPU."Though I respect TABS, there is no influence here. I have never actually played the game and I didn't even hear about it until halfway through [EBS's]development," Brilliant Game Studios said in response to a forum post suggesting the idea was copied. "TABS focuses and procedural physics based animations which look hilarious. Epic Battle Simulator focuses on completely ridiculous large battles while keeping a level of realism in both visuals and outcomes."But whatever the case, Brilliant Game Studios certainly has a flair for the dramatic. There are shots that directly recall the Battle of Helm's Deep from Peter Jackson's The Two Towers, and the camera frequently and artfully swings from sweeping panoramas to closeups where killer Kris Kringles batter emperor penguins with candy canes.After a little more than seven minutes, the action comes down to a single Santa, hemmed against a stone wall and heaving wearily over the bodies of his once-jolly compatriots. As inevitable as the winter, the penguins march down the slope and overwhelm him. Score one, or perhaps 11,000, for Mother Nature.
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