Greatest strategy game ever (Combat Mission - Barbarossa to Berlin (PS))

Member Name: mrpwase

Product:	Combat Mission - Barbarossa to Berlin (PS)
Date:	27/03/04 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Realism and attention to detail, The morale system, Scenarios that force you to think

Disadvantages: Micromanagement to the extreme, Faults in the TacAI, Slightly dodgy graphics

I?d heard about Combat Mission before now, but when a demo appeared on a magazine cover disc, I decided to give it a try. Within five minutes I was hooked.

The game itself is a hybrid turn-based strategy and real-time strategy, in that you give orders to your units in the planning phase, then watch them carry them out in the 60-second-long action phase (or ignore them and do something else, since the AI is quite sophisticated). This makes the game a challenge in that you can?t change what a unit is doing halfway through a turn, which can cause all kinds of problems ? it makes you think before you give an order, something I have rarely seen in other strategy titles.

The first thing that struck me was the complicated command system. Units can advance (that is, use any available cover to move in a set direction, useful for moving towards an enemy that is firing at you), move to contact (move until an enemy enters the unit?s line of sight) and withdraw (i.e. retreat in an orderly fashion), as well as the requisite move (walk), run, and sneak (crawl/go prone). ?Cover arcs? can be set to ensure units only target enemies in a certain area, and pauses can be used to synchronise units ? although this could do with being a bit more specific, as you can only pause in increments of 10 seconds, not, say, 5 or even 1 second increments. Tanks can ?hunt? (I think this is used against entrenched or hiding infantry) and lay smoke. Also, units are divided up into platoons, companies etc, and each platoon, company etc has a HQ unit. When, say, a rifle squad from a rifle platoon strays out of the command radius of its HQ unit (or something else blocks the HQ from the unit, for example smoke), then the rifle squad will take longer to execute orders, and will not receive any morale, combat or stealth benefits from its HQ unit. It seems very complicated, and it does take a bit of getting used to, but believe me ? it?s worth it.

Combat Mission is so packed full of
detail, it can all seem quite daunting (there are roughly 1700 different units, if my memory serves me correctly), but for anyone who doesn?t have extensive knowledge of WW2 weaponry, Battlefront have managed to make a game that is easy to learn and hard to master. For beginners, there is a tutorial, a manual, and a large community based on both the Battlefront forums and several separate CM websites where you can ask questions and discuss the game. The forums are also a regular hangout for seasoned players looking for opponents, new scenarios or help with tactical problems.

The Tactical AI is one of the best features of the game ? it?s the part of the game engine that makes units act entirely on their own. Take a Sherman tank for example ? picture it sitting on a hill, happily machine-gunning routed enemy troops, when a Tiger heavy tank comes along and blows a large chunk of earth into orbit from right in front of its right tread. The Sherman tank commander decides that the Tiger is too strong a threat, and orders the driver to reverse down the hill to safety, and orders the gunner to lay smoke. So even if you have given a unit orders to engage another unit, they may fall foul to the effects of morale. Infantry which are pinned by machine guns will stay prone, units that are subject to sustained fire will first panic, then break and crawl for it, and finally rout and run to safety (or machine gun death ? routed troops are cannon fodder for tanks) ? all these add up to make Combat Mission a very realistic battlefield simulator.

There are two types of game you can play, and you can play these in four different ways ? you can play against the computer or against a human opponent either on the same computer (hotseat), by email or by direct internet connection, and battles are divided up into scenarios and operations ? the former being a single battle, the latter being a string of scenarios where you keep the troops and ammo you had in the last scenar
io (you might receive reinforcements). This system works extremely well ? if you just want a quick battle choose a small scenario and play against the computer, if you want a casual game against a human opponent play by email, and if you want a massive battle that requires a lot of thinking and speed, try a operation or large scenario on TCP/IP.

There are some niggling faults, however ? micromanagement is the main one. If you want to move, say, an infantry company into a forest, and then have them sneak through the forest, you have to first select all the units at once, give them a move command that gets them all into the forest, then select each of them individually and give them a sneak command each. Rarely is micromanagement so frustrating, especially in large battles. With some scenarios you could spend ages on planning phases, only to see it blow up in your face when the enemy guesses your location and drops some 205mm artillery shells on you. Another problem is that, while being one of the best features of the game, the Tactical AI is not perfect ? sometimes units will run 50m across open ground, be within 5m of its destination (a wood), then get shot at and start the long ?panic crawl? back to its original location, even though there is perfectly good (even better) cover 5m away. Maddening.

Another, nowhere-near-as-important problem is the graphics. Now, the latest incarnation of CM, Afrika Korps, looks very good for a game that goes into so much fanatical detail ? but there are occasional hiccups ? buildings that only go half transparent, trees that slowly disappear when you move the view through them, 2d explosions and dust clouds?nothing drastic, just a few little faults that could have been glossed over ? never mind, I?m just winging now. This is a great game, and I recommend you buy it straight away from the Battlefront website (good luck finding it in a retail store), possibly the bundle pack including CM2 and 3, Barbarossa to Berlin (
BB) and Afrika Korps (AK) respectively.

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