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Way back in 1974, just after I graduated from high school, I attended my first Gencon. Gencon was one of the first wargame conventions, and since I was an avid board wargamer, I drove up to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for a little head-to-head Panzerblitz. I took along my friend Dwayne, who had no interest in wargaming but was nonetheless intrigued by Lake Geneva because 1) Wisconsins drinking age was 18 and 2) one of the Playboy mansions was located there. Though Dwayne did manage to get staggering drunk the night before Gencon, no Playboy bunnies materialized, so he ended up coming along with me to the convention. I figured hed be bored, but he almost immediately found a group playing a new pen-and-paper game called Dungeons and Dragons. That was it for him. I had to listen to stories about dwarves the whole way home. As for me, well, I was swept off my feet by historical miniatures. Id never seen thousands upon thousands of meticulously painted Napoleonic figures arrayed on a tabletop before. It blew me away. Even better, I got into a few WWII battalion-level miniatures games using HO scale models and the Tractics rules (what TSR was known for before D&D). Of course, over the years D&D has become a spectacularly successful roleplaying system that is as much a part of the cultural landscape as fast food and music videos. And of course historical wargames are still played by a few old grognards in back roomsand by Brits. This is reflected in computer games as well. At this years E3, there were scads of games based the D&D rules system, and one could argue that any RPGof which there were dozens at E3owes most of its gameplay conventions to D&D. But there were almost no historical wargames to be found. The bad news for wargamers is that since Talonsoft has more or less left the historical fold, no big publisher is doing wargames. You want a hardcore game, youre going to have to find an independent publisher on the web. The good news is that these small publishers are turning out excellent games that dont look or play like theyve been produced on a shoestring budget. Big Time Softwares Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord is the best of the bunch so far, and possibly the best computer wargame Ive ever played. No kidding, its that good; I havent been so excited about a wargame since playing Tractics in Lake Geneva in 1974. Combat Mission lets you refight World War IIs post-Normandy West Front at the tactical level. Your units will include individual tanks and vehicles and infantry squads and crews. These units come in a wide variety of flavors, tooalmost every nationality and branch that took part in the campaign is represented herePoles, Brits, French, Americans and airborne troops on the Allied side, and SS, Volksgrenadiers, and paratroopers on the German side. Youll see just about every significant piece of ordnance, toofrom M3 halftracks to infantry with Panzerschrecks to the many varieties of Shermans to Tiger IIs, the guys at BTS did their homework. Along with a great collection of scenarios and an excellent editor, this comprehensive variety of troops gives CM just about infinite replayability. Usually small wargame companies dont have the resources to ratchet up the graphics quality. Thats not the case here. Dont expect Unreal, but Combat Missions graphics are well above average, and excellent by wargame standards. Tanks and vehicles are superbly modeled, and while infantry looks a little stiff and puppet-like, CM does a fine job of making infantry easy to find on the battlefield without making the games scale feel skewed. Its harder to do than it sounds. The games moveable camera is a wonder, allowing you to zoom from eagles eye view to worms eye view in no time. And youll need to, since the terrain is so well-modeled that every battlefield offers numerous folds and gullies to hide in or rises to fire from. This means you have to scout the ground thoroughly and take advantage of every piece of terrain. This is much more realistic than other games, where vast stretches of ground are represented as billiard-table smooth. Special effects are nicely turned as well, and Im very fond of the games sound. In a word, its amazing. Artillery shells will rattle your monitor, non-penetrating hits on tanks will ping off, and as you scroll closer to combat on the field, the noise of battle will gradually grow louder. Youll be able to hear that enemy MG a lot sooner than you see it. All of this ran very smoothly on my PIII 450 with a TNT2 and 128 megs of RAM; even at high resolutions and with all the bells and whistles on, I never experienced lag or stutter. At the heart of Combat Mission is a very slick game system. Rather than the typical Igo/Ugo system most gamers are familiar with, CM uses a Wego system. Each turn is made up of two phases. First, you issue orders to your troopsthese are quite extensive, and include such actions as move, target, fire smoke, hide, and (my favorite) hunt. After issuing orders, you then enter the action phase. You hit the go button, and one minutes worth of action is played out in real time. Of course, during this action phase your troops will usually run into hidden enemy troops, come under fire, and sometimes be destroyed. After this phase action comes to an end. But you dont go on to the next orders phase just yet: CM allows you to replay the turns actions as much as you like, from any camera angle you like. This means you can garner valuable intelligence you might have missed the first time through, or just watch really cool tank duels over and over again. This system provides an elegant combination of the strengths of turn-based and real-time gaming, and it captures the feel of WWII combat exceedingly well. It helps that the friendly AI is exceptionalrarely will your troops do something stupid. Theyll take cover, back away from suicidal situations, and fire upon enemy units without your prompting. Of course, sometimes theyll bolt, but thats just realistic. Tank units with hunt orders will seek out enemy tanks and automatically take hull-down positions. If theres any weakness to the friendly AI, its that it sometimes targets the wrong enemy. But thats realistic too. Enemy AI is pretty beatable, but much better than most. As usual, it plays a much better defense than offense. CM offers over forty missions, and they range from small infantry skirmishes to massive tank broil-ups. The scenario editor is easy-to-use and very deep, and already the CM community has posted loads of free new scenarios for download. CM has a few little glitchessometimes line of sight can be quirky, and there are occasional clipping and seam problems. Theres no easy way to get a roster view of your units statusyou either have to seek them out on the battlefield or tab through them individually. Most disconcertingly, the only multiplayer option available is PBEM, even though the games menu lists a TCP/IP option. Apparently this will appear in a forthcoming patch, and I cant wait for it. Im a wargamer from way back, so I was pleased but not surprised to be so taken with Combat Mission. But I knew it was something special when my non-wargaming friends (including my son and his mob) first gathered around to watch me play and then wanted to play it themselves. That never happened with Rising Sun, or even with Panzer General 3D. And apparently its not just my friends who like the game: BTS sold out of their two-month supply of Combat Mission in less than a week. Its back in stock now, but dont expect to find it in storesyou can only order it from www.battlefront.com. Heres hoping that the grass roots success of this excellent game leads to wider distribution of Big Time Softwares future games. |