Close Combat IV: Battle of the Bulge

DEVELOPER : Atominc Games
PUBLISHER : SSI 

Originally started by Microprose and Atomic as a computer port of the popular Advanced Squad Leader series, the Close Combat series was destined for greatness.  Unfortunately, the precipitate withdrawal of Avalon Hill spelled the end of that dream.  The project had a life of its own, though.  Atomic went back to the drawing boards and the rest was computer wargaming history. 

First out of the stable was Close Combat (1).  Set in Normandy and utterly departing from boardgame conventions, the game itself was almost a backdrop to the technology in the engine beneath.  Amazingly, every soldier in the game was depicted, and moreover had his own AI – was he scared, excited, determined, tired?  Each unit was made up of realistically modeled soldiers with different attributes and abilities.  Run a MG team across a street, and no longer was it quantized as a “unit” crossing the street en masse (ala the long-standing wargame paradigm). Instead you saw the loader dash across the street first, and the poor bastard lugging the gun chugging along behind.

The graphics too (as I recall – it’s starting to dim as ancient history) were outstanding for the time – the sprites were accurately modeled overhead views of the various units and vehicles (including the graphic blood pooling around slain soldiers).  The terrain (admittedly, in CC1 it was pretty flat) was equally well represented, buildings having multiple heights, and LOS was modeled accurately, rather than using contour-line ‘steps’ or other fudges.

Each revision since then has been an improvement over the original.   CC2 was set during Operation Market Garden, and introduced a major addition in the form of an operational facet to the game.  “Off-map movement”, long term goals, and strategy (as opposed to tactics) also became important.

CC3 finally put the series on the eastern front, and introduced a campaign game as an essential element to the Close Combat player’s experience, rather than as a simple adjunct of a few loosely linked scenarios.  I felt it was the best of the series thus far (some CC2 players would roundly dispute that), but there were some valid concerns in the community regarding the direction the game was taking. Specifically many complaints were also aimed at the combat modeling, the rudimentary artillery implementation, and the reduced cover values causing a butchery of the poor bloody infantry.   Departing from the relatively “pure” infantry battles that were the heart of the series thus far, CC3 also moved to more of an armor-dominated game – the campaign engine invariably ending with a 90/10 mix of AFV to infantry at best.

Fortunately the system had been left deliberately open to ‘tinkering’ by players, and the players came through with a number of mods that tightened the weapon performances and forced the engine to provide more combined-arms challenges throughout the game.

The first evident change in this iteration is that Close Combat IV: The Battle of the Bulge comes to us now from SSI as a publisher, instead of Microsoft.  But more importantly for players, it now brings the latest “CC” back to the west front during the German Ardennes offensive.

A last gasp of the Wehrmacht in the West, the offensive historically was a gamble to drive a wedge between the US and Commonwealth armies.  This was meant to force the Allies to the bargaining table in light of the inevitable Soviet offensives the German General Staff saw forming in the East for the coming spring.

The Germans managed to deluge a quiet sector of the American front with surprise concentrations of men and materiel, overrunning and annihilating green US troops with the largest armies in the western war.  More than a half million men were engaged on both sides, as crack German troops drove through unprepared defenses and quickly burst onto rear areas.  Overcast skies favored the Germans, preventing the might of Allied airpower from being applied to the attackers restricted to the narrow and confining Ardennes road net.  Nazi teams, led by the infamous Otto Skorzeny, parachuted behind the lines dressed as American MP’s, misdirecting traffic and causing a disproportional amount of confusion and paranoia in Allied HQ’s.

The security of the entire front teetered in the balance as US forces gave way in a deep salient, the 101^st Airborne the lone holdouts in Bastogne, the only exception to the litany of German successes.

But as the Germans were aware – if the offensive took too long, the result was almost inevitable.  As the battle progressed, the tide of fortune eventually started to turn against the Germans.  Their Panzer divisions, equipped with the best tanks of the war, began to run out of fuel and ammunition.  The skies eventually began to clear, allowing massive concentrations of Allied airpower and artillery to hammer on Nazi columns, supplies, and staging areas.  Patton in the south and Montgomery in the north had each mobilized relieving forces at the shoulders of the salient and began to drive it closed.

The great offensive that had been the optimistic hope of Hitler and his Wehrmacht became an ignominious retreat, as units abandoned vehicles and raced eastward – desperate to escape before the pocket closed behind them.

CC4 casts you as either the Germans or the Americans in these momentous days. Players re-live the intensity and desperation of those fateful battles through an impressive array of scenarios, mini- and full campaigns.  The British involvement is not included, which is an unfortunate but not serious omission, given the overwhelming proportion of American troops in the counterattack.

Essentially, players of the previous games in the series should recognize that CC4 is CC3 on the west front.  The graphics are just as good as CC3 – highly detailed and very realistic, and the sound suite is Close Combat series standard: excellent.  For those new to these games, CC4 won’t disappoint – the unit sprites are completely convincing, vehicles casting shadows as they move, and billowing clouds from smoke rounds realistically rising and dispersing.  Sounds range from the panicked shouts of your men to gunfire – realistic gunfire, sounding like digital recordings of the actual weapons.  You’ll not soon forget the characteristic “ripping” sound of an MG42.  Unlike many games, the background chatter isn’t random noise either; your personnel are telling you things that you need to know based on events in the game occurring around them!

The interface and the play of the game on the tactical level are identical to CC3.  Unit orders are an easy right-click away; a dropdown list gives you potential orders: move, move fast, sneak, fire, smoke, defend and ambush.  Clicking on any of the movement alternatives allows you to then left-click the destination (or waypoint) for that unit.  The fire commands are similar, but the line between the unit and your cursor is green if the LOS is clear, red where it’s blocked.  (This would have been a mechanic well applied for movement, had it represented rough going or even prohibited movement in that context.  Unfortunately it does happen that the player must keep issuing move orders through tough terrain only to get repeated responses of “No clear path!”)

Play is real-time, and intuitive – your tanks sneak down lanes as your infantry leapfrogs from house to house, when suddenly an enemy AT gun is identified (usually by the WHAM as it slams into your glacis and the crew is shouting “bailing out!” into your ears).  Your units pause and deliver cover fire, as further back units rush up to catch the enemy unit in a crossfire.  Your tank crew, caught in the open as they dismount, is cut to pieces by nearby LMG.  You pop an artillery marker on the enemy strongpoint and call for a barrage, and the WP smoke plumes neatly over their position (even its shadow is consistent).  Very visceral and very satisfying.

Linking the tactical maps is the strategic map of the Ardennes region.  Divided into irregular zones centered on critical junctions or towns, each side’s representative formations are moved around on a daily basis on this map from one zone to another, and where German and American formations occupy the same region, a tactical battle is fought.   Also on this map, the player has a chance to employ their air and artillery assets, adding them to critical battles or husbanding them for later crises.

Interestingly, each tactical map is linked to the strategic zone by entry/exit points.  Control of one of these at the end of a battle prevents the opponent’s use of that road during his strategic move.  This is a neat feature, and leads to some interesting possibilities in which you can strategically encircle and isolate a strongpoint that fails to fall to the initial assault.  Of course, as this is the case they’d have been remiss in not modeling the consequences of supply (and being out of it, more specifically).  Allied supply dumps ring the map, and are critical resources to keep the flagging German forces supplied in the mid-campaign. 

In implementing their strategic engine, the designers have made their main break with CC3.  Sadly, it’s not that great a thing.  They have given us a real battle-generator, and allowed us to have a meaningful larger context in which these battles are fought.  Likewise, they took a lot of flak from USENET and their own forums on CC3’s inability to model artillery or air support, and this engine now puts the use of such resources at the player’s fingertips.  But CC4 remains a tactical game in all but words. 

This strategic engine is pretty shallow and doesn’t let the player deviate from the scripted chain of events significantly.   First, the main restriction is the limit of one formation per strategic zone.  This is pretty frustrating. Further, strategic movement is much like Diplomacy – units can only move around if unopposed, and will cancel their move if a friendly unit occupies the destination already.  Despite the presence of an armored battalion right down the road, you cannot ADD them to the weak front line infantry unit – either disband the infantry, or let them get killed to ‘clear the way’ for the tanks. 

Moreover, the ability to allocate support (artillery and air strikes) assets is also limited to one “module” each per zone – forget concentration of fire, you must piecemeal your fire across many sectors. The artillery itself I found unimpressive – OBA fire is represented (always) by 4x 80mm mortars firing simultaneously (40-60 shots) which might knock out a light AT gun but rarely have much effect on obstacles or dug-in troops.  When it’s available it’s ALWAYS available, and nearly immediate in application.   (Both air and artillery availability are announced a few minutes into each scenario, probably to represent the delay between ordering such fire and it arriving.)

I will credit it, however - the strategic engine does a good job of keeping the battles near to an ‘historical mean’ in terms of infantry/armor proportions, preventing the all-armor slugfests so common in CC3.

Infantry combat is as lethal as CC3 (cover values were reduced in CC2 and haven’t returned), making battles a somewhat set piece affair.  Moving infantry is very vulnerable unless totally protected from observation, even when sneaking in forests.  Basically, unit placement at the start of scenarios is critical, as they won’t survive laterally redeploying very much.  The unit and individual info screens are also present as previously, giving the player a super-detailed look at the condition of the individuals under their command.

Vehicles are again quickly dominant on the battlefield, although I found the AI’s placement of AT assets to be slightly better than CC3, and the movement of unsupported armor is realistically restricted by the chance of a “gotcha” bazooka or panzerschreck attack.    Unfortunately the maps are so small that again, placement is critical – on the attack or defense it’s likely that you will be under fire almost immediately.  I also found that AT assets seemed a bit too lethal – the first shot of a light AT would frequently immobilize my Panthers, and (to my advantage, but rather surprising) that a bazooka shot to the side of Jagdtiger KILLED it! (“Soldier, what did you PUT in that gun?”)

The AI still has a frustrating tendency to break cover and run under your guns.  I found that (on offense) the only scenarios that were challenging were where you as the attacker were channeled by mines/river/etc into suicidally narrow firelanes.  (HERO level difficulty were all pretty tough no matter what, though.)  On defense (typically as the Americans) your armor was likely to be slaughtered rapidly by well-sited initial placements of German guns, but once that pain was over, it was relatively easy to use the rest of your forces to ambush and eliminate the attackers.

One of the greatest new features is measuring morale – no longer do sides fight “to the last man”.  A scale displays as your or the enemy’s forces take losses, your morale sinks.  I noted that significant units (tanks, etc) when lost are disproportionate morale-hits, which I think is very credible.  I didn’t see however that this scale would ever reverse (by the seizure of victory locations, for example).  I think this (and the timer limit) is a good mechanic for keeping the battles limited in duration, which is a huge improvement over CC3 where the game could be interminable.

Speaking of multiplayer, head-to-head CC4 is (as the rest of the games were) supported by the MSN gaming zone, Mplayer, IPX, serial, etc. and is always fantastic.  Obviously, many of the complaints about the AI are N/A when playing against a human, making for a much, much more interesting game.  I found that flank security, snipers, and ambushes are all far more critical in a Human/Human game, and returns the gameplay much more closely to the spirit of intense infantry combat from the earlier CC games.

The editor function lets you build battles either in one zone or craft a whole campaign (within the context of the Ardennes setting).  It seemed to be the result of a great deal of work, but I couldn’t ever get it to function – even after reinstalls, and trying to open/edit a current scenario, I kept getting “bad data” errors.  I haven’t seen anything about this from anyone on USENET, and am still waiting for an answer from SSI.

Reviewing and rating Close Combat 4 is not an easy task.  It’s the fourth version in the series, and there are some glaring things that haven’t yet been fixed.  Infantry transport is not possible, either as passengers or riders.  Towing guns is still also N/A.   I found on Hero level that the AI’s competence was suspiciously good – a German AFV facing north was the target of a stealthy approach by a team of engineers with flame-throwers, etc.  Somehow, that AFV with no enemy infantry nearby and taking fire from other tanks in the north, noticed the approach of these fellows THROUGH THE THICKNESS OF A BUILDING TO THE SOUTH and swung its turret to destroy them the moment they entered the opposite side of the building.  What the heck?

Moreover, I find that I play a lot of this game at the zoomed-out level, to have the best possible picture of what’s happening (I find this is the only counter to my poor human brain’s inability to match the computer at managing simultaneous events J).  However, as in CC3, this screen shows almost nothing about what’s happening to the player’s forces.  There are no signs of enemy fire (considering you can take fire without spotting the enemy, this can be serious when you are trying to find out WHO is being shot at) nor artillery beaten zones.  Lines of fire that appear “good” at this level are frequently contradicted by the zoom-in view.

Despite the litany above, I liked CC4 and will play it for quite a while (the full campaign will take a substantial amount of time – assume an hour per battle it could be well over 50 hours) but I can’t help feeling a little disappointed.  It’s probably that I had over-anticipated its value, but I think their campaign system – in my view the main change between CC3 and CC4 - should have been a great deal better.  In fairness, as I said at the beginning of the review, potential buyers MUST remember: CC4 is essentially CC3 on the western front, and that (no matter what my excessive hopes were) is one damn good game. It definitely continues the high standards of its predecessors, but ultimately fails to take any significant step forward.  If that’s a critical concern for you, there it is.  As for me, I’m gonna get over it and go straight back to the game.

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Reviewed by Steve Lieb