Let's say you're a wargamer. A long-time, dyed in the wool WW2 wargamer. You may have played the V for Victory Series ages ago, and thought that was pretty good. Steel Panthers was also a lot of fun. The Close Combat series, while a nice effort, came off as ultimately pretty gamey and didn't really reach the level of a simulation. You played all the Talonsoft wargames, they hearkened strongly back to playing ASL with your buddies. By the final editions they were quite good... but well, something was still missing. You - like most wargamers - were left ultimately wondering when SOMEONE would really bring the hobby into the computer age. Every computer wargame on the shelf was either an arcadey nuisance or little more than a straight port of a tabletop board or miniatures game.
Realizing that we're never satisfied, we resolve to write the pinnacle of computer wargaming ourselves. Taking a clean sheet of paper in hand, we write down the most desireable features in a World War 2 computer wargame. This is a total wishlist, pipedreams and pies in the sky - no limits.
Number one priority of course, is utter realism. We're starting from scratch, so we're free to dispense with all the sacred cows of board wargaming and miniatures wargaming that we've all come to accept as 'natural'. Down with CRTs, down with "Attack Strength" and "Defense Strength" and "Armor Points"! All these rationalizations, all these estimations go out the door - we're bringing a couple of million transistors to bear here so let's use the real world numbers. We're going to use the kinetic energy of the round, the precise strike angle, the Brinell hardness and thickness of the armor plate, the cross-section and quality of the round fired. Realism in combat results, realism in damage calculations, realism in every aspect of the game. Every single shot will be tracked, adjusted for wind, temperature, EVERYTHING we can think of. If it's a hit, we want brutal details on where it hit and what is the effect. If it misses, it will be tracked until it hits something or leaves the board. (Sometimes we might just want to play without the details, so we'll neatly black box it and tuck all these calculations invisibly behind the engine where the numbers are available but not obtrusive.)
And speaking of the board, let's totally dump the hexes, shall we? They were a necessary kludge when simple human brains had to measure distances on gameboards, and they were handier than measuring everything with a taperule and calculator when you just wanted your T-34 to drive "over the wall and around the house." But now we have multi-gigahertz procesors that can measure and recall the effect of every inch of terrain, let THEM do the calculus and tell me where and how far my tank went.
Same with contour hill levels. Level 1 hill, level 2 hill - what's that? Again, a kludge for human brains trying to work out line-of-sight on a 2d mapboard. We want gradual and chaotic terrain, with true LOS calculus based on everything from viewer's height, intervening foliage levels, and the atmospheric and temperature conditions to the technical quality of the viewer's optics.
That's a pretty comprehensive list, but we're not nearly done. We've thought hard about it, and decided we don't like turns at all. They're patently artificial, and the game rules that have to be put in place to keep people from 'gaming' them are a Pyrrhic cure at best - zones of control, opportunity fire - hell, the exceptions become more complicated than the rules themselves. But what's the alternative? Real-time is attractive; it's an enticing idea that nothing stops, ever. Real combat doesn't happen sequentially, does it? Of course not. It's a great idea, until you see it implemented. Command and Conquer is NOT a wargame. Units running willy-nilly all over the board, the player trying desperately to chase them down and click on them with a mouse to issue some ultra-brief command because that other unit over there is being overrun and we've got to click on it because that other unit over there needs to rally...and so forth. The pleasure of wargaming is visceral, certainly, but it's also cerebral.
It's no accident that Go, Chess, and other ancient wargames are widely held to be the pinnacle of 'thinking' games. Wargaming is about out-thinking and out-planning your opponent; the clickfest of realtime is hardly conducive to more than a cursory strategy. Personally, I want the situation and the cleverness of that S.O.B. on the other side of the table (even if it's the AI) to make me sweat, not the frantic exertions trying to pin a panicked pioneer platoon with my cursor.
Whups, almost forgot: we MUST have Fog of War. The 1000-foot general is dead! If our units can't see it, we don't want to see it on the screen. We want our decisions to be based on what we'd know in real life. Sure, I might hear tank sounds, so I'd know there is armor in the town. But I better not know what until someone sees it. And...let's go for broke, make the identification reports not be 100%. Green units thought every tank was a Tiger, so we should have to sort through and qualify the value of various reports just like real commanders would. Command control would be in there of course, since it's natural that experienced, well-led units would act on orders quicker and more reliably than green militia.
We're going to put in on the Eastern Front, the WW2 tactical wargamer's native habitat. :) We're also going to put in the now-rare "BIG FAT MANUAL", well-written with tons of examples and useful information. (Besides, every wargamer measures value by weight - if you're dropping $50 for a board game, it better weigh at least 5 lbs!)
Of course, the best part about the really good wargames is that you can play them forever. Give us a huge number of scenarios, at least a dozen linked campaigns (all carefully balanced of course) but don't skimp on the editor. It should be full featured, SUPPORTED, allow you to customize everything in the game, and be a breeze to use. Sometimes, of course, we're just too lazy to use the editor so throw in a random battle generator that makes sensible, decent, playable scenarios and implement an AI that can cope to a reasonable degree with anything.
Of course, even wish-list quality AI's are beatable: there are just too many methods to human cunning for a computer to cope with them all. So it's de rigeur that our game have a robust multiplayer capability. TCP/IP is a necessity of course for playing stable games on the net, but hey! How about timer that you can implement to fix the maximum limit on the order phase for the pokey-turtle you're playing against? That will keep even long games moving. Hotseat is good, wargaming is a social thing in its unique way. Finally, it must support PBEM sinc that's just perfect for the game addict that wants to have 15 games running simultaneously with opponents from all over the globe.
Our page is nearly full but for one final thing...let's make it LOOK GOOD. Oh, yeah I know: it's the gameplay not the graphics, you stupid reviewer! We've all used that mantra, but this is a WISH list. We were all weaned on counters, but you have to admit that there's not much more beautiful than a well-crafted miniatures battle, with puffs of grey cotton smoke and beautifully-painted minifigs. We're going to make it like that, and can go even one better: we want all of our units to have some lifelike dynamic, that little extra arm or head movement that suggests living, breathing soldiers, lifelike flames, startling explosions. Every conceivable vehicle, unit, and weapon should be available for play. While we're prettifying it, we're going to have totally 3d sound with authentic weapon, vehicle, and voice sounds (all in their native languages, of course!).
[SARCASM] Well that's not much of a list, is it? [/SARCASM]
We simply want it all: a hardcore, reality-based, deep wargame with meticulous research, extensive vehicle and unit lists AND we want it to be beautiful. We want it to be a pleasure to look at and listen to. And it should be so simple to play, a newbie can use real-world tactics and achieve appropriate (but always realistic) success without massive tutorials or long learning curves.
So we have a sheet of paper filled with what we want in 'the perfect wargame'. It's also a list of most of the design features of Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord. Released in 2000 to widespread acclaim, this genre-defining title quickly became the darling of the wargaming set. But it was the first effort, and while subsequent patches and the thousands of mods around the web enhanced the game considerably it did have a few threadbare patches remaining. It was almost there, but not quite. Battlefront.com wasn't finished, either.
First, Battlefront paid very close attention to their legions of fans. Second, they made the decision early on to make the next version not simply a clone of the first on a different front (as so many companies have chosen to do). No, they made the commitment to aggressively and comprehensively take apart every function, every aspect of CMBO to see what can be made better.
It uses the same innovative we-go system, where each side issues orders and then the execution of those orders is simultaneous and real-time. Veterans of the series will recognize a huge improvement over CMBO however - the order system is much more flexible and the helper AI is top-notch. In CMBO, you could really only give a unit orders to move and fire. If you wanted to try something complicated like having a TD pop from hiding, shoot at enemies, and retire behind cover you had to rather artificially delay the vehicle (hoping you didn't dawdle too much & miss the end of the turn), move out. Then the next turn, you would give it orders to pull back to cover. All gone in CMBB: all of this hassle is now subsumed into the single neat shoot'n'scoot order.
Orders allowing the units their own initiative could be a disaster if the helper AI didn't have them behave logically during the execution of those orders - what do they do when they are ambushed, for example? Here again, CMBB is a significant improvement from CMBO. From a better fatigue model to more realistic behavior under fire, you can now trust your troops to carry out your commands to the best of their reasonable abilities (which may range from outstanding to dismal, of course).
Seriously, it would take the better part of CMBB's monstrous 250+ page manual (Yes, Virginia, some companies still give you great big manuals!) to list all the enhancements, improvements, and downright neat features added since CMBO. While reading, you'll frequently hit something - reread it - and think to yourself "yeah, that's EXACTLY how I would have done it..!" You will say precisely the same thing in the game as you play through and notice all the 'finishing touches' that show that CMBB is not just a game, but clearly a labor of love.
That list we wrote out? Everything is in here (plus a lot more).
Simply said, Battlefront did it: CMBO was good, CMBB is a classic. Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin is the very best WW2 tactical simulation, sans pareil. I could ramble on forever about the game, but then I'd be doing you a disservice. Every minute I keep you reading here is one you could have spent much more wisely (and fun!) playing CMBB. What are you waiting for?
A *very* short list of some CMBB websites to get you started:
The Combat Mission Big Oracle: a collection of the best forum posts from the Battlefront.com forums. (Note these are from CMBO, the original game in the series and are thus slightly outdated. However, they are still full of great information and rather entertaining general reading as well.
http://www.combatmission.com/
Combat Mission HQ: Everything you could possibly want for CMBB, plus a lot more. Includes links to CMMOS (currently ver 4.02) a mod-management tool that's critical for the regular mod-user.
http://www.cmmods.com/
Combat Mission Modifications Database: a no-nonsense site with TONS of mods for CMBB.
Note that some mods can be tremendously large due to the addition of tons of new textures and graphics. My mod directory including whitewashed winter vehicle sets, and a few miscellaneous other mods runs over 300 megs while zipped!
If you like to comment on this review, please post a message at the forum.
Reviewed by Steve Lieb.
