Our increasing coverage of the increasinly interesting world of electronic historical wargaming increases apace. Keith Zabalaoui, the energetic and talented (if slightly eccentric) President of Atomic Games has shown that he possesses the one skill essential to any successful wargame designer: the survival instincts of a desert hare. Starting with his first publisher, 360 Pacific, he has managed to be first into the lifeboats and away from all his previous employers, through Avalon Hill to the merry world of Bill Gates' Microsoft. The initial result is Close Combat, a tactical WWII game that uses 39 D-Day scenarios on 6 maps to simulate company-level fighting, with individual men and tanks. The first thing you thus notice is that this is not computerized ASL, as had been rumored. The second thing you notice is how tiny all the details are on the (typically for Atomic) graphically beautiful and well-presented playing screen. The map really does give you the feeling of staring down from a low-flying helicopter … well, perhaps not so low. Because of the close tactical scale the invisible hexes (or whatever equivalent the game uses) had to be shrunk quite small to display a workable bit of terra firma. Even as it is, the map distance from one edge of the monitor to the other is less than rifle range, and all the scenarios require a lot of scrolling to manage your forces. Unfortunately, despite the Win95 version taking advantage of the "Direct-X" interface (designed to speed up graphically intensive games by giving them direct access to the video hardware) Close Combat scrolls slowly and jerkily. The limited display area of a computer monitor is the single greatest shortcoming of computer games, and tactical games with ranged units are the ones that suffer the most from this; Close Combat is a good example. The game's unit icons are shrunken little things, too. Tanks and other vehicles can still be easily distinguished, but infantry squads and teams are shown as a cluster of very tiny little wriggling individuals. The green Americans are almost invisible against outdoor terrain, and the feldgrau Germans are almost invisible in buildings. Yes, you can zoom in, but this just produces a hazily pixelated enlargement of the standard view. Now, if you've seen any of the advertisements for Close Combat, you know that the center-piece of its design is that your units react in "real-time" to a detailed psychological reality of their own as well as to the gamer's commands. Once unit deployment is finished and you click the Start button, it all runs continuously with no pauses or discreet game turns. CC's definition of "real-time" is pretty hard core too; the action can be stopped for a quick trip to the bathroom, but there is no way to review the map or give orders while paused. You do your work on the fly or not at all. Combine this with tiny, almost invisible units, and slow, jerky map scrolling, and your first couple of scenarios are guaranteed to be exercises in frustration. The little tanks belch exhaust smoke as they move, and the tiny infantrymen are fully animated – a dazzling effect. But, as you maneuver one group of units, the vivid sound effects of rifle fire, screams, and a plaintive voice calling "move-out" let you know that you're missing something vital elsewhere. The controls are necessarily simple: you mouse-click on a unit to select it and then use a key command or pop-up menu to issue one of just five orders (Move, Move Fast, Fire, Smoke, or Defend). A second click sets the target of the action. Despite this you're soon frantically scrolling about, clicking at seeming random, eyes glazing over as you try to pick out your forces, many of which seem determined to launch suicide attacks on their own initiative. Keith Zabalaoui has vigorously defended the choice of a "real-time" system. But, I seriously doubt that "real-time" contributes to the actual realism of historical simulations. First off, Close Combat does not actually run in real-time. All its scenarios can be completed in a couple of hours or less. In reality, a serious infantry assault took most of a day. Company-sized skirmishes, like those in Close Combat, are still subject to major pauses that would be quite boring (and time-consuming) to simulate accurately. I believe, therefore, that even the Slow setting on Close Combat's Option menu compresses the action considerably, making your job actually more difficult than that of a real-life commander. As it is, the game's execution is as flawed as its concept. If real-time gives you less time than a real military commander has to make decisions, the game also gives you considerably less help than the real military chain of command provides. In Close Combat every squad, team and vehicle exists in splendid isolation; you must give orders to each one of them individually (forty or more units in the larger scenarios). A scrolling list beneath the map lets you select units with a click, or center the map on them with a double-click, but, as it also shows no platoon or other organization, it is just as frustrating to find a unit there as it is scrolling about the map. Micro-management, typical as it is of wargames, is out of place in a turn based game; it is a nightmare here. Even worse, Close Combat actually tracks the name, ammo supply, wound status, morale, and activity of every single man on the board. Since it is the state of these individuals that determines the unit's response to your orders, you have to pay attention to this. Insane! Not fun when the clock is continuously running and not a good simulation of what a company commander does, either. And the decision to simulate a single battlefield in such extreme detail also limits the scope of the game. Not only do you get only six maps, these all portray completely flat bits of bocage. There are no elevations on any of them to lend variety. Once you've worked out an approach to tackling hedgerows and stone houses, the game becomes very repetitive. Ironically for the many who regard Microsoft as the Evil Empire, Gates' crew are responsible for much of what is good about the game: the excellent on-line help, the grammatical and typo-free (if also pedantic and repetitive) manual, and the bug-free port to Win95). Despite its considerable resource requirements the game is, in fact, a very good software citizen on both the Win95 and Mac platforms. Unfortunately, Microsoft has stuck with the current practice of the game market in one respect, by not including any useful player's notes in the manual. Instead the back cover includes advertising for not one but two player's guides! Keith (Poulter, if not Zabalaoui) would be proud. I would hate to leave the impression that the game is an utter dud. Atomic is a successful, high-powered design-house, and too much talent and effort was devoted to this game's creation for it not to have its moments. There were times, when I happened to scroll to the right spot at the right time, that the sight of all those little wriggling men and smoke-belching tanks maneuvering under my command really did induce a feeling of excitement … impossible to create in a turn-based game with static icons for units. Those moments were too few for me, however, and I confess that I have since used the Win95 Uninstall Command on Close Combat. Most Keyboard Kreigspeilers will prefer SSI's phenomenally successful Steel Panthers, a turn-based, squad-level game that doesn't require you to track every soldier on the map. Those who fear Bill G's rake-in-every-shekel approach to marketing should take heart, however; the Microsoft name has not kept Close Combat out of the bargain bin. Lack-luster sales already have it marked down considerably from its original price. The early intelligence on their upcoming game releases isn't encouraging either. Of course, complacency is never a good attitude whenever the persistent Bill Gates is involved, and wise game publishers would treat this first wave of releases as Microsoft's wake-up call. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #24 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1996 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com