You may have surmised that I was a bit unhappy with computers and computer games when you read the last column, that is, if anyone does actually read it! Having received exactly zero emails or replies of any kind, I really wonder. Your silence is a deafening as someone once said in one of my numerous favorite movies. I love favorite movie lines. Maybe we should run a contest on obscure movie lines or other trivia type column references a la Dennis Miller who I enjoy but must admit he does lose me occasionally! Well, let's ramble onward to Infinity and Beyond! Odd how a 2 1/2 year old grandson who occupies 2 or 3 afternoons a week of my time affects your life and knowledge. Tomorrow we (read me) are setting up an American Civil War Lionel train ( I am assured by the local RR store that this is a collector's item, yeah, right ) to go with my thousands of ACW 25mm troops and equipment. A brilliant rationalization on my part, thank you? When last we met, I was thoroughly disgusted but my computer White Knight, Shawn McEvoy galloped to my rescue! My computer was misbehaving and I was ready to kill it. Luckily, my wife doesn't allow me to keep live ammunition in the house. Anyway, Shawn (coowner of DynaCom ) arrived with Windows Mellenium in hand, cleaned up my hard drive and installed Windows Millenium. He said this solves most problems and he was right!! Now everything is running well and I am a happy wargamer. CAVEAT EMPTOR Another of those Dennis Miller type references! My CPA said it messed up his office computer Big Time so if you are going to use Windows Me for a business be very Careful!! Enough of my problems, let's look at Close Combat 4, Battle of the Bulge. If you liked Close Combat 2, A Bridge Too Far, you will like this effort. I don't care for it too much but it's not my style in all fairness. It offers a wide variety of short battles ( 60 ) that are drawn from the Bulge. There are four campaigns, one of which is the Grand Campaign Wacht on Rhein. The other three are Bastogne ( the southern thrust ), the Northern Shoulder (SS Panzer Korps and Jochen Pieper's Kampfgruppe- infamous for the Malmedy Massacre), and The Center (St Vith etc). In addition there are 12 operations with about 5 or more battles apiece. All of these battles, operations or campaigns can be played from either side and are fun if you are into the Ardennes campaign which I love but I didn't care for the way this is set up. So, why don't I like it? The graphics are not as good as Close Combat 3, The Russian Front. I was VERY Disappointed! I think the designers did this deliberately to reflect the winter battle, fog, snow etc. and the standard 2D graphics are O.K. but not up to CC3. I can accept this as they are still pretty good although not up to the CC Trilogy we reviewed in the last issue. Two of those had no winter campaigns, but CC3 did have winter battles whose graphics are still much better than this game! Much to my consternation, the zoom out graphics which I desperately need for control of my units and to offset my poor scrolling skills are again worse than CC3. NO EXCUSE is acceptable for this! These game designers just CANNOT leave well enough alone. The zoom out units which look like the die cut counters on a board game, albeit better, are really important to me as this is a real time game and even with the optional blacken outline feature, the zoom out units are still not as good as CC3. What the H--- were you thinking of, you #@&*+ designers! Once again as in the Trilogy, you get 15 units which usually is three platoons of whatever. Thus, you really are an ad hoc company commander of three platoons of different composition. You might have one or two platoons of tanks, interspersed with one to three platoons of infantry and support weapons. I really think that this type of ad hoc unit formation at the platoon level was very rare on both sides but more common on a company to company level at least from what I have gleaned from my studies of WWII which are extensive! There is no choice of units such as we had in CC3 which really annoys me. I guess the designers want to prevent you from loading up on Tiger Is, Tiger IIs and Werfer halftracks which were deadly in CC3 or the American equivalents of the Russian SU152, SU122, ISII etc. That is what made the CC3 game fun for me as you could select and build up your forces if you husbanded points to become a really tough company or battalion. We ( the U.S.A.) did have the M26 (Pershing) tens of thousands of Shermans of different variants, the British version with a high velocity 17 pounder gun Sherman Firefly ( essentially the same as the German 88 but the British idiots refused to use it early in the war except as an antiaircraft gun ) etc. so all is not lost! In addition the game does not identify the armored units beyond the designation light, medium or heavy tank. The same with tank killers. I can tell from the picture or silhouette what some of them are but I think the lack of vehicle and weapon I.D., which CC3 had, SUCKS! I can easily recognize the German Panther which they call a medium tank, ditto the Mark IV but I can't tell for sure what the German tank killer is- StugIII-IV, PzJgIV? I can recognize the Sherman and it looks like the American Heavy tank is the M26 which was only available in very small numbers if at all in the Bulge battles. The light US tank appears to be the M24 Chaffee which had pretty much replaced the M3 Stuart variants by this time. The troops and leaders are all named and you can change them which personalizes the game very well and increases the enjoyment except when they get killed. There does not appear to be a reveal all enemy units option which also makes the game tough. Isn't it strange that the computer always seems to do better with the same units than you do when you switch sides? All of this does have the effect of evening out the sides and makes the game much harder for the player. That's fine if you are into losing and are not easily frustrated. You get ambushed a lot since you can't elect to- see all the enemy units which was a big help in CC3. All in all this is a decent quick game system if you don't mind its' shortcomings. Panzer General III Scorched Earth More good news, I managed to get Panzer General III Scorched Earth to work on my computer and it runs well on Windows Me. This game requires a 3-D Video card and is my favorite game since Panzer General II. If you like a strategic type game and the Eastern Front, this is the game for you! If you are into the Eastern Front and like a strategic type game with a force of 16-20 units that you can play in an hour or two then you must buy this game and a good 3-D video card if you don't have one. It's that good! I am currently playing this game avidly and really enjoying it. It is better than Panzer General III Assault. The design team actually made this a much better game but where do they go from here? This game system is too good to scrap. Starting the game can be a little confusing. You make your campaign game selections there are four, Guderian, Von Manstein, Zhukov and Konev ) and then it takes you to a map. You must click on the next battle and then the program tells you about that battle and you can then continue on to fight the battle you selected. The manual neglects to tell you this and I had trouble figuring it out. Not too bright, are we? I need to keep track of the scenario options with a cheat sheet hand written or I get confused. You may find this helpful. Some of the Soviet units I have had difficulty finding in my reference works but I did find the ZIS chassis to be authentic. Has anyone ever heard of the T43? This tough vehicle is a new one on me and I can't find it in any of my books on the Russian army or armor reference works. If you know anything about it, please email me at docwren@aol.com. detailed report on this great game next issue. Back to MWAN #110 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum 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