Episode 293: Close Combat

[Rob Zacny]

The Winter of Wargaming continues with Rob, Bruce, and Troy "We Need More Canadians" Goodfellow talking about the Close Combat series. The series saw a refresh in 2014's Gateway to Caen - was it enough of an update or has the series gone stale?

 

Listen here.

[Gaizokubanou]

Description of the gameplay sounds like an instant buy but description of the UI problems sounds like never buy...

 

I just can't deal with bad UI anymore these days.

[ExitDose]

I picked up Last Stand Arnhem during the recent Matrix sale; my first experience with Close Combat. I had a real bad experience with it. The interface was just so awkward and unintuitive relative to modern designs. Close Combat seems like one of those games that you should pick up if you're feeling nostalgic. I'll probably give it another shot in the future, but I haven't bounced off a game like that in a long time and it gave me a lot of reasons not to go back. 

[Salacious Snake]

I do have some nostalgia for the series, but I'm holding out for The Bloody First, which will have a new engine. The first game sure was cool for the time.

[chanman]

I think one of the big changes from A Bridge Too Far to Eastern Front was the move from having limits on force composition (a certain number of slots divided between infantry and support slots) to Eastern Front's no-limit unit slots allowing the player to replace all infantry with tanks (and on some of those steppes maps, that was probably advisable).

 

Tank machine guns also became much more potent against infantry in the sequel. In the first two games, it would still take some time for a tank to completely destroy a squad caught in the open, while in CC3, it seemed to happen too fast to attempt dropping smoke to extract the squad in trouble.

 

Also, I was hoping for more of a discussion on the very first game which didn't even let the player choose their forces, instead streaming seemingly random reinforcements to the player after every day of fighting.

[dauntless_dad]

I owned both A Bridge Too Far and The Russian Front. Neither one "clicked" with me. Then I bought Combat Mission and never looked back. I find it hard to get excited about the modernized versions today, although I have looked into them.

[chanman]

Hey*!

 

I'm curious from you Close Combat vets if you think that someone who hasn't played anything like this would be able to pick it up easily? Like my closest game I've played to this is probably like I dunno - ultimate general gettysburg or company of heroes - or pike and shot maybe? 

 

Basically I'm curious if this is the kinda game you can just pick up from scratch, or is it really hostile to those not initiated?

I think it's pretty easy, but I haven't played any past the 3rd. You can control the speed and issue orders while paused, which takes a lot of the sting out of it and the tutorials were pretty good.