CMFI, Wargame of the Year 2012 at Eurogamer

[umlaut]

The danish gaming site, eurogamer.dk, has chosen CMFI as Wargame of the Year 2012.

To spare you from the horrors of Google Translate, I´ve taken the liberty of translating the words (it´s far from perfect but definitely better than Google).

The first article is the announcement of "Game of the Year" from december 25th 2012, the second part is the full review that was published on august 28th 2012.

http://www.eurogamer.dk/articles/2012-12-25-aarets-spil-krigsspil

Games of the Year: Wargame

There is no other game on the market today that is better at simulating a battlefield than Combat Mission: Fortress Italy. Every relevant factor is being taken into account when a game of CM is starting, and Battlefront, the makers of CM, doesn´t take any shortcuts in making the game.

Details of the armor thickness of the tanks, the artillery´s armament, muzzle velocity and the characteristics of the shells are all part of the game. The individual soldiers are treated with equal thoroughness. Every man´s psychological condition is being carefully monitored and if he is subjected to an artillery barrage or sees his comrades being shot then the game takes this into account.

The battlefield is chaotic and it is a man´s job to keeping track of it all. But the satisfaction of accomplishing a difficult task without losing (too many) troops is incomparable. Even though the game with modern eyes looks a bit dated graphically, don´t be fooled: Combat Mission is the peak of wargaming at the moment.

But "noblesse oblige", and time will show if Battlefront will manage to stay in front the coming years. So far the game has evolved in a very technical direction, in the sense that the developers have focused on refining and perfecting the qualities that the game already posseses. We hope to see more genuine innovation in the years to come.

There are competitors on the field and ukrainian Achtung Panzer from 2011 is very close to rival Combat Mission´s unsurpassed simulation.

Combat Mission is also available in a light version for iPad.

http://www.eurogamer.dk/articles/2012-08-28-combat-mission-fortress-italy-anmeldelse

Combat Mission: Fortress Italy - Review

The king of tactical wargames, Battlefront, has delivered a stand alone expansion for Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy that was released last year and became Strategy Game of the Year at Eurogamer.

The new game is called Combat Mission: Fortress Italy (CMFI) and portrays, as the name more than implies, the battles in Italy between the americans and the axis powers. Apart from new units, fitting sicilian houses and trees, the new module promises improvements in the shape of some long awaited graphics love.

The germans get new Luftwaffe units, amongst other the notorious Hermann Göring Division, the americans get the Rangers. But real star of the game is the italian army. The italians of course were, to be honest, an unintentionally comical element in WWII from time to time. They surrendered often without even being shot at, and their equipment and uniforms have since been the source of a certain amount of amusement amongst fans of military history. Especially the green feather in the baret of the Bersaglieri forces (that I believe they still wear today) seems a tad anachronistic, but that is all part of the charm of leading Mussolinis finest into battle.

In CMFI you can explore the cause of why things went so wrong for them and I´m not revealing too much by saying that it is all about organisation and equipment. After a couple of turns in the mud against the americans one understands with brilliant clarity why the italian soldiers weren´t compelled to embark on great heroic deeds: Their equipment in CMFI is exactly as bad as we´ve read in the history books, and they suffer from a disastrous lack of NCOs and officers in their units. There is a lack of machine guns and automatic weapons of every kind and their platoon of 30+ soldiers has only one single officer to control them - and no NCOs on squad level. This may sound traumatic, but it is actually tremendously amusing to lead the italians, and in order to win using them you have got to have a firm grip on your tactics. That Combat Mission as a historical laboratory in this way spendidly illustrates these points is symptom of the game´s amazingly thorough simulation.

If you disregard the new equipment, the new building types, improved terrain representation (slopes and mountain sides now work) CMFI is almost identical to CMBN in every aspect. There are optimizations many places, most are invisible but important - for instance this reviewer has got a feeling that machine guns have recieved an overhaul.

But the great, new feature that has been trumpeted in connection with the launch are the graphical updates and those are unfortunately a mediocre affair. Albeit optimizations have been made moving around the map still feels slow and albeit shaders have been introduced - that is objects casting shadows on other objects - the terrain in Combat Mission is still - for lack of a better word - undramatic. That is a pity. Well, hardcore wargamers can survive on 16 bit ZX Spektrum graphics they say. But statistcs show that it is the sexy screenshots that´ll make the bank notes leave the wallet.

Another new feature is bumpmapping, and that helps make the ground a bit more realistic. You can see that the graphics have been improved, but here we wish that Battlefront would increase the speed in this field.

There are features we wish to see introduced in the series. If you play real time - and I always do, even though it took a long time to convince me (one of the things I didn´t know I liked, but Battlefront convinced me about), then the game still give the player too little feedback about what is happening around the map. The consequence is that when you play big scenarios there is no other option than play turn based, one minute at a time. Otherwise you are going to miss too much and the scenarios will end up being confusing, disorganized brawls.

This interface itself that normally has worked fine for me has suddenly become irritating. The reason probably is that the keyboard short cuts only work if you have pressed F6 and have switched to the correct tab. This sentence won´t make much sense, unless you have the game yourself. But trust me, the extra key stroke quickly becomes a showstopper (correction: it sometimes works like this and sometimes in the old way).

In the minor complaints department I will mention the lack of a overview of the forces at your disposal on the map. But that is one of those things that one could imagine would become a part of an overall "feedback" improvement. Multiplayer is the same as always. Head to head play or PBEM. We keep our fingers crossed for the eventual introduction of coop play against the computer.

War is drama of the highest caliber and that is why generations of young men (and a few girls) are drawn towards wargames year after year. And I am not ony talking about Call of Duty, but also the more "dry" types of wargames: The tactically, realistically and historically correct ones. Like for instance Combat Mission which for the twelfth year running holds on to the throne as the king of tactical wargames. But the throne is faltering.

The drama of war is quietly on it´s way out the backdoor of Battlefront´s perfect laboratory. The new graphical updates that is part of the justification for the not insignificant price tag of 50 dollars is not very impressive and compared to the competition (Achtung Panzer) they seem like archaeic afterthoughts.

In Combat Mission there is a lack of tanks exploding (there are no visible signs of damage etc), track prints in the mud, dirty vehicles (why do all tanks look like they have just rolled out of the factory?) and dramatic lighting.

Noblesse oblige. Battlefront is the leader in the field and we look forward to seeing them take war gaming to the next level, as they did 12 years ago with the original Combat Mission. What it takes right now I can´t say, because the game is unsurpassed, but I believe that this is one those things you will know when you see it.

Battlefront has the confidence and the experience to give the customers what they didn´t realize they needed. We can´t wait.

8/10 (score)

[thejetset]

Thanks Umlaut ... btw ... email me when you are ready to do some PBEM!

Like the article said, I'm really excited to see what BF does graphics wise in the 3.0 engine! That's one of the reasons I have no problem shelling out some cash for all the new Modules and Upgrades ... I hope they invest it into some kick-ass graphics guys.

Just the player-uploaded, jaw-dropping, videos on Youtube would get them a pretty quick return on their investment! New people would try and buy the game that would not have previously. (IMO)

[umlaut]

You´re welcome. I´ll PM you soon

[Erwin]

Wow. Congrats to you guys!

[MikeyD]

I rather liked the edited AAR video (which was in English) in the article, would give a newbie a good ideal about the feel of the game. And didn't fixate on complaints like some do.