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New York Times Review

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LuckyShot Member

LuckyShot

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Here is the online version of the article - I imagine it is just the same as the print version:

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October 5, 2000

GAME THEORY

Playing War, but With a New Set of Rules

By PETER OLAFSON

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STARTED looking forward to computer war games the day my mother conquered Russia with a car door. And with the release of Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, I've started looking forward to them all over again.

This singular war game, from a small New England publisher, blends the meticulous planning treasured by war-game enthusiasts with a 3-D perspective to reproduce the mystery and terror of war. I can't seem to put it down.

War games and I have an intricate history. I fell in love with the open structure of tabletop games in the mid-1970's and played games like Avalon Hills Afrika Korps and Conflict Games Overlord to distraction. The games I bought grew larger and larger in scope but they never seemed big enough to contain my ambition.

I went a bridge too far when I bought interlinking simulations of the Russo-German campaigns of 1941-45 from Game Designers Workshops. Drang Noch Osten (Drive to the East) and Unentschieden (Undecided) were so large they couldn't be set up in the house. For weeks on end, I retired to the Ping Pong table in the garage after dinner and squinted at the vast map and the small cardboard counters in the dim light.

That was just to set up the game. The war itself was never fought. Returning from the market one day, my mother swung the door of our Dodge Coronet station wagon too wide and succeeded where Charles XII, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler had failed. The table shook violently. Dozens of stacks of units toppled. Mother Russia fell without a shot being fired. I looked at the debacle in wordless bad humor, and started dreaming of games immune from the depredations of the real world.

Conventional computer war games have that immunity. Unfortunately, they usually don't offer any advantages over their real-world counterparts other than purely practical ones. The game calculates the combat odds. It allows you to see the map without moving the units and keeps track of the enemies you can and can't see. But even the best of these games are fun principally in the ways that the original games were fun, and they still fall prey to artificial constraints of their models.

In the mid- and late 1990's, a number of developers sought to bring a sense of accessibility and fun to this niche market, notably SSI with the Panzer General line and its offshoots, Atomic Games with its Close Combat series and Firaxis with its two Civil War games.

In Combat Mission, Big Time Software has achieved what these developers had and more. It has given us a turn-based game free of the unrealistic limitations that typically accompany turn-based games. And it has given us a 3-D game without the burdens of real-time combat, which can turn the player into a fireman racing from one errant unit to the next. In so doing, it offers the best of both worlds and effectively creates a fascinating new one with a whole new set of rules. War gaming may never be the same.

The game isn't vast in scope. Indeed, part of its appeal is its very manageability. Combat Mission consists of 41 small-unit engagements and seven multibattle operations set on the Western Front in 1944 and 1945. These scenarios, which can be played from either side, range in size from a 10-turn Allied assault on German positions in the Hurtgen Forest to a 75-turn battle royal in eastern France. You can also have the game whip together a random scenario by setting 22 variables yourself, or build one in detail.

When I saw the manual — an intimidating 166 pages — I hunkered down to follow a long learning curve. But the game is in fact remarkably intuitive, and I've used the book (which is written in appealingly plain language) only to sort out finer points of play. I sorted out most of the broad strokes by simply playing the game — something I've rarely been able to do in a war game.

It's simple enough. You highlight a unit or group of units with the mouse, click the right button and up pops a menu of choices. These depend on the specific unit and the state it is in, but they might range from Hunt to Hide to Button Up (which orders a tank to close its hatches) to Line of Sight (which allows you to determine what a unit can see). To direct a soldier to a new destination, you simply draw a line there. Once you've entered orders for the units, you click on the Go icon, the computer simultaneously implements your instructions and those of the game's artificial intelligence, and you watch the next 60 seconds of action unfold.

The result is, effectively, a battle with a pause button.

What you'll see is often thrilling. The action is fast and furious. Even the tutorial scenario, in which a lean German force is assigned to capture a vital intersection, gave me a good run for my money. My two Panzer IVG tanks got lucky. Approaching the crossroads, they cleared a rise and caught two Sherman tanks out of position, one obstructing the aim of the other. Concentrating their fire, they quickly took out the Allied units and the surviving crews abandoned the flaming hulks and retreated into the woods nearby.

I had the advantage. Now I had to use it. Commanding the center with the big guns of the Panzers, I brought forward my infantry, designating one small group to hold the crossroads while others advanced on the flanks. I wasn't really sure where the enemy was, but I quickly found out. A bitter battle erupted on the left flank as my riflemen and machine gunners ran headlong into American troops advancing through the woods. Troops on both sides dropped into prone positions as mortar rounds and grenades tore up the earth and smoke rounds enclosed the battlefield in a thick mist.

It didn't look good. My troops in the woods were clearly outnumbered. American antitank units appeared out the woods and immobilized the Panzers. It was anyone's battle until my infantry advancing on the right flank moved into position alongside the woods and caught the American troops in crossfire.

The computer commander knew it was licked. It began to pull back, and I finally allowed myself to breathe again. It's the first war game I can recall in which I've responded emotionally to a victory, and I know why. It felt as though I were there.

You can adjust the perspective to a position so high in the air that the terrain looks a bit like a war game map, and so close to the ground that you're right on the battlefield with the smoke, the screams, the tracers and flying dirt. This doesn't lend itself to control — you can't see the forest for the trees — but it's the only place to be when the shooting starts, because it shows off Combat Mission's marvelous eye for detail. If you're close enough, you can actually see the medals on the driver's uniform. When I finally won a battle after having my head handed to me a few times, I felt as though I'd planted the French flag atop the Eiffel Tower. And that beaming sense of pride is different from the rather clinical reaction I've had when I've been successful at other war games. This didn't feel like a game. It felt like a battle.

Now, car doors did bang Combat Mission in small ways along the way. My Newfoundland drooled a bit on the manual, as she drools on everything she touches. I misplaced, and then accidentally scratched, the game CD. But the game went on regardless — undisturbed, practical, but also deeply absorbing and intensely entertaining.

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Combat Mission, published by Battlefront.com; developed by Big Time Software; for Windows 95, 98 and 2000 and MacOS 7.5; $45 at www.battlefront.com; not rated.

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GriffinCheng+ Senior Member

GriffinCheng+

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NY Times wrote this!!! Incrediable! Wow, looking forward to hear news about running out of stock from BTS very soon.

Keep up the good work people.

Griffin.

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"+" is just the beginning. Expect to see "GriffinCheng76", "GriffinCheng(105)" or "GriffinChengA3E8" more should Forum problems occur again :(

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Guest Der Unbekannte Jäger

Guest Der Unbekannte Jäger

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Now if only I could buy some stock in BTS before the massive orders start flooding in...

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"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."

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Spacewrangler Member

Spacewrangler

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Its a shame the BBS didn't get any mention. Half of what makes this game so great is the community we have here.

Perhaps he didn't know about it? I would suggest, if traffic on battlefront.com increases dramatically (as I would guess it will) due to this article, that the BBS is highlighted better on the home page.

As of now, there is only one text link and a small graphic side-nav pointing to this vast fountain of knowledge and (generally) good will towards fellow CMers.

I would suggest a face lift in order to increase the chances of those who visit the home page to become aware of the most unique aspect of this game, the strong grass-roots, historically and tactically knowledgable community.

You're not going to find that anywhere else.

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Guest Big Time Software

Guest Big Time Software

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Thanks for the praise, and we welcome the Times to the CM Collective wink.gif

And LuckyShot, many thanks for posting the full text. Some of us weren't able to get a hold of a copy today for one reason or another.

Steve

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