Bash Microsoft? Who, us? Well, not this time; not with a game that was made on a Mac and then ported to the PC. Close Combat is a complex combat simulation set during the days of World War II following the Allied landing in Normandy. You can play as the Americans or the Germans (but not the British, French, Belgians, etc.). As the Americans, you must gain ground in the French hedgerows, ultimately ending up 20 miles inland at Saint-Lô. As the Germans, you must hold the line.
We recommend playing through the tutorial, which is very thorough and fun to boot. You’ll learn how to command your troops, and who can move, fire, and hide (among other things). WWII buffs will appreciate Close Combat’s realism. The sim follows the battle closely, using the exact weapons and correct firepower (which are also detailed in an AppleGuide help system that even includes QuickTime movies showing the actual weapons and tanks).
Close Combat adds several new features to standard war-sim fare. First of all, everything is in real-time, rather than turn-based, so it’s more like WarCraft in that respect than TacOps, And the animation is in real-time, too, so if you lob a smoke grenade, you’ll see the explosion, then watch the smoke dissipate. Unique to Close Combat is the ability to track the mental states of individual soldiers. These can range from panicked to berserk (and you'll need to take care to rally your panicked troops).
The downside to playing this game in real-time is sheer information overload — it is very confusing to receive status information from ALL of your units every time they are hit. There is absolutely way too much going on at one time and no way to offload tasks. You should be able to give a squad or team a battle plan and have them attempt to achieve it as the battle conditions warrant, but you can't. Despite the developers claims that Close Combat reproduces the realism of combat and the subtle psychological factors affecting the soldiers, the soldiers can't process more than one instruction at a time; so you can’t tell them to run up a road, hide behind a bush, and then shoot a target. You have to wait for the soldier to complete each task before giving him a new order.
Close Combat can be played on a network, and it's fairly easy to connect two machines. However, a two-player game requires two CDs. (It would be better if the game used the WarCraft or Marathon model that allows you to play against a friend with one CD.) You can’t customize the network battles at all and are forced to fight as Germans vs. Americans. (It would be interesting to see Germans working together or Americans vs. Americans.! You also can't select the number of units on each side. But networked games are cool nonetheless.
With a few tweaks. Close Combat could have been a awesome game. It really only lacks a way to macromanage your troops. If you're a WWII buff, or a war-sim fanatic, we wholeheartedly recommend Close Combat.
Tafel, Kathy. (November 1996). Close Combat. MacAddict. (pg. 80).
Atomic Games
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
351 / 
2014-04-14 / 
3f1a481c3a600dda61281ceb88490dcfefad5ea7 / 
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CloseCombat.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
