Close Combat IV: Battle of the Bulge

by Barry Brenesal
January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST

The fourth installment of Close Combat focuses on the Battle of the Bulge, Atomic Games picked up the series after Microsoft handed it off. But does it improve the series or merely lengthen it?

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Good generals put into practice the axiom about the best defense being a good offense. Lee gambled with his Northern Campaign; and so did the German military staff in 1944, when the Allies were closing in. The idea was to use blitzkrieg tactics on Antwerp, rush through the Allied defenses, and sue for a separate peace with England and the US. But the Oberkommando der Wermacht underestimated logistical problems and supply shortages, while ignoring the strength of Allied supply lines. In CC IV: Battle of the Bulge, you get to replay the campaign or portions of it from either side.

Bulge is a hybrid turn-based/realtime war game. You choose the starting locales for groups of battle units on a strategic map. Given varying terrain, roads, and covering buildings and trees, your choices have a major impact on the battle that follows. And follow it does, in realtime, all units acting at once, sending you verbal information and taking instructions at a clip which could easily daunt a player new to the series. There's no speed control, unlike Sid Meier's Antietam; however, Bulge includes a series of short in-game tutorials which cover some of the basics before you drop into the frenzy.

Unlike previous CC games (and many wargames), you don't "buy" military units for your combat groups in Bulge. Instead, you automatically receive reserves that fill vacant positions at appropriate times. This is certainly more realistic, though it also removes some of the what-if replayability value of purchasing different units at the start of specific scenarios.

Like SMA, again, Bulge includes an effective fatigue/stress factor, which prevents suicide missions, and governs when your units will disregard commands and either rout or dig in. Quite rightly, Atomic Games realizes that one of the greatest thrills an armchair commander can face is the need to master, not only the terrain and your enemy, but the psychological requirements of your men under fire.

Bulge offers a wide range of historical units, including flamethrowers, tanks, anti-tank guns, snipers, mortars, and scouts. Bulge's graphics are sub-par, however. We're used these days to wargames that offer a degree of visual tension via isometric battlefields: 3D houses that are occupied by enemy troops, shadows of planes passing overhead, tanks warily circled from within covering brush. Bulge offers none of this. Granted that explosions look decent and the communications of troops sound authentic (you have an option for German units to report in German or English), the top-down perspective still vitiates atmosphere.

The AI gives further cause for concern. It's nowhere near as bad as the AI in CC III, so that enemy tanks no longer rush eagerly into infantry ambushes. However, tank pathfinding seems quixotic at best-I've watched tanks literally walk around the edges of a thickly forested map, ignoring several convenient shortcuts and missing the battle completely unless you micro-managed them.

Bulge's multiplayer options include support for serial, modem, internet TCP/UDP and MSN Gaming Zone connections.

A mixed rating, then, for Close Combat IV: Battle of the Bulge. It has more visceral thrills than most wargames, good balance, an effective interface and a dose of realism, but these virtues are compromised by poor movement AI and inadequate graphics.