Close Combat

My biggest ludological disappointment of 2019? Close Combat: The Bloody First, without question. Slitherine's 3D take on Atomic's gripping top-down wargame series should have been irresistible, but a host of bugs and questionable design decisions left many of the pages in its copybook looking like Rorschach tests. Curious to see what difference a year of fairly regular patches has made, I reinstalled last Friday.

Tagged with The Flare Path, Close Combat, Close Combat: The Bloody First.

The development of Close Combat: The Bloody First has lasted for as long as the war it depicts, but four years after its original intended launch date, Matrix Games’ World War II RTS is due to storm the beaches soon. As well as being the first 3D game in the series, it’s the first that’s been built in publisher Slitherine’s Archon engine, but more interesting…

Tagged with feature, Matrix Games, preview, Slitherine, Close Combat, Close Combat: The Bloody First.

Gentlemen of England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here to read my IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Kuban war diary, participate in today's Close Combat competition, assist in the defoxing of this fiendish word puzzle, and pedantically point out that “Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war” is from a completely different play to “Gentleman of England now a-bed shall…

Tagged with Close Combat 5, IL-2 Sturmovik, IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Kuban, The Flare Path, Close Combat.

Three of the first four Close Combat games are now back in legal circulation thanks to GOG.com and current licence holders, Slitherine. For years I've been telling myself that prolonged exposure to Combat Mission and Graviteam Tactics would make a long-term relationship with Atomic's top-down tussle series – a series I loved dearly in the late Nineties – difficult today. I now realise I was…

Tagged with AAR, Close Combat 2, Close Combat 3, RPS Recommended, The Flare Path, Close Combat, Nantucket.

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.The Close Combat series turns twenty next month. Twenty! Doesn't time fly when you're waging turnless war on a top-down WW2 battlefield with alarmingly vulnerable Armoured Fighting Vehicles and teams of understandably reluctant infantrymen.

Tagged with atomic games, feature, Have You Played, Close Combat.

Close Combat was PC wargaming's Hirō Onoda. Years after his comrades emerged from the jungle with hands raised, the turn-spurning CC engine was still busy patrolling... scouting... soldiering. People like me would periodically point our bullhorns at the undergrowth and urge the old fool campaigner to "Jack it in!", or at the very least learn some new tactics. Usually he'd reply with wild rifle shots or deluded AI…

Tagged with Ironclads 2, The Flare Path, Totem Games, Close Combat.

It's been another horribly humdrum week here in Simulatia. Since we last shared a screen, early access IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad owners have acquired a handsome new cloud cleaver, a blistering Top Gear track legend has been added to Cornetto Hoarser, yet another ursine sim pitch has shambled onto Kickstarter, and the FBI has inspected an FSX install in the hope of finding clues…

Tagged with free games, PicaSim, Steve McClaire, The Flare Path, Close Combat, Close Combat: The Bloody First.