Close Combat

I was kind of bored with all of my computer games a few weeks back, so to find something new I started digging around Wikipedia. Wikipedia is great for this by the way, just type in a genre or what have you and you'll be swimming in games. So because I'm on a tactical game fixation I'm rooting around that section, and eventually end up in tactical board games. Which didn't really bother me in the slightest, obviously you can't pirate a board game (well, you might be able to, but it'd way more bother than it's worth) but if I see something I might like, I can go to my gaming store back home and they'll probably have it.

So anyway I'm on the wiki for Avalon Hill's advanced squad leader (a board game) and I see a tiny little link at the bottom for a computer game series called close combat. According to the two sentence blurb. it's based on this world war 2 themed board game. Naturally interested, I click, dig around for about a half hour, and then go to pirate bay and download all six games.

The game's wiki had mentioned that the graphics are dated, but it also said that it got great reviews for gameplay. The links at the bottom of the page confirmed that, along with a bit of independent research on my part. So when the downloading finished I fired up Daemon tools, installed it, and tried to play, thinking that'd I'd be able to jump in and have some good ol' tactical fun.

Man, was that a mistake. After playing for about five minutes and having no idea what the hell was going on I stopped the game, went back to the main menu and tried the tutorials. Which, as it turns out, are about as helpful as stepping in dog shit. So losing faith and heart I went on the game's forums and read around the newbie section. And there was this thread that had some weird title like read here before posting. So I clicked, and the very first post said something like, before asking questions, go and read your manuals! Good advice.

Seeing as I had pirated versions of the game, I naturally didn't think of this course of action. But like pretty much every other game this century, it included the manuals in .pdf form. So I read the manuals, which were really helpful as it turned out. So I fired up the game again, started the very first historical battle (the close combat version of a one map quick game) and proceeded to get my ass handed to me by the computer. Which was disappointing to say the least, but I read on the forums some more, went over the tactical help sections of the manual, and in the course of this found out a pretty important fact. If you treat your little digital people like real people, and actually use real world tactics, you'll still probably lose to the sometimes brutal AI, but you might not look like a total assmuncher.

Which brings me to an interesting point about the close combat series of games. They try and simulate real life psychological responses to combat stimuli. Which in essence means that you have to treat your dudes like real people. Unlike most RTS games, these guys wont charge a firing machine gun, or stand like numb skulls in the open while receiving heavy fire. They wont take initiative usually, but if they're getting pounded and they don't have any other orders, they'll try and change the situation sor they're not getting shot at. It's incredibly frustrating at first, because its so different from pretty much any other tactical game. But after a while you get used to it, and it makes it much more fun. You get really interesting responses too, green troops surrendering under fire, that one guy going completely apeshit and saving your ass. And in the campaign mode, where you can carry units over from mission to mission, you actually get attached to your little dudes. It's a strange feeling to be reluctant to send digital soldiers into withering machine gun fire, cause in pretty much all other games, it's taken for granted that that's what you're going to do.

What really makes the close combat games interesting though, is just the interesting stuff that happens on the battlefield. when you throw in that psychological element, it basically makes you have no fucking idea what exactly is going to happen. For example, if you take the premier world war two RTS currently, company of heroes, you can tell right off the bat what's going to happen when some infantry get surprised by a tank, namely, they're going to get trounced. Just the way it works. And that applies to pretty much every other conflict in the game, it's a very paper rock scissors kind of gameplay. Which isn't a bad thing by a longshot, I enjoy company of heroes very much, but it's not the same as close combat.

What happens in close combat depends on a number of elements, but assuming the tank just kind of appears right next to the infantry, it'll probably open up with its machine gun and turn them into hamburger, but only probably. The infantry could swarm all over the tank, drop molotov cocktails on it, and turn it into so much rubble. Or they could be scared shitless and simply run away, you never know quite what's going to happen. And that's what keeps you on the edge of your seat in these games, cause sometimes its all on the line, and you hope you gave the right orders, but it's really up to those little digital people.

For example I was playing through an operation, which is a series of linked maps where your troops carry over from mission to mission. It's a lot of fun, but anyway, I was playing as the Germans against the Russians and I was trying to take this bridge. So I had my troops hustling over it to cover on the other side and out of fucking no where this group of Russian infantry opened up on my bottlenecked guys. I any other video game they would have soldiered on taking a nasty amount of casualties, but they did what you or I or anyone would have done, they stopped dead in their tracks and hightailed back across the bridge to cover. In the next couple of minutes I called in a mortar on the enemy infantry and got my dudes across the bridge, but that was the first time I really realized I couldn't treat these guys like so much cannon fodder.

The next moment was even better in my opinion, It was a snowy map and there was this series of Russian entrenchments up on a hill. The hill had this commanding field of fire and it was surrounded by a ton of open ground, which basically meant that if my guys went near it they were gonna get nailed hardcore, but I couldn't exactly ignore it either because if I wanted to win this map, I needed to take that hill. So I positioned some infantry and a few machine guns at the bottom of the hill in some trashed buildings in my placement phase, and sure enough, machine gun and anti-tank fire comes pouring off the hill as soon as the game started. Now there really wasn't a whole lot of room for maneuver, so if I wanted to get at these guys I had to come straight at them, which was a really bad idea. So I did what any reasonable person would have done, blasted the crap out of the top of the hill with mortar fire, and dropped smoke shells right in front of the position, which gave me a fair amount of concealment. and then I rushed the hill. It was a tough fight even then, but the tension and the feeling of that moment was great. Despite the so-so graphics I felt like I could see exactly what was happening. My troops cowering in the rubble under heavy fire, the arcing mortar shells first blasting the enemy position then providing needed smoke and concealment. And then the pell-mell rush up the hill, breath frosting in the cold Russian air, carrying that super heavy equipment. Then through the smoke and right into the trenches of the suppressed enemy. The best part about that is that that moment really wasn't unique, I've had other like that since, but it just really drove home the feel of the game.

The last moment was the one that made me realize that I was going to play this game for a good long while. I had some tanks and infantry advancing through some trees towards this line of entrenchments (it was very world war one-esque map) and on my right flank this emplaced and unmovable Russian AA gun began blasting my troops with enfilade fire. Which sent most of those forward units running for the rear with a lot of casualties. So I call in some mortar fire on it and swing a few tanks around to get a good shot, but nothing is really working, it keeps on murdering my infantry and it takes out a tank to boot, which is seriously not cool, those things are expensive. So finally one of my panzers lines up this beaut of a shot, the gun is pointing 90 degrees away from it, and my tank shoots... and fucking misses. So now that nasty AA gun is swinging around and once it does, bye bye tank, which I really can't afford at this point, I still have a whole freaking line of entrenchments to break through. I'm frantically trying anything to distract it, I try calling in some mortars, but they're reloading, my infantry is cowered and I can barely get these guys moving in the right direction, let alone providing some suppressing fire. My other vehicles are obscured by the trees, which while that means the AA gun can't shoot them, they can't shoot at it either. So it's all on this tank, they're reloading their main gun and that damn AA just keeps swinging around closer and closer. Finally the AA gun lines up its shoot and boom! My tank blasts it to hell and back. It was great moment, I practically leaped up in the air. It turned out to be the turning point too, the Russians fled the map a few minutes after the AA gun got destroyed. But that is what makes this game series great, you never know what's going to happen, plus it has great realistic tactical combat. If you're interested in that kind of thing at all, and you can get past the fairly old school learning curve, you'll have a lot of fun. what more can you ask from a game?

The New Year and HBO

A happy Hew Year to everybody, I hope you all enjoyed it and got royally plastered or something. Mine was fairly tame, but I did go drinking and smoking and partying and such. So I would consider it a good time, but not the blow out, end all, beat all party that New Year's is cracked up to be.

In any event, I hope everybody had a good time.

HBO

I've been borrowing Chuck's DVDs of The Sopranos for a while now, and I have to say that I really enjoy that show, its really good and all that. Despite the favorable feeling that the sopranos gives me though, I've always been slightly reluctant to watch any other of the HBO dramas. Nothing drew me to them so to speak.

Man have I had a change of opinion.

I've been watching Rome and Deadwood the past couple of days, and quite simply, I'm blown away. Rome is great, that perfect mixture of historical epic and personal human stories. I likes it a lot.

Deadwood is what has really grabbed my eye though. Just so you get a picture of how awesome it is, Imagine the best western you've ever watched. Now make make it more awesome by a factor of five, throw in really talented actors and acting, great writing, a setting that will your jaw drop in its attention to detail, and make it 36 hours long.

I love Deadwood.

I haven't finished the first season yet, and I'm thinking about posting some sort of post mortem when I do. Just to codify all the thoughts and feelings I have towards the show, but what I'll probably do is either start watching the season over again, or go and try to nab the second season from Chuck.

Incidentally, I have over a hundred pages views on this blog thingie. I have to wonder, who are you people, and what interests you here? Isn't there TV and video games to be watched and played?

Readers... I'll never understand 'em.

Later everybody, all 101 of you.