Close Combat Trilogy
by Microsoft

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Category: Video Games
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Product Summary

• PC Gamer (1-year)
• 100 Military Leaders Who Shaped World History (100 Series)
• Close Combat 3 Official Strategies & Secrets
• Saving Private Ryan (Special Limited Edition)

Video Game Reviews of Close Combat Trilogy

Customer Review: Realistic for the History Buff, Adictive for the Gamer
Summary: 5 Stars

I am a career infantryman in the Army and have served as a paratrooper in two different regiments that fought during Operation Market Garden. For me the single best aspect of all three games is their tactical realism. If you don't cover the movement of squads with smoke or suppressive fire, the enemy blows you away. The games allow for mechanized and light infantry combat, combined with indirect mortar fires. The developers did as good a job as could be done replicating the "fog of war" and I thoroughly enjoyed these games.

Highly recommended for history buffs and gamers alike. Several books and movies would enhance the novice's understanding of the games if unfamiliar with the history. "A Bridge Too Far" (the book or the movie) explains Operation Market Garden, the most ambitious paratroop assault ever. Stephen Ambrose has written several good books about the Normandy assault, and "D-Day" is a solid pick. Read anything about "Operation Barbarosa," the German code word for the Russian campaign.

Great games. Realistic and Fun!

Description of Close Combat Trilogy

Close Combat let us relive D-Day battles, but unfortunately its shoddy graphics and limited play mechanics aren't aging too gracefully. The original just isn't in the same league as its superb successors, Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far and Close Combat 3: The Russian Front. Both upped the graphical ante for war games, serving up beautiful terrain that becomes scarred with pockmarks from mortar shells and tank fire as the battle progresses. The computer opponent is tough, and your own troops act in an eerily believable way. In a scene that could have been taken straight out of Saving Private Ryan, we had a few squads occupying a building, shooting it out with some Germans across the road, when one of the enemy soldiers scored a lucky hit on the soldier carrying the flamethrower. The fuel tank on his back exploded, taking out half the squad surrounding him, and that was it for the rest of the GIs in the building. No amount of cajoling could get them to stop running away from the scene of the disaster, despite the German machine guns chewing up the dirt around their feet. Moments like this, both panicked and heroic, happen all the time in these games.

Some gamers are put off by this series because it doesn't let them micromanage individual soldiers, and the morale model means squads sometimes do not follow orders. Those folks should stick to the sci-fi real-time strategy games. Anyone who wants a better appreciation for what combat was like in World War II (according to the accounts we've read) will find that the Close Combat Trilogy is one of the best bargains in gaming. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Games span three famous World War II battles
• Morale model makes this real-time game much more realistic than other strategy games
• Sound effects for the newest titles are terrific

• Realistic morale model may frustrate some players
• The original Close Combat hasn't aged well

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