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Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin Preview

The next Combat Mission game chronicles the struggle between the Soviets and the Germans during WWII. Read on to find out what you can expect from this promising strategy game.

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It was one of the biggest and bloodiest conflicts between two nations in history: the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union from June 1941 until the end of World War II in Europe. Around 40 million men and women were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner in the conflict--and that's just the military personnel. Then there were all the killed, displaced, or enslaved civilians. By the end of the struggle, Berlin was a smoldering ruin, and the Soviets assumed a new, fateful place on the world stage. Soon you'll be able to play out the battles of this massive, decisive, and utterly brutal conflict in Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin.

The Soviets exact their revenge in the burning streets of Berlin.
The Soviets exact their revenge in the burning streets of Berlin.

Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin, or CMBB as the developers and fans often call it, will follow up on the highly successful Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord. Created by tiny developer Big Time Software and originally published exclusively through its Internet publishing arm, Battlefront.com, Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord earned one glowing review after another and an impressive array of awards. The beauty of Combat Mission was that it took WWII wargaming to the people, seamlessly melding an intuitive interface and dramatic 3D battlefields and units with historical accuracy and detail. Like many great games, it was easy to get into, but it kept revealing more and more depth as you played. It was a game for novice wargamers and hard-core grognards alike, and it gripped you both emotionally and intellectually.

Now CMBB is set to offer a highly expanded and more polished version of that winning formula. The game will offer a much greater scope than its predecessor, with countless new unit types, improvements to game mechanics, major new command options, improved graphics and sound, and much more. That said, CMBB will at heart offer the same fundamental type of gameplay found in Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord. You can expect to find the same groundbreaking marriage of turn-based and real-time gaming that made Beyond Overlord not merely a fun game but a potentially important one for the development of the strategy genre. You can probably also expect the same sort of pick-up-and-play possibilities, thanks to a fairly easily learned interface and controls. CMBB looks to be somewhat more complex than its predecessor, but you shouldn't be overwhelmed by the arcane unit symbols, obscure commands, and overly complex rules that bog down more traditional wargames.

Some of the new orders at your disposal.
Some of the new orders at your disposal.

The first thing you'll likely notice about CMBB will be its dramatically expanded scope. Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord played out in Western Europe from just after D-Day until the fall of Germany. CMBB will cover the entire Russo-German conflict from June 1941 through May 1945. You'll fight battles from the Crimea in the south all the way up to Finland in the north, from the heart of Germany in the west to Stalingrad and the banks of the Volga in the east. While the overall scope of the game will be enormous, the individual battles will play out on roughly the same scale as those in Beyond Overlord, typically though not exclusively company- to battalion-sized engagements.

Individual units will consist of squads, HQ units, special weapons teams, and individual field guns and vehicles. You'll get to command multiple branches of German, Soviet, Hungarian, Romanian, Italian, Finnish, and Polish troops. All these forces have been meticulously researched so that their organization, equipment, uniforms, and other characteristics all match their historical counterparts, year by year of the war. You'll notice, for example, little details like German troops sometimes carrying captured Soviet PPSh submachine guns, a not-uncommon practice during the war.

Real Tactics and a Really Big Selection

What's immediately striking in the beta build of CMBB that we received is the vast number of unit types you'll get to employ this time around, more than 900 in all. In addition to numerous troop types, you'll find a huge panoply of weapons with each soldier, be it a simple rifle or a massive self-propelled gun, modeled according to real-world data. Success in a tank duel, for instance, shouldn't hinge on pure luck or some arbitrary gameplay rules, but rather on real-world ballistics data and complex armor penetration calculations--and of course smart tactics. In other words, what did and didn't work in the real war should also be true of CMBB battles.

German troops eliminate the final Soviet resistance in a randomly generated quick battle.
German troops eliminate the final Soviet resistance in a randomly generated quick battle.

It's true that some weapons, like Germany's gargantuan Karl siege mortars, and some modes of transport, like horses, won't appear in CMBB due to gameplay balance issues, obscurity, or the impracticalities of coding them. But, what you will find should be enough to brighten the day of any WWII weaponry buff. You'll get to employ numerous small arms like MP40s and antitank rifles, as well as more impressive armaments like flamethrowers, mortars, machine guns, howitzers, off-map artillery and rockets, and more. You'll also get to place fortifications and defenses like trenches, barbed wire, minefields, and multiple types of pillboxes.

And then there are the vehicles--more than 300 different types in all. You'll control trucks, jeeps, half-tracks, armored cars, tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns of every description. Of course, you'll find all the expected things, like multiple Panzer III and IV variants and various T-34 tank models. But then you'll also find many more-colorful or unusual vehicles like Germany's Brummbär or Sturmmörser Tiger (with an enormous 380mm main gun), not to mention truly obscure Romanian or Hungarian vehicles that even many die-hard WWII buffs will be unfamiliar with.

You'll control all these units using the same basic system found in Beyond Overlord. You select a 3D unit with your mouse and then use a simple pop-up menu or hotkeys to issue orders. Data for the selected unit will appear at the bottom of the screen essentially as before, though in a more informative and colorful format. A new "gun rack" will show you at a glance what weapons a squad currently carries, while a color-coded vehicle icon will help you quickly understand the strong and weak spots of a vehicle's armor. A pop-up screen with more-detailed unit stats, like exact armor thickness and angles, will still be available, too.

Just a small sampling of some of the more colorful vehicles you'll get to command.
Just a small sampling of some of the more colorful vehicles you'll get to command.

In CMBB, you'll find many additions or tweaks to the game mechanics, like machine guns doing a better job suppressing enemy troops. You'll also find many new or improved orders that offer fresh tactical options. For example, a much requested "move to contact" order will cause your troops to advance until they spot an enemy or are fired upon and then to stop instead of just blithely walking into a hail of bullets and panicking. New cover arc commands will make setting up effective ambushes far easier. You just specify a zone with a simple point-and-click interface. Then your selected unit will open fire when, per your specification, either infantry or armored vehicles enter the area.

You'll note that vehicles now feature a command-and-control system similar to that of the game's infantry. For effective action, you'll want to keep your subordinate tanks in contact with their HQ tank. This might prove harder than expected, though, when you recall that many an early-war Russian tank had no radio. If the crew of such a tank then "buttons up" the hatches for protection, they'll go out of contact with their platoon leader. Vehicles will get some major new order options, too, like the ability to automatically seek out hull-down positions and to cover a certain arc in one direction with their turret while moving in another direction.

A Turn for the Better

You'll still find the hybrid turn-based/real-time turn system that made Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord so original--and so monstrously addictive. Each turn is divided into orders and action phases. During the static orders phase, you take as long as you like examining the battlefield and issuing orders. When you're ready, you hit the "Go" button, and both sides' men will simultaneously carry out their orders during a one-minute real-time phase.

Hungarian troops prepare to defend Budapest from the Russians.
Hungarian troops prepare to defend Budapest from the Russians.

During this phase, you won't be able to control your men directly, but you'll get to watch them act according to your previous orders and their own desire for self-preservation. All kinds of exciting things can happen as your men try to follow your commands as best they can while reacting to surprising situations according to their experience, morale, and fitness. Taking Beyond Overlord as a model, it's safe to say that each action phase should play out like a dramatic miniature war movie, keeping you on the edge of your seat.

The graphics in CMBB should have a major effect on gameplay: With 3D terrain and units, realistic lines of sight become a major factor in battles, as opposed to the abstractions you find in 2D wargames. Just as importantly, the 3D visuals should make a strong emotional impact, with massive Tiger or IS-2 Stalin tanks rumbling toward the enemy, broken squads desperately running for their lives, and rockets blasting village buildings into rubble.

Right away, you'll notice the more detailed and convincing ground and unit textures in CMBB. Now numerous boulders and clumps of grass rise from the ground, giving the battlefield a more three-dimensional look than before. Trees now sway in the breeze, and smoke wafts according to the prevailing winds. Soldier graphics, from their uniforms to their faces, look somewhat more convincing now. Vehicles will be sporting more detailed textures, as well. New animations should also add to the experience: When the main gun of a tank fires, the barrel (replete with sooty muzzle brake) recoils, accompanied by a flash and a cloud of smoke that quickly dissipates. Buildings now display progressive damage like smoke-covered walls, and when they're totally destroyed, they sometimes continue to smolder for a few turns.

Create new battles on random maps for infinite replayability.
Create new battles on random maps for infinite replayability.

Expect CMBB's audio to make a big impact, too. As in Beyond Overlord, troops shout out orders--or cry out in panic--in their native tongues. Even if you don't know, say, Finnish, the tones of voice should heighten the emotional impact of the battles. You'll hear lots of new or modified combat sound effects in CMBB, which should really bring the battles to life, with thunderous artillery explosions, creaking tank treads, and ricocheting bullets adding to the ambience.

You'll get to experience all this in 70 different predesigned scenarios and multibattle operations. You'll also get a quick-battle generator with expanded options for designing battles to your liking. Now you'll be able to set unit ammunition levels and select whether units start out reduced from prior casualties, for example. Every quick battle will offer up a new, unique map based on general parameters you set, and you'll get to handpick your troops or have them assigned randomly. You'll also get an integrated scenario and map editor. Judging by our preview build, it looks like Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin has the potential to be a truly exciting--and massive--addition to the Combat Mission series.

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