Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord Review

Outside of the hard-core wargaming community, Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord didn't receive a lot of attention prior to its release. It was originally developed as the computer version of Avalon Hill's Squad Leader board game, but Avalon Hill terminated the license shortly before Hasbro Interactive purchased the company in 1998. Undaunted, developer Big Time Software pressed ahead and joined with online publisher Battlefront.com to finish the game this summer. While Hasbro's forthcoming Squad Leader may bear the title of the board game, Combat Mission is very true to its spirit, and thus it manages to be one of the best wargames ever made for the computer.

Many game players associate computer wargames with stuffy, turn-based strategy games that look a lot like the old board games that reached their height of popularity in the late '70s. Combat Mission brings wargaming up to modern standards without compromising realism and historical accuracy. The most striking aspect of Combat Mission is its fully 3D graphics engine, which, although not up to today's highest standards for computer-game graphics, nevertheless does a good job of presenting a believable World War II battlefield in such a way that hasn't been seen before in the genre.

Combat Mission depicts the fighting on the western front of World War II between the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the end of the war. Combat units consist of squads of infantry, individual leaders, and individual vehicles. Scenarios pit British, American, French, and Polish units against the Germans in a variety of situations, and you can play as either side, either against the computer or a human opponent.

The essence of the gameplay in Combat Mission is very simple: Each turn consists of giving orders to your units, and each is followed by an action phase where both sides' orders are resolved simultaneously. In the orders phase, units can be told to move, fire, crawl, run, place smoke for cover, or perform any number of other realistic combat actions. These orders can be very detailed - a squad of infantry might be told to pause for 15 seconds, crawl up to a hedge, fire over it at a target, and then run over the hedge and into a building. Turns last only 60 seconds of real time when they are resolved (although any amount of time can be spent giving the orders), so there is only so much a squad or tank can do at once. Unit coordination is the key, and because every unit is moving at the same time, becoming skillful at Combat Mission can take some time.

Because of the 3D nature of the game, line-of-sight rules are crucial. It's actually possible to adjust the view to "see" from a given unit's perspective simply by rotating the camera accordingly. Fortunately, Combat Mission has a good line-of-sight tool that makes this judgment easier. You can draw a line from any unit to whatever spot on the map you choose, and the color of the line will display whether line of sight is blocked, as well as where the blockage occurs. Yet even with this kind of help, the 3D view in Combat Mission will take some getting used to for those accustomed to 2D portrayals of combat. But the 3D landscape adds so much realism to both the graphics and the gameplay that the learning curve is well worth it.

The orders phase makes Combat Mission seem very much like a traditional wargame. What's surprising is the action phase: A real-time 3D game engine makes all the difference in a tactical wargame. The gameplay can be very tense as you watch a line of tanks roll down a road toward an objective, knowing that the enemy has hidden anti-tank weapons. The battlefield comes alive as your lead tank takes a hit from a concealed gun position up the road. The sound effects tell you and the game screen confirms that your tank was hit, but the shell fails to penetrate. Will the next shot be more effective? Did you remember to bring infantry support to engage the anti-tank gun? Combat Mission is as instantly exciting as a real-time game, but it allows for detailed strategic planning as well. The action phase can be replayed multiple times and from any angle, and it can be rewound, fast-forwarded, or paused. This makes it easy to find out exactly what happened to each unit, even in large scenarios. This combination of action and strategy is something that hasn't ever been achieved so successfully in a wargame.