Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin Review
Barbarossa to Berlin raises the wargaming bar even higher with its pitch-perfect, ultra-polished improvements to an already great game.
Big Time Software's Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin is an entirely new type of wargame that successfully combines many seemingly incompatible elements. It combines traditional wargame mechanics with 3D graphics, real-time action with turn-based planning, strategy with excitement, and minute details with an accessible interface. Barbarossa to Berlin is the follow-up to the first title in the series, Beyond Overlord. If ever there were a showstopper of a wargame, this is it. Barbarossa to Berlin raises the wargaming bar even higher with its pitch-perfect, ultra-polished improvements to an already great game.
The most immediate change that Barbarossa to Berlin makes to the original game is in the scenery. The graphics are much improved since the first game's quaint in-house-artist look, which was more concerned with fidelity than flair. They were the kind of graphics only a crotchety old wargame veteran could love. But this time around, the foliage is more complex, the textures are sharper, the special effects like fire and smoke don't look so homegrown, and the vehicle models feature more detail and animation. You'll spend more time getting in close to study the replays just because they look so good. With the possible exception of its stiff little infantry models, Combat Mission now looks like a big-budget game. The audio is as rich and full as ever, with careful attention paid to the sounds used for different weapons and the nationality of the men yelling at each other. You may not be able to tell a Finnish call for a medic from a Romanian one, but you'll hear them both here.
The scenery has also changed with the new location. Barbarossa to Berlin moves the action from World War II's western front to the huge swath of territory on the eastern front. There are four distinct zones, each with unique terrain, weather conditions, nationalities, and equipment, ranging from Finland all the way south to the Crimean peninsula. While the first Combat Mission seemed almost pastoral with its villages and hedgerows, this time the maps include denser urban locations. Although buildings are still fairly abstract (they're essentially a terrain type laid out in blocks), city fighting is more vivid, with new rules for damage to structures and sneaking through sewers.
More detailed infantry commands make house-to-house fighting less dependent on the AI by giving you more control over your men. For instance, a new command to advance under fire and use cover along the way is invaluable in the city maps. It's also easier to specify that an infantry unit should get in close to a tank to assault it (in the first game, they tended to think you were telling them to fire at a tank with their rifles, the World War II equivalent of shooting spitballs at a charging rhino). With new rules for infantry fitness and fatigue, Combat Mission can now model the difference between fresh inexperienced recruits and burned-out, war-weary veterans.
- GameSpot Score 9.1 Editors' Choice
Player Reviews
Critic Scores
- IGN 9 / 10
- GameZone 8.6 / 10
- Game Raiders 96 / 100
- GamePlasma 7.6 / 10
- Daily Game 9 / 10
- PC Gameworld 95 / 100
- Loaded Inc 9 / 10
- Gamers Europe 9 / 10
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- Battlefront.com
- Big Time Software
- Real-Time Wargame
- Release: Oct 29, 2002
- ESRB: Teen
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