Subject: Have CC4 - First Impressions From: "Deron and Marcy Dorna" After some hesitation I purchased Close Combat 4 today at EB. I'm a huge fan of CC2, liked CC1, and was extremely disappointed with CC3. Anyway, I went into this with great skepticism and here are my initial observations after starting the Grand Campaign as the Germans and fighting three battles on the first day: 1) First off, it's not as bad as I feared. In CC3 infantry was just plain useless (my biggest problem with the game), and were clearly shoved aside in favor of tanks that went boom. Infantry appears to be back in CC4 in a big way, and I'm happy about that. They seem to be a little more survivable and hidable than in CC3, but they're still easier to kill than they were in CC2, it would seem. 2) Graphics are very good, of course. Explosions and sounds are nice, etc. etc. The only thing is that for some reason my sound appears to be backwards. I'm getting sounds from the left in my right speaker. Maybe something wrong with my setup. 3) The campaign portion of the game, which was the main draw for me (and a big turn-off in CC3), looks to be fairly good, with one possible exception: apparently there are no coordinated attacks, which I thought had been discussed by the design team at one pont as a feature. Each area is strictly limited to a single battle group, so no supported attacks. A bit disappointing, I must say, unless I'm just missing something. You can't Flee any more without causing the disbandment of the entire unit (that's everyone on the map, folks). And no more retreating units off the map individually either. I'm not sure why this is. although it does make some sense given the new campaign structure where you actually move your units around on the "Big Board". The way to get your people out of there seems to be to hold out on the map until the battle ends do to failing morale, Time Limit, or Truce, and hope you've held on. If you still hold a victory marker, you can then move off the map during the following Campaign turn (which represents half a day, by the way), perhaps being replaced by an adjacent unit. I'm interested to see how this mechanic affects gameplay; it certainly makes things interesting. Supply really matters -- your ammo will be low the longer you're out of supply and some of your vehicles could start a battle immobilized due to lack of fuel. This was one area I didn't like so much in CC2 - the supply didn't seem to have as big an impact as it should. Here, at least in theory (the exact effects are actually spelled out in game terms in the manual this time), it will have a big impact. I'll have to see how it really plays out, of course. 4) I played the demo and was really worried about the poor pathfinding of the armor, especially when crossing bridges. I haven't had a chance to cross a bridge yet, but so far the pathfinding has been fine - I have no complaints. 5) The demo seemed to be full of "gee whiz" units like flame throwers (what's with the Atomic guys and flame anyway?) and rocket platforms. In the Grand Campaign, however, the units seem to have a much more realistic, reasonable makeup of units. Also, air strikes and artillery strikes are fairly limited in availability. All in all, the unit mix seems about right to me. I suspect the demo was just put together to show off the various units in the game, not to be representative of what you'd find in a typical battle. 6) The Americans are probably too strong, at least in the Grand Campaign. I'm having a tough time breaking through the initial defense, which were supposed to have been taken completely by surprise, right? Well, you could have fooled me. I'm definitely winning, but this is no cake walk. And this is against the computer. In a multiplayer game I think I would have had my butt handed to me by a competent US player. I suspect that the German player will need to have things tipped in his favor when doing a multiplayer Grand Campaign (which is all my buddy and I will do) if the game is to be balanced. 7) In the minor quibble department, the video intro has an absolutely awful voice over. I was embarrassed for SSI. It's good for a laugh, I guess. That's it for now. Admittedly brief, but I thought I'd fill those in who are wavering. My recommendation is to buy it from EB and give it a shot: it definitely is not a flop, it just might not meet high expectations. After CC3 I wasn't expecting much, though, so I'm actually pleasantly surprised at this early stage. Time will tell, of course. -Deron Subject: Close Combat 4 - Some comments (long) From: keithhSPAM_OFF@sd.cybernex.net (Keith Hemmelman) I've been playing CC4 the past few days and have a some comments. All in all, I'm not as happy with my CC4 purchase as I've been with past CC purchases, but then since I get to blow things up I am having fun with it. It's basically CC3 graphics with a better supply feature than CC2 rolled into one. I enjoy playing CC4, but then I enjoy playing the past versions too. With a new version of the game though, I don't see it as having anything new to offer me. They could have just made some new maps for CC3 or something and I'd be having just as much fun. - First thing that struck me as being odd was during the installation process, it asks you to register to allow you to "unlock" a strategic map. Not knowing any different, I figured this strategic map would be something really cool, but as it turns out it is just a single page Acrobat file of the overall map of the game. Viewing this map outside the game is of little use so I was disappointed that this is all it was. I figured it would be something with all kinds of data or historical info or something, but it is basically useless. But then since they didn't include a decent version of this overview map in the manual, maybe it will be of some use down the road. (I'm just not sure for what yet.) - I find I do not like the color schemes of the menus and text at all. I know this is a minor issue to some, but for me it is a disappointment. I just don't like the light 'army green' (or pea green) textured background color behind all the text/info. This makes everything less crisp and easy to read. I often play multiplayer against my father, and I know this will be difficult for him to read. He already has a hard enough time seeing the units on the map, now he'll have to strain to read all the text too. No sense rambling on about this since your stuck with it, but I'd prefer they kept the background behind all text a solid, dark color to allow the foreground text to stand out and easily be read. - During a battle, I find the small insert map to be extremely helpful with it showing the small blue and red squares designating where yours and the known enemy troops/units are located. In CC4, they've made this insert map 'transparent' or see through. Only problem is it's not transparent enough to easily distinguish what is underneath it on the map, and they've also made the blue/red squares 'dimmed' or transparent too. So not only can you not clearly see through the insert map at things behind it, you now have to look longer to find the squares too because the map graphics underneath and the squares in the insert map above kind of 'blend' together. I personally much preferred the solid insert map from past versions. - You can no longer get a description of each unit and it's capabilities like you could in CC3. All you get is the name of the unit. But since you can no longer select what units you want to fight a battle with, I guess this isn't needed, but it was interesting to see this info in CC3. - The names of the units are now generalized. (i.e. - Medium tank) Once again, this is a change from past versions that I do not like. You can get the true name for each unit, but you have to individually click on them all to see it. This info should be up on the screen for all units regardless. I know you can edit the names, but this is something you have to do for every battle since the names don't seem to stay. Also there is a 15 character limit. (I wanted to rename a tank killer to "M18 Hell Cat - 76mm" but could not.) - They've gone away from the 'points' scheme of things, and you seem to have to fight with whatever pre-determined troops they programmed into a particular battle. - The map graphics are no better than CC3. The same goes for the infantry. The tank graphics however, are now worse in my opinion. Also, the maps so far seem to be smaller than in CC3 too. - The explosion graphics are better than past versions though. Also the tanks emit a puff of black smoke when starting to drive or backing up which is nice. - The sounds seem to be somewhat improved over past versions. - The battles so far have all ended very quickly. I'd prefer to fight it out a little longer on each battle. I'm playing the Grand Campaign with the victory option of capturing all victory points as the prerequisite for winning. However, every battle so far has ended due to either my side or the enemies side having 'low moral' regardless of control of the victory points. - The indirect fire of mortars seems to be too accurate for my tastes. I can't comment on the reality of this, but the shells drop in accurately afer only a few rounds on units that are out of line of sight. - After playing the Combat Mission demo, I really like the battle 'replay' option, and think I would enjoy this feature in CC4. (Sure hope CM puts in the ability to replay the entire battle, and not just each individual turn!) - I've not fought a lot of battles where I've had control of tanks or other vehicles, but when I did, they seemed to be easy enough to control. I've seen other comments on the poor pathfinding, but to be fair, I've probably not controlled enough armor on a enough of a variety of maps to get a good feel for this. - The scenario editor in my opinion is much worse than past versions of the game. I usually setup single day battles that I can use for fighting against someone over multiplayer, so that is the main pretense from how I am viewing the scenario editor. You can no longer assign points for the battle because there are no points in the game anymore. You also cannot select the individual units for each battle. All you can do is select a single 'pre-selected' unit type for each side. (i.e. - Armored, or Infantry, etc.) This may not be so bad, but you have absolutely no idea what is included in each unit because you can't bring up the details for that unit! Why the heck did they change it to where you now have next to no control or options on what you want to setup your battle with?! If I want to setup a battle with 15 tanks per side, why do they care? I really liked the 'points' approach because this makes you and your opponent think about what they will buy for the upcoming battle and there is room for error on your part if you get the wrong items. The experience and moral seem to also be predetermined for each side and I prefered the CC3 approach of 'Conscripts, Regular, or Elite units, with each type costing more to get the better ones. Also, so far, I've only been able to set a single day battle to the first available date of December 16th. The left slider doesn't want to move to the right for me to allow me to select a different starting date. For a single day battle, this isn't an issue, but would be nice to know if I'm just doing something wrong, or if it doesn't work. Sorry to ramble on so much. I've really enjoyed the CC series and CC4 just isn't what I expected or hoped for. The only real new item is the supply scheme and that's not why I bought the game. I was hoping for bigger maps, more units than 15 per side, more sounds, better map graphics, additional commands I could issue, additional weapon types and units, and a more flexible scenario editor. What I got was either the same as CC3 or something I personally find to be less desirable than past versions. It's not that it isn't fun to play because I do enjoy it, it just isn't the upgrade you'd expect from a game that's now in it's 4th revision. Keith Hemmelman keithh@*SPAM_OFF*sd.cybernex.net