Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far

8.8

Format PC

Developer Atomic Games

Publisher Microsoft

Genre Unknown

Dave Mathieson likes nothing more than to settle into his rocking chair on a Sunday afternoon clutching a packet of Werther's Originals and his trusty pipe, while watching cheesy war films. Microsoft have just the thing to breath some life into his tired old bones...

Top-down strategy games usually fit one of two categories - real-time futuristic efforts like Command & Conquer, and historical hex-based games set during some war that's actually happened. Hex games might be hot on accuracy, but when it comes to thrills per minute, they're decidedly lukewarm, more closely resembling board games than your average PC blast-fest. The problem is that there are plenty of people out there who like their realism, as anyone who's witnessed flight sim enthusiasts discussing the flying characteristics of Luftwaffe planes on the Internet will testify.

Advertisement:

A Bridge Too Far is a bit of a corker, as it seamlessly merges anorak-friendly realism with real-time hecticness of a 'proper' game. Set during the end of the Second World War, ABTF is based around Operation Market Garden, when the Allies tried to speed things up a bit by trying to establish a bridgehead on the Rhine in Holland.

The action is divided up into lots of individual battles in which you can play as either the Allies or the Germans, each one in a beautifully drawn landscape consisting of towns, villages and fields. Unlike its predecessor, Close Combat, the scenery in ABTF doesn't look like it's been made up of tiles, and roads and rivers curve realistically in different directions. The soldiers are tiny but superbly animated little fellas, and they crawl, run, take cover, and get blown up very convincingly.

The interface is easy to use, and the main game screen is controlled by clicking on units and selecting orders from a drop-down menu. At the bottom of the screen there's a big status screen with information on each unit, and each soldier in that unit. Having a big monitor is definitely a bonus here as at higher resolutions you can obviously fit more on the screen.

Your forces are divided up into different units, and you give orders to the unit as a whole. The way these orders are carried out depends on how sensible the commands are, and the game's AI means that the la-di-da Gunner Grahams among your men can't be persuaded to take out machine-gun nests on their own. It's pretty hard to compare the AI of two different games, but I reckon that the boys in ABTF could have a group of NOD troops from Command & Conquer any day.

The sound effects are superb, and the scenery is constantly updated so that by the end of a battle that nice picturesque Dutch village is covered in shell craters, wrecked houses and little bloody corpses.

Different attention spans are nicely catered for, and there are three ways of playing the game - individual battles, operations in a particular area or the whole campaign. There are plenty of difficulty settings, but even with everything on 'easy' the war won't be over by Xmas. Comparing ABTF with C&C; is a little unfair, as the gameplay is very different. While it's not quite as accessible, A Bridge Too Far's atmosphere, graphics and excellent gameplay give it the edge if realism's your thing.