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Michael Dorosh
Canada
Calgary
Alberta
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The heyday of turn-based, squad-based, company-level tactical wargaming set in the Second World War on the PC may have come and gone. Combat Mission was probably the ultimate expression of this genre; Steel Panthers never graduated beyond alternating turns and the 2D map, and Close Combat is still with us after more than half a dozen titles, but never broke successfully into 3D successfully despite 2 or 3 tries (including the ill-fated G.I. Combat). Panzer Command is slowly gaining traction (especially now with the announcement on 16 August 2010 of a massive free update coming in Q4 called Panzer Command: Ostfront), however, and Combat Mission: Shock Force, the sequel to the original trilogy of Combat Mission titles of which this game was the final entry, has arguably turned into more of a "platoon shooter" than a serious tactical level game. And the updated World War II title was supposed to be out by Christmas 2009, and as of August 2010 we're still waiting for two other games that were ahead of it in battlefront's release queue.
Despite the fact this review is being written almost 7 years after release (an eternity in the PC world), CM:AK still occupies the high ground in this niche, from the perspective of serious, sim-minded games. That's not a contradiction in terms. CM:AK has a lot of physics under the hood - tank shells are tracked in flight, even get pushed by the wind, and such things as armour slope and the angle the tank is sitting on terrain will have an effect on survivability and vehicle damage. But these calculations stay under the hood, and a unique game interface keeps the player informed and up to speed and makes this a fun game first and foremost.
There are too many positive attributes to be able to effectively catalog them all. The game is open ended in that it has a fully user-friendly map editor. The downside is that you can only use the terrain elements the game ships with - no importing of 3D models, and you can only vary the elevations in 2.5, 5, or 8 metres increments up to 20 different levels - which is still a lot. The graphics are dated, sometimes horribly so - no moving water, but the wind does rustle the leaves on the trees. Nonetheless, you can build a map from scratch, or, amazingly, have the computer build a pretty decent one for you at random, in either North Africa or Italy (which will pass for Northwest Europe, too). In the latter case, you can fully mod the terrain with new skins simply by dropping new .bmp files into the appropriate folder (no in-game utilities are present, but it's simple to do). The scenario editor is a breeze to use, unlike, say, Operation Flashpoint, which required a Ph.D in mathematics and a working knowledge of the Czech language.
Game play is simple; victory conditions are either territorial (capturing flags, either static or "dynamic", meaning you don't know for sure which one the enemy is going for), casualty based, or exit based, or a combination of the above. Single missions ("battles") can be either pre-made by scenario designers (many are included on the release disc, more are abundant out in the online community) or created on the fly by the "Quick Battle" system which will do them at random, either on a map of your choosing, or on a random map, using any parameters you choose. If that isn't enough flexibility, you can also play pre-made "Operations", a form of campaign that consists of several "battles" fought over the same map, either to represent an advance over several hundred metres of terrain, or a defence of a key position. The redrawing of the front line between battles was a weakness that never really got ironed out in CMX1 - and unfortunately, Battlefront never figured out how to do it, and dropped the idea from the new game engine. Too bad. Many gamers have used CM:AK and its Eastern Front twin, CM: Barbarossa to Berlin, to create "meta-campaigns" which do the same thing, only with the details tracked manually, on spreadsheets. They're a rewarding experience in and of themself.
The units in the game also speak to the enormous wealth of detail and flexibility included on the disc; well-researched order of battle for German, British, Canadian, Polish, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Italian, American and Free French forces in North Africa, Crete and Italy are included; every major infantry battalion type, armoured fighting vehicle, ordnance type, light anti-tank weapon, and a handful of representative soft-skin vehicles and aircraft are all included to portray just about any action that took place from 1940 to 1945 in the Mediterranean theatre of war. And they all speak their own language.
Play is turn based, using simultaneous (WEGO) turns, either solo play, 2 player PBEM or TCP/IP. Can you learn to play quickly? Yes. But you can't master it in an afternoon. There are hundreds of different kinds of units, and mastering the complexities of such things as tank vs. anti-tank weapons is just one facet. As an example of one of the thousands of things to learn, German units after 1943 bristle with short-ranged weapons, though they won't fire them if suppressed by small arms fire or high explosive, and if they fire them from inside a house run the risk of injury...and that's just one detail of one facet of the game. Luckily there are decent info screens accessible by a single command, and coloured bars showing things as armour penetration, without being obtrusive in a FPS way. You have vital information at your command, without being hand-held. The game also has a tutorial mission in the manual (not a walkthrough as in, say, Medal of Honor) and if you're really stuck, the official forums can help you out and the CM:BB Strategy Guide is still for sale and will be applicable in large part to this product though the unit-specific data in it will not.
There are some disappointments; BFC abandoned support to the game after a small number of official patches citing the need to move on to the new game engine, and support on their forums was sometimes openly hostile. And there are a few things that never got fixed; most importantly, the much-touted "multi-turreted tanks" included in the game don't actually fire their guns at independent targets. There are other minor bugs discussed on the official forums but none that should turn away a potential customer, and the game is stable. The dated graphics include such things as 3-man squads substituting for 10-man units on the battlefield - much like a counter or board game map - but the action is best observed from above and play is fast and addictive, best enjoyed against another human.
A unique, fun, and realistic game that helped set a high standard which other games - including it's own sequel - are still struggling to meet.
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SJ Benoist
United States
Saint Charles
Missouri
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Best game of its sort ever designed.
Too bad for us (the sort who love this type of thing) that the company tried to pursue the more "mainstream" crowd.
I had always hoped they would do a Pacific version of the game 
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Alex P
France
Paris
Ile-de-France
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I just wish they would publish their games through Steam - I don't like to bother with patches and failed voice-chat anymore so I buy exclusively through the service now. They refuse because they think they'll make less money somehow...
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