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Close Combat 5: Invasion Normandy
by Nelson "Admiral" HernandezGrognards have continually complained about the realism of the series. My opinion is that this game gives a pretty good overall impression of small-unit combat. You are penalized for doing things that would be fatal in real life, and rewarded for using proper tactics. A major flaw in CC3 and CC4 was that armor was dominant to the point that infantry was nearly worthless. This imbalance has been remedied in CC5. Tanks are often more of a liability than an asset in the difficult terrain of the area, and the infantry occupies its rightful place as the Queen of Battle.
But where is the King of Battle? Ah, now that is a problem. The CC series has never rendered artillery very well. At first we could only have on-board mortars, which were really only good for suppressing the enemy. CC5 tries to put more artillery power in the hands of the player, by adding naval gunfire, mortar barrages and airstrikes as a kind of “off-board” artillery. This is an improvement, but unfortunately none of these is very flexible and their implementation is flawed. You simply click on the area you want to hit; no spotter is necessary. All the fire is then used up, and you have no chance to adjust it.
In the country
My thinking is that naval gunfire and airstrikes should be out of the hands of the player altogether. But conversely the player should have more control over the mortar barrages. And mortars weren’t the only kind of artillery on the Cotentin Peninsula! There were guns of many calibers, most of them more potent than what is in the game. Considering the importance of artillery in the Allied advance, this seems to me an unfortunate omission. For those who do not think that heavy artillery was used in battles on this scale, I cite Company Commander, a book by Charles B. MacDonald, in which the author, a young captain, calls in a 155mm howitzer barrage on an enemy advance, with devastating results.
The lack of artillery doesn’t kill the game, however. The battles are still fun and, for what they include, realistic. At the end of the battle you get a detailed breakdown on what happened to your men, which ones performed acts of courage or cowardice, and who earned medals. In the campaign the men do go from battle to battle gaining experience, but you never really grow too attached to them since there are hundreds or thousands of them and it is difficult to keep track.
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