It has been a fantastic experience to re-appraise one of my all time favorite games and, despite the game looking a bit long in the tooth, it still has the wonderful level of depth and challenge as it did when I first played it way back when.
Close Combat 5 (with its mods) remains the BEST single WWII game yet made. In many ways it still needs a lot of work to be brought fully into the 21st century. Also I would like to see the developer go mad and extend the campaign to a HUGE size so that lunatics could play tactical resolutions for an entire FRONT. But even in the pretty humble form of this game, it's great to see the CC spirit alive and well. It's sad to see people calling this game a "dinosaur". The basic gameplay and graphics of course still are 14 years old, but despite them its still the best WWII game in existence. If you are interested in this genre some more support for this game rather than flak would be more constructive. Please persevere Matrix!
THE GROT REVIEW CRITERIA: After a long time writing reviews like an anus, think its time to set a few bad habits straight: Stop insulting designers. Show some respect for the design process and getting games in circulation. Hence (1) No Red scores. (2) Game scores as follows: Bad Game 5/10. Poor Game 6/10. Mediocre Game: 7/10. Good Game 8/10. Great game 9/10. Stella Game 10/10. To get 10/10 it must be a game that can be (theoretically) play-able for 1000+ hours. Not only great but near endless fun. Games may be bad or poor but making them should earn respect. Thus even the worst POS will still be a 5/10. 0/10 no longer exists in my vocabulary. Yellow is the new red. For the sake of accountability: you can reply if needed: Orctowngrot: Tim Rawlins: ****
Since nobody else seemed to be writing a review I figured I would write an account so that I could. This game has changed quite a bit compared to previous versions. This is my 5 CC game and I feel that I am qualified to write a thoughtful review. First thing I noticed is the graphics are amazing. 32 bit rather than the original 16 bit. Everything about this game looks better. If you have watched some of the trailers you might have been thrown off a bit by the tank graphics. I will agree that at max resolution the screen is so large and the tanks so much smaller you dont get to see the extreme details so it may seem bland at first. The explosions look much better. This has to be the most realistic and unforgiving CC I have played. If you get a mortar team zeroed in on a machine gun unit and you fail to react, you will most likely lose the entire squad.
The mortars have been completely reworked. The first aimed shot takes about 20 seconds to fire but the crew makes adjustments and each shot becomes faster as long as you are on the same target. Each additional shot gets closer and closer to the target even when you are firing blind. This makes mortars very effective against a stationary target. So far I have not been able to destroy any open top vehicles like in previous games. This is balanced of course by the mortars seemingly new ability to kill troops within a building. My first map a mortar round took out my sniper in a 3 story building.
My first impression about the game I thought it looked good but something felt off. After playing it the first night the more and more at ease I became. Now on my second night I realize how much potential this game has and I feel it may be the best CC ever made and I am hopeful that they will continue with the series. A new edition is the ability to put troops into halftracks. In previous games halftracks were easily destroyed and not much use. Now you can rush a machine gun team to a building, for example a meeting engagement. Another new feature is the ability to use trucks to tow your anti tank guns. There is just so much new great stuff.
Another thing I noticed is that Snipers are not as overpowered as they use to be, or maybe I have not had luck. What I loved about previous CC games was that your troops each had a name and stats, awards and kills. What **** was that if you put a unit back into the force pool, the "person" would be gone forever. Now if you have a tank gun for instance, and he has 3 tank kills and a silver star, and the next battle there are no tanks, you can put him back into reserve and pull him back up later and he will still have same experience etc. This fact alone has me sold. I love to see how many kills a certain sniper will have after a campaign or something along those lines.
Now you can have multiple battlegroups on the same map and you can have an armored division relieve an infantry division in the same location if the enemy happens to be attacking with armor. There is too much good stuff happening. If you love CC and you are not sure, take the plunge. After you get used to the new look and feel, this game is great.
Agree with Roofies85 review here, so I'll make my review short. Panthers in Fog is a lot of fun, improves on many facets of the original CC release, totally worth the purchase. Excellent sound effects, graphical tweaks, bug fixes, you really can see all the hard work that was invested to make a solid game into an almost perfect WW2 RTS sim. I also bought the full CC series re-released, great experiences made compatible with modern PCs.
Same engine of CC Caen , not yet the 3D CC we waiting for (The Bloody First ... HYPE), BUT this CC, like all the other, it's awesome to play!.
CC Caen was with British, now you control American forces so the gameplay is also pretty different ( no more 17 pdr :( )
Considering the average steam game, the price is high, but this is a very niche series where you "play" with real history. The units, the maps, the battle order, the unit composition, everything is historical accurate so you are not only playing but also learning WWII military history.
It's like opening an Interactive Osprey book, and one Osprey book cost around £12, so as one enjoying Osprey books is not a problem to pay the price and support this series.
Obviously not a game for all, if you think to play this in a superficial way, without paying attention to the details put in to the game and you don't care about real history, then for you it may be just an old school overpriced 2D RTS.
cheers
We've read this book before! Panthers in the Fog just misses the mark, but I wasn't expecting much when I purchased it. With this new addition to the series don't be surprised, it's one of its prequels wrapped in nice packaging and a much higher price tag.
Don't bother with this tactical dinosaur, as it's nothing new. All attempts to shake it up abit with this release completely fall short of the mark. What a waste of time.
Not sure where they were going with this game, but ok. It misses the mark in many aspects and lacks any sort of improvement, worth mentioning here, over its predecessors. Don't even bother. With outdated graphics and artwork, the lack dynamic control or gameplay, and with little replayability, Pathers in the Fog is just another Close Combat game resold at a higher price.
Cheers.
SummaryClose Combat: Panthers in the Fog depicts an historical battle that closely follows the events of Operation Overlord, which was the setting of the very first release. The Battle of Mortain, when the 47th German Panzer Corps launched a desperate week-long assault on the strategic position of Hill 315 where the U.S. 30th Infantry Division...