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[IMG News]

Battlefront.com has announced the upcoming August release of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy. The first in a "new family" of Combat Mission titles, CM:FI will focus on the Allied struggle to defeat Italy during World War II. The stand alone game will give players the chance to play as the American, Italian, and German forces in three unique campaigns. CM:FI will also feature a variety of new equipment and vehicles, and will be the first Combat Mission game to utilize the features of CMx2 engine Version 2.0.

"We always wanted to return to the Mediterranean Theater, though figured it would be several years before we got to it. Simply put, the stars aligned last summer and work started in September. Now it is in final beta testing and it's time to tell you what to expect from it," said Steve Grammont from Battlefront.com.

Fortress Italy is a new "family" of Combat Mission games covering the Allied struggle to knock Italy out of the Second World War. This initial release deals explicitly with the battle for Sicily and sets the groundwork for future additions to simulate the hard fighting in the rugged terrain of "Europe's underbelly" up until the war's end in 1945.

The combat forces immediately available to players include the full range of historically available American, Italian, and German forces which fought in Sicily. In addition to the completely new Italian forces, both the American and German organizations differ significantly from those familiar to Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy players. Some of the highlights are elite formations such as:

• Italian Bersaglieri
  
• American Rangers
  
• German Herman Göring Division

Of course, the time frame and units involved require equipment new to the Combat Mission series. A full list is available on the new Fortress Italy website, however here are some particularly fun gadgets to play with:

• R-35 Light Tank
  
• Semovente 90/53
  
• Panzer Mk III
  
• Grille
  
• M3 GMC Halftrack
  
• T30 HMC Halftrack

Players get to dive in and try these forces out in three (!!!) campaigns, one from the perspective of each national force (USA, Germany, Italy), a host of new stand alone battles, and of course the automatically generated QuickBattles. It won't take long for Normandy players to feel how different this time period and setting is from what they are used to. And the Italian forces are very interesting indeed! Squads the size of Platoons, almost no radios at all, few antitank weapons, proportionally few support weapons, and relatively light armored vehicles present even the best CM player with a lot of new challenges.

But wait, we didn't come to the best part yet... Fortress Italy features more than just a new setting and new units. It is also the first Combat Mission game to be upgraded with our CMx2 engine Version 2.0 features! If you haven't heard about the new Upgrade path for Combat Mission, click here for more info. For those who have, here's just a few of the new features you'll experience:

• Moveable Waypoints
  
• Target Armor Arc Command
  
• Expanded Floating Icon Categories
  
• "Fog of War" Floating Icons
  
• 2D Editor Map Overlay
  
• Auto-Assemble Road/Wall/Hedge Tool
  
• Camera Jump to Groups
  
• Target Briefly Command
  
• New Rendering Shaders
  
• Bump and Normal Mapping
  
• Improved Framerates
  
• Pausable Realtime TCP/IP Mode
  
• ...and more!

In all, Combat Mission: Fortress Italy packs a lot of punch and is sure to have a lot of surprises for even the most experienced wargamer. If there are any doubts about this you should check out the Demo when it is made available (near release time).

As mentioned in the introduction, you can already preorder CMFI right now. Preorder customers get benefits:

• you save $10. You only pay $55 plus Shipping & Handling and will receive a download and the physical goods by mail at no extra cost.
  
• if you preorder, you are guaranteed to receive the "Tin Case" Limited Edition of Combat Mission Fortress Italy, including a new printed game engine manual (~100 pages) including game engine v2.0 updated features, and the "Tin Case" all metal DVD box. The "Tin Case" is not a Steelbook™ and is all metal with a plastic window. It can hold up to four discs, enough room to store all your CMFI module discs in one convenient place :)

Both the printed manuals and the "Tin Cases" are limited as long as supplies last (but we'll make sure that all preorder customers get one).

Learn more about the game at the links below.

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[DaveyJJ]

Can not wait until they bring British, Polish and Canadian forces to this theatre. Bravo, Battlefront.