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| | Publisher: Battlefront.com  Genre: Strategy & War | | Mac OS X: Not Supported Mac OS Classic: Mac OS 8.6
CPU: G3 @ 500 MHz RAM: 64 MB Hard Disk: 1170 MB 4x CD-ROM Graphics: 640x480 @ 16-bit |
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I was never meant to be a general. Hot lead and microscopic shrapnel fragments do not surge through my veins, occasional war cries emerging as strained bleats of protest when someone loads a completely god-awful MP3 within earshot. Virile, unconquerable armies are not to be guided by my limited military wisdom and anyone who would trust me with such a responsibility might want to consider checking the chemical content of their breakfast cereal.Much as I'd like to think myself completely exempt from the role of guiding any kind of military offensive (my lack of Close Combat prowess readily demonstrating that inanimate objects could conquer the forces of evil with greater efficiency), Big Time Software's Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin has offered me a second chance at something I believed to be an entirely lost cause. If you've never heard of Big Time Software or their efforts in the Mac gaming world, you're not alone. Despite the company name (iffy to say the least, the moniker having the same soothing implications as finding the car you were considering buying engulfed in flames on the dealer's lot while the salesman smiles a snake-oil grin and describes the vehicle's extensive defrosting features), there's an interesting game to be had here. Retailing in the typical $40 range and oddly wrapped around Mac OS 9 with a Carbon update yet to be delivered, Big Time Software has offered a conventional war game from an entirely new perspective. Full Metal Geek? Starting from scratch, Combat Mission is unlike any game that's been seen on the Mac to date. Yes, strategy games sell decently, the World War II perspective adding almost nothing new, especially in the wake of hits like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Combat Mission has fused the two themes together, the most similar game to it being Microsoft's Close Combat series, which used real-time strategy with combat-realistic elements such as routed forces and simple unit emotions encoded into the game.Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin has trumped the Close Combat games in almost every respect, the new ruler of the playground ensuring that Microsoft's lunch money never actually goes towards the purchase of food. Similar in appearance only from the first glance when players are asked to position their units using the classic overhead view, the differences begin to spawn in what turns out to be an extensively updated version of Close Combat pumped full of barely-legal steroid-esque substances and stepping over Close Combat's twitching body after stealing its giggling, attractive and personable prom date. Graphics and Sound While Combat Mission may not be the prettiest title from the get-go, its title screens, menu choices and setup dialogs seeming impersonal and overdone, things improve immensely once the player enters the heart of the game. Photorealistic units sprawl across the screen from a bird's eye view, needing to be carefully placed along the player's side of the map. Zoom in and the graphics engine reveals a whole new world. Units pulse in their animations, turning their heads and stretching, the graphics engine going far beyond anything the Close Combat engines ever did. Terrain and battle damage are amazingly detailed, the graphics engine recording every bullet scuff, mortar crater and unit position. Crank up the sound and the reason you invested in powered speakers and a subwoofer becomes perfectly clear. Big Time Software didn't skip a beat in its audio work, ambient sounds such as wind blowing and birds chirping create an eerie silence before each turn. In the midst of combat, every scream, yelp, ricochet and round fired seems perfectly recreated, units even shouting in unison when players order their forces to surge forward as a human wave against the enemy. Zoom around the map during the middle of a turn and individual zones activate, each area creating its own sounds depending on what's happening within it, the zone and whatever unit the player is concentrating on taking precedence and becoming the focus for the game?s the sound output.
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