Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Feb 24, 2022

  Two Thumbs Up! - 20+ hours into the game and this has to be the best Close Combat game yet! *UPDATE 9 APRIL 2022*: Modder Nomada_Firefox has done a mod of CC:The Longest Day for CC:TBF and the developers have added it as a download. I just finished playing all three CC:TBF campaigns and tried out the mod - excellent! Kudos to Nomada_Firefox! The "Veteran" mod looks like it will double or triple the replay value of CC:TBF (i.e. maybe add another 100-200hrs of gameplay). Read the news update on 1 April 2022 to see how to download the mod. TLDR: Pros: - *NEW* 3D-detailed terrain does make a difference to tactics! - Continuity of troop experience and morale throughout Campaigns as in the previous CC games - During Operations, continuity of supply state, fire support availability, squad strength and morale as with previous CC games - *NEW* Option to choose among Hasty Attack, Night Attack and Dawn Attack: do you keep up the pressure on the weakened, demoralised enemy or do you rest and resupply your men? - *NEW* Ability to increase the number of teams you have onscreen by splitting them into teams before the battle: Don't dare to risk your platoon commander, as a result he just sits there doing nothing each battle? Try detaching a sharpshooter from his team. Mortar teams now have "Elite" status from surviving many battles? Give them some direct action by creating bazooka teams out of them! Cons: - Animation is in some ways better, some ways worse than previous CC games: you can see a bazooka man rise up from a prone position to a kneeling position to take a shot at a Tiger tank, but teams which are supposed to be executing a fast move look like they are walking - While keyboard shortcut commands are the same as for other CC games, using the mouse to select/deselect teams takes a bit of getting used to; same for right-clicking to order them to shoot at a target or move to a location. I just triple left-click instead THE LONG STORY: I have played and loved the Close Combat franchise ever since Close Combat: The Russian Front came out. I bought CC:TRF when it was remodelled as Close Combat: Cross of Iron and hunted down CC:1 and CC:2. I bought Digital Downloads from Matrix Games when these became available as backups to my CD-ROMs and then bought some in Steam versions to ensure I never lost these games. I bought the remakes of CC:4 and CC:5 - and played through the entire Normandy campaign as BOTH the Allies and the Germans. I've got CC: Panthers in the Fog, CC:Gateway to Caen, so this makes CC: The Bloody First what, CC:8? I hesitated to buy CC:TBF for a long time because of the bad review and got CC:TBF along with the last three CC games that I had not purchased from Steam yet: Last Stand Arnhem, Wacht am Rhein and Cross of Iron - all for less than the USP for just CC:TBF - a real bargain! Thank you Steam and Slitherine/Matrix Games! 20+ hours into the game and in the middle of the second Campaign (Sicily), I CAN SAFELY SAY that this game is a worthy successor to the other CC games. I think some of the criticism of the sound effects and animation are overblown; I didn't buy multiple versions of the CC games because they had great sound effects or realistic animation. However, I do like the atmosphere the voices and sound effects add to the game: when I hear a German shout "Obergefreiter", I know an enemy team is now minus its team leader, and when I hear a big explosion, I look worriedly around the screen for who the enemy Tiger tank is targeting, because my guys don't have anything that makes an explosion as loud as an 88mm HE round exploding. The animation is more than adequate; it is enough for me to see the tank turning to face another direction or even just rotating its turret - that's the time for my bazooka team to crawl out of cover and take a shot at the flank of the Tiger! What I appreciate about CC:TBF is the 3D TERRAIN. While it is hard to see the different height levels of the terrain, holding down the CTRL key shows the contour lines of the map and also the areas of the map visible from where your mouse cursor is pointing to: if an area is shaded white, that means it is visible from where your mouse cursor is; if it is dark, then it is not visible. This applies to enemy units too: if the Tiger tank shows up as green, that means the position on the map that your mouse cursor is pointing to is a good place to move your bazooka team to! Make sure the whole side of the Tiger is green though, and not just a little bit at the front. The way to move your troops safely then, is to select the team by clicking on someone in it, or on the team icon just above the team, or (my preferred method) click on the team name in the team list on the left of the screen, then hold down the CTRL key while you move your cursor to where you want them to go, and then clicking on a suitable location, such as a knoll from which they can have a good view of the enemy. If the approach is out of sight of the enemy, I move the team fast until just before the top of the knoll, then when I hear the report "Move complete" or "In position", I have the team crawl into position on top of the knoll and press the "V" short-cut key to call-up a line-of-sight and click on the enemy unit to order the team to fire on the enemy. If the line of sight is green, well and good. If a message pops up along the line-of-sight saying "No LOS", then a bit more crawling is needed. What works in real-life really works in the game! If you are losing a lot of men just trying to get them into position, don't fast-move them over open ground but use CTRL to look for covered approaches instead. The 3D terrain enables the use of GOOD TACTICS. This is the strength of the CC franchise: the ability to use real-world tactics. Fire and movement, covering/suppressing fire, smoke, crawling away and out of the line-of-fire from effective enemy fire, officers rallying troops... I had a bazooka team break and run after mortar rounds landed near where they had been hiding. The company commander managed to reach them and rally them, and the team went back into action on a threatened flank, stopping a breakthrough by enemy armour! If you are on the attack, or if you are on the defence but have forced the attacking enemy to break and retreat off the map, you get to decide whether to continue fighting immediately, or to delay attacking in order to resupply and reinforce your men. I prefer to keep up the pressure on the enemy and launch hasty attacks, beating them back until I run low on ammunition. Keep in mind that your men's ammunition and morale levels will drop if asked to battle on for hour after hour; you can mitigate this by using fresh teams, but at some point you are going to have to stop and rest - and let your mortar and other fire support catch up with you. GOOD STRATEGY is thus important also. PLAY BALANCE and ENEMY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) seems fair. If you are just taking cover and shooting it out with the enemy, like I was doing in my first few battles while getting used to the game, both sides' casualties will be roughly the same; many wounded but few killed. If you later try suppressing the enemy with one team while moving another team closer in to assault at close quarters, enemy casualties will be higher than yours. But don't expect the enemy to take this lying down: other enemy teams may move into position to fire on both your covering and assaulting teams, or enemy mortar fire may soon be landing on your covering team! Enemy armour also doesn't move forward recklessly without infantry support, but is ready to move forward and engage you aggressively if you fire upon the enemy infantry. At the end of the day, it is the REALISM of CC:TBF that is its winning factor; not just the realism of the 3D terrain, but more the realism of the tactics - and to some extent, the strategy - that you can employ in the game. I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS GAME AS MUCH AS I AM ENJOYING IT!
• gamedeal user

  Oct 4, 2019

  Close Combat is back yes and in 3d. loving the game nice and slow I dont feel rushed. wish there was more gfx setting im feeling like its a we bit hash on the eyes for me after playing 2 hours.All i can say is after owning most of the other games this is still just has fun but in 3d so if your a CC fan get it. quick update i found the full manual in the game folder there is also a printable friendly 1 there aswell goto STEAM LIBRARY>STEAMAPPS>COMMON>CLOSE COMBAT-THE BLOODY FIRST>MANUALS and there is 2 PDF files which are the manuals
• gamedeal user

  Oct 4, 2019

  Loaded and runs smoothly. Just a few hours in but really enjoying it. Nice look to battles with uncluttered yet interesting landscapes and more details to the soldiers than expected. Pacing is just right allowing for on the fly tactics and the maps are sized so that you can keep your eye on everything. Animations, effects and sounds all pretty good. Game was a long time coming but for me I'm glad to give it a thumbs up.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 4, 2019

  Unfortunately, you'll get more content and better gameplay with less bugs by just playing the older Close Combat titles. It seems very unfinished. The gameplay was almost what I had hoped for, but the poor animations and general lack of detail across the board kills it. The game looks terrible, and it's really a shame. I would probably pay 10 dollars for this title, but 40 is an insane ask for the state that it is in.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 4, 2019

  These titles have got progressively worse and this one isn't going to buck the trend. And at £30 I was expecting more, a lot more. It is well overpriced, again, like the other previous titles. Granted, I have only played just over an hour on this one but I have played these titles since their inception in 1996 and apart from the 'new' camera angle gimmick not a lot has changed from the last two mediocre titles, Panthers in the Fog and Gateway to Caen. (This is worse graphically) I wanted to see a better more polished CC with something different from past titles. As soon as the battle began (after a tedious set up) I was just underwhelmed. If you have not already played Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem, do, that's the best one then pick this up on sale.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 4, 2019

  Sadly didn't meet my expectations and refunded. Game play was as I expected but this game should be in Early Access. Biggest issue I have is surface clipping e.g. my solders walking through bunker walls but couldn't shoot the enemy who was buried under the floor. So here are 4 squads pinging the closest (invincible) enemy & not defending themselves against enemy troops further away. Was happy to let the bugs go and wait for patches but icing on the cake was the poor graphics experience. There was so much room for bringing something amazing to a classic but to choose something that barely lifts the experience from the '90's was a bad decision.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 5, 2019

  I really, REALLY wanted this game to be what it was advertised as. Close combat with an updated engine and 3d maps. Fighting an epic persistant campaign from africa to normandy? Heck, yes, sign me up! Three hours of frustrating gameplay later, i requested a refund. Infantry combat is not terrible, although i saw them make some questionable choices about cover, part of a squad leaving buildings big enough for the entire squad, but they want to lay prone in the yard, spinning in place while waiting to engage, ignoring the large rock next to them in favor of laying prone on the ground. But the REAL issue is vehicles, and the camera. Vehicles are frustrating. They wont engage at sensible ranges, or sometimes, ANY range. MY howitzer halftrack drove up to a german halftrack and they just stared at eachother, twitching, both saying "Steep angle". So i back my halftrack off and try to shell it with my mortar team, who refuse to try, citing that its armor is too thick. Except for that its an open topped vehicle. Something is seriously wrong with the vehicles in this game. And it was heartbreaking. When i started the first battle and I got that classic Close Combat drum roll sound effect, i was stoked. "here we go!" Three hours later, so very frustrated. Read the Rock Paper Shotgun review, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/10/04/wot-i-think-close-combat-the-bloody-first/ it covers all my complaints a lot better then i can do. Maybe a patch will happen and ill come back and change my vote, but for now, stay away from this game and go play an older one instead.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 6, 2019

  I have been a CC fan since number 2, and I can see SO much promise with this series going forward. With enough updates and opening of the Steam Workshop, this game can be great. But, and it breaks my heart to say this, considering how long this game has had for development there really is no excuse for how many issues it currently has, and for some seriously questionable design choices. The biggest one is the graphics, 2D CC was abstract enough that your imagination can fill in the gaps to make it exciting, but this 3D engine lacks so much detail that it actually looks worse than the old CC games. These graphics are straight up terrible, there is no way around this point, even a tiny bit more detail would have made the world of difference. But even that is excusable if it was a solid successor to CC, but it feels like a step backwards, the UI is a bizarre info-less mess, with no tool-tips! The AI is all over the place between solid and broken, and for some reason, the awesome strategic campaign that made CC5 SO good, is gone. And finally, to show how much I really want to like this game, if it had been cheaper I would STILL have given it a thumbs up. But it just doesn't justify it's price. I'm going to keep playing and I REALLY hope it gets updated and turned around, but right now? I can't recommend.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 7, 2019

  This game is not worth the steep price tag in its current state. The Dev team did limited beta testing, if any - truly disappointing in 2019... A few of the obvious bugs I've noticed: 1. Game crashes on save, repeatedly and the save files get corrupted. 2. Unit selection and movement is problematic (half the time you click and drag the units posture changes and its just poorly done) 3. Very poor unit AI. My guys will just flat out not shoot half the time. 4. Unit spinning 5. Get "MAJOR VICTORY!" and then feedback saying that my units were pushed back and I lost objectives, despite me actually winning? 6. Very poor flow of game/mission/strategy logic. Thats not the right way to word this but basically I was playing as Axis and then had to make a command decision? To... Defend? Against the Axis? Defend against myself? What? 7. Unit portraits bug out half the time... So, $40 and all of this ive found in one day. Its almost as if they just flat out did not test this game. Shame on the devs. Shame on the leadership behind this company. Shame on all parties involved who are ripping off the consumer.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 9, 2019

  well, ive love close combat as one of my favourite strategy games from way back.. CC3 is probably my favourite game of all time. I really really wanted this to be good. I even love the 1st division following. I chose the 1st divison for my bolt action army for this reason.. they participate in pretty much every theatre. I do like the story line of progress from battle to battle.. makes sense and that feeling of trying to keep troops alive is back. I feel CC4 and 5 campaigns lost this small unit (platoon plus) intimate style of command. so thats good.. but there arent actually that many battles, and they are over quickly. the italian campaign.. was ok.. pretty darn easy and very short, but ok.. BUT THIS HAS TO BETA, right?? this game has a huge air of either rushed , or unfinished.. the graphics do kinda suck for a modern game title.. old titles older 2d CC are less painful to look at. And the battles, well I was completely underwhelmed. it felt boring... So much seems to be missing.. like its half the game any other purchase would give you.. this is like DLC content at best.. Steam tells me, i played 10 hours... and im done.. there arent even extra maps for custom scenarios after you finished all the operations. im actually unhappy with myself for saying this .. but this is a half ass attempt at best. CC3 is still a lot better IMO and calling this a close combat title release is embarrassing.