Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far” is a top-down real-time tactical strategy game developed and published by Atomic Games in 1997. The second installment of the Close Combat series, the game is played on a two-dimensional map with three-dimensional terrain elements. The game is set during the Operation Market Garden campaign in World War II, where the Allied forces are tasked with capturing key bridges in the Netherlands to end the war quickly.
The game’s mechanics are real-time, with players controlling squads of soldiers and vehicles in combat scenarios. The game features both single-player and multiplayer modes, with the single-player mode comprising a series of missions that increase in difficulty as the game progresses. The multiplayer mode allows players to compete against each other in skirmishes or co-operate in a campaign. A range of units are available to utilize in your army, including infantry, tanks, and artillery. Each unit has unique strengths and weaknesses, such as armor, firepower, mobility, and morale level which affect their combat effectiveness. Units have limited fields of vision (particularly vehicles), suffer from fatigue, have limited ammunition, can be suppressed, will break and flee if their morale drops too low, and generally behave in a manner similar to real life (although there are options to make units always visible, always obey orders, and/or fearless). Some units, such as the command units, have better morale, leadership, or combat proficiency and can give your army a boost. Players can customize their unit formations and give orders to individual units to achieve their objectives. The game requires players to use various strategies and tactics to achieve their objectives. Players need to balance their offensive and defensive capabilities, considering the terrain and environmental factors. Units need to be used efficiently, with infantry providing support for tanks and artillery. Players need to manage their unit’s morale, keeping them in high spirits and avoiding panic. Communication and coordination are also essential, with players needing to issue orders quickly and effectively. The game’s environment plays a crucial role in game play. The terrain is based on the actual locations of the Operation Market Garden campaign, including towns, forests, and rivers. The terrain affects the combat, with units being able to take cover behind buildings or trees, and vehicles being able to traverse certain types of terrain better than others. The terrain also affects the visibility, with players needing to use reconnaissance and scout units to spot. Depending on the map, terrain features can include a variety of features providing concealment and cover, such as hills, hedges, foxholes, trenches, streams and buildings. It also affects movement and combat, with units having difficulty moving through rough ground or crossing water obstacles. Weather conditions, such as rain and fog, can affect visibility and accuracy. Buildings and other structures offer cover and concealment, making them strategic locations to hold or capture.
A Bridge Too Far offers a range of game play modes, including single-player battles, operations, sector campaigns, a grand campaign, and a head-to-head multiplayer mode. The battles depicts a single one-day engagement, such as the taking of the Arnhem rail bridge and generally are played in a single seating. Operations are made up of a series of battles, and depict an operation spanning several days in a specific location. The sector campaign offers a larger scope of combat than the operation or battle. Sector campaigns take place in one of the three sectors: Arnhem, Nijmegen, or Eindhoven. Each sector campaign consists of a number of operations fought in parallel. The Grand Campaign is the largest in scope of all the game play modes, and offers the most strategy. It combines all three Sector Campaigns into a single campaign, depicting the events of Operation Market Garden starting from September 17, 1944. The ultimate objective is Arnhem.
Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far is a great strategic and tactical game that offers a range of game play modes and challenges. Its focus on the small-unit combat as well as the overarching grand campaign, provides a unique and engaging game play experience. The game’s environmental factors and strategic game play require players to think critically and adapt to changing situations, making it a challenging yet enjoyable game to play.
This series of games is the standard to which I measure all RTS games that I play. It started me down the road of playing all of the close combat games. It wasn’t without its faults the biggest of which was it felt like the AI was had god-like targeting and accuracy. Your units could be hiding deep in the bushes and an enemy tank would roll up and murder them all and their was nothing you could do about it.. Meanwhile your units would be ambushed by completely hidden enemy units and there was no way of hiding. However, it was still an amazing game and I would play it quite often. Probably the feature that I found darkly hilarious was you could run over the infantry units with tanks and it would count as a kill. The down side to this was that you could also run over your own units if you weren’t careful. There was more than one time that I lost part of a unit because they decided to run right in front of their comrades in a tank. Still, A Bridge To Far and its successors, were the best RTS games I have ever played, and would highly recommend to anyone interested in playing a historical strategy game.
