![]() I will continue to follow Battlefront and I really do hope they make improvements in the future as I really do like Combat Mission. I suspect the battlefront forum types are going to say something nasty here before too long as they despise criticism being directed at their favorite games, but I just wanted to post my viewpoint. Armor penetration is accurate and a plethora of ordnance is modeled as well.ĭespite this, however, I can't recommend this at $60. The weapons modelling is great and the vehicles are well researched. Much of the scenario design is also quite good and well thought out. The TOE seems to be very accurate and some effort was made in recreating it. There are a few good things to say however. Some will claim this is due to them being a small business, however I see far superior graphics from small publishers with ever increasing frequency now. The graphics, while not hideous, are also nothing to write home about. Larger maps can't even be rendered appropriately which is irritating for the ranges we are fighting at in conventional modern combat. The engine itself feels incredibly old and pushed to its absolute limits. While this type of AI was more or less the norm in the 1990s-early 2000s it is very much showing its age and can be incredibly boring. While the enemy AI can do quite well as a fixed defender, it is incredibly poor and predictable for meeting engagements and when it has to assault the player. Your units have almost no autonomy and all enemy movements have to be pre-programmed by the scenario creator. While I think this is likely easier to code, the computer getting bad 'rolls' for your guys LOS results in enemy tanks popping up 10 meters away from your own men seemingly out of nowhere and can result in some incredibly unfair and unrealistic firefights. Unlike most modern games that use something similar to a what you see is what you get approach, the visibility of enemy units is determined by a roll of the dice depending on numerous factors. ![]() I was immediately reminded of the incredibly poor line of site system used upon playing the first couple of scenarios. Luckily with the transition to steam this practice seems to have stopped. On top of this they began charging for patches by calling them 'engine updates' more or less hurting people that bought their games early. I suspect this has also resulted in them concentrating most of their energy on those government contracts and neglecting their regular consumers even more. Battlefront has show little interest in innovation and primarily relies on a small cadre of loyal buyers and government contracts to fund their operation. The engine feels antiquated, the AI is still non-existent and the interface, while not horrible, feels outdated. ![]() ![]() Due to the fascination with the topics covered and the supposed improvements made to the engine over the last several years I did decide to pick up this release to see what was up. For a while I quit playing CM2 games, even reverting to some of the earlier and much more ambitious CM1 games for a while. Something I noticed starting with Fortress Italy was a major lack of innovation between games. I've been playing CM2 (the current engine the game uses) games since Shock Force and have owned several games using it, namely Normandy and Fortress Italy. I picked up the CMCW on the official battlefront website a month ago and feel like I've played it enough to give it a review. ![]()
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