Video Games

by Patrick S. Baker

“Take command of men who act like real soldiers” was the tag line on the Close Combat box.

When first released in 1996 Close Combat took the war game world by storm. It was not just one of the first real-time tactics/real-time strategy (RTT/RTS) war games, but also boldly claimed to be an accurate simulation of modern war. The game was developed by Atomic Games and published by Microsoft, and was one of the few games published by the software giant at that time.

It was originally announced as Beyond Squad Leader and was to be a digital sequel of Avalon Hill’s million-selling Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) board war game franchise.  However, the companies’ affiliation was fraught and, eventually, Atomic and Avalon Hill parted ways. Atomic renamed the project Close Combat, and continued the development, with Microsoft coming in as publisher.

By Mitch Reed

When I first heard about this game being ported to a digital format, I was excited and also worried on how some ports from board games turn out. After bugging Dave Thompson for a preview copy, I got the chance to check it out, and it is amazing and will make you salivate to play over and over again.

By Mitch Reed

Porting tabletop games to digital is a hit or miss endeavor. Sometimes the developers get it right and sometimes we end up getting a game that just fails. Recently acquired the rights from Warlord Games to bring the aerial combat game Blood Red Skies to the small screen. How well this will turn out remains to be seen, but my talks with some insiders make me feel confident that this port will not crash and burn.

By Max Chee

To my knowledge, there are not that many medieval tactical wargames out there. I can name a few of the top of my head like Total War Medieval 2 and XIII Century. Both are great games in their own rights but none of them really tickle my love for miniature wargaming like the Field of Glory series from .