Close Combat Mac Review (1999)

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From the archive: this review first ran on the Mac Gaming Alliance (MGA), the Mac games site that lived here on DimensionZ in the late 1990s. It was published around 1999 and is reproduced as originally written. More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Close Combat is a World War II simulation. In this game, you control American Allied units who just landed in Normandy, or German troops attempting to hold their ground. Not everything can go according to plan, however, because your troops, and enemy troops, can become mentally unstable, either to your advantage or to the enemy’s advantage. Video coverage of the actual D-Day campaign shows you what you need to do, what you did, and what really happened.

Gameplay

Close Combat requires a Power Macintosh due to large amounts of information it has to process. Gameplay is typically very fast. You will really feel that you are really commanding troops in Normandy.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Close Combat are very good, for the most part. They can appear “grainy” during combat when you have magnified the battlefield 100%. Sound in Close Combat is also very good, and unlike graphics, it does not falter.

Interface

The interface in Close Combat is very simple: point and click. In the battlefield, there are also added conveniences in terms of buttons. Move out, Defend, and Pull Back lets you control all your troops without having to control each team.

Difficulty

Even on the Easy level, Close Combat is a very difficult game. Sometimes the only way to get past a particular battle is to do your best and refight it, that way the enemy is weakened.

Conclusion

Close Combat is a very good game. While the graphics could use a little work, the rest of the game is done very nicely and realistically.

Find a copy

Close Combat has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Close Combat on Amazon.

Ratings use the MGA’s original 1–5 apple scale. Prices, system requirements and web links in this review are from the time it was written.