Close Combat - Gateway to Caen (Mac)

Ported using Wineskin.

Review:

Have you ever been in the middle of a firefight and felt like you needed to run away to survive? At some point, in Slitherine-developed Close Combat: Gateway to Caen, your men will feel that way. Their resolve will fail and they will tell you you are crazy before running in the opposite direction that you told them to.

Gateway to Caen is set during World War II as Mongomery’s 21st Army attempts to capture the Norman City of Caen, originally a British D-Day objective. The game offers you the chance to play as either German or British soldiers on thirty different battlefields in the Odon Valley, west of Caen.

Up until now, I had never played a Close Combat game. I had heard of A Bridge Too Far and the shooter spin-off that was produced a while back but I had never taken the time to play any of the games, instead usually opting for turn-based wargames. This was a rather unfortunate decision, as I was missing out on one of the most unique wargaming experiences I have ever played.

Gateway to Caen is a real-time pausable game. With this in mind, I went into the game expecting to have to pause a lot to think things over. Instead, I found that the pace of the game suited my playstyle well, instead only having to pause during major firefights to get my bearings.

It did not start out that way, though. After playing the tutorials, I thought something along the lines of “hey, this is pretty easy!” I was wrong. The game is simple to learn to control, with a small amount of orders being issued through a menu that comes up after selecting a unit and right-clicking a spot. There is a small interface that shows information on your currently selected squad, a minimap, and holds three buttons for advanced, limited tactics such as airstrikes and artillery. The theories behind many of the tactics are even very simple. However, once you actually get onto the battlefield, and you have a dozen or more squads to control, while simultaneously having an AI opponent that is responding to your every mover, it gets difficult pretty quickly.

“Wounded. Dead. Wounded. Wounded. Dead. Broken.” For quite some time, that is what my forward squads were reading after only a short time in battle. Those squads that were more broken than dead were busy running away. I was in cover. I was laying down suppressing fire. I was not sure what I was doing wrong.

There were a number of times I gave orders to units and wondered what they were doing. All too often, I would have an entire squad run out into an open road and then start crawling across it instead of sneaking down a hedge like I had ordered them to. At first, I thought that maybe they took the quickest route available but their chosen route was obviously longer, having not gone in a straight line like the original route was planned to be. That being said, it seemed that they would default to crawling when under fire, which makes plenty of sense, as, once under fire, I could not get them to reliably get back up and run to cover. However, despite these issues slowly contributing to my losses, they were not the biggest issues.

My biggest issues, by far, were my reluctance to use smoke and issues positioning my soldiers. Smoke tactics are essential in this game. Laying down smoke in the right place at the right time can be a life or death move for your soldiers, depending on the intensity of the situation.

In terms of positioning my soldiers, despite the flat look of maps in Gateway to Caen, each of the maps has its own heightmap. You can check the height, and the cover rating, of any spot on the map, at any time, by holding the right-mouse button when the cursor is over it. When you are looking at an open field, it can be very easy to forget that the field is not actually flat. The game gives you ample warning that your men are not able to shoot at a target if you do happen to forget but there are times when it is simply too late to recover from having positioned your squads poorly after forgetting.

However, when you lay down smoke, start supporting fire through the smoke and then rush a building to clear out the enemies while a tank sits outside waiting to annihilate anyone that dares escape, the feeling is great. Watching your plan fall into place after carefully positioning your units is a joy like no other. More so in Gateway to Caen because of the slow, tactical nature of the game and the punishment for errors due to the smart AI.

At this point, I should probably mention that the primary objective of a match is rather simple. There are capture points scattered across each map and your goal is to capture them all. Sometimes there are many, sometimes there are few. Sometimes they are easily defended areas like buildings. Other times, they are in the middle of an open field. Each map places these capture points in a variety of different areas and will be sure to test you as a player.

You can get even more depth by playing campaigns and operations, of both the historical and fictional variety, where you move squads around a Risk-like map in turns, getting into real-time tactical battles when your forces collide with the opponent’s on a tile. I found these campaigns to be entertaining, if a bit tedious at times.

In all, Gateway to Caen is an extremely well-made real-time tactical strategy game in a long running series that manages depth in a simplicity rarely seen in wargames. There is some meat to its bones, as well, with a number of campaigns and operations on top of its more than 30 battle scenarios. If you are a fan of real-time wargames, I highly suggest picking the game up.