Close Combat: The Battle of the Bulge

The Good
Extremely tense, close scenarios; top-down view (which I vastly prefer to cheesy, pseudo-3D views for getting an idea of what's going on on the battlefield); two very different sides (different quality of troops, different types of arms and vehicles, different objectives); airborne units kick butt (smart enough to pick up German Panzefäuste, so they can even knock out Tigers, but only once per unit)

The Bad
The amount of stomach acid each scenario can build up....

The Bottom Line
Contrary to the previous reviewer, I would say that with patience, a good gamer who knows a little bit about military history or tactics can win as either side. An impatient gamer who doesn't want to learn a little from experience is likely to find this game infuriatingly painful. Keep you infantry under cover until they have a good shot: make the enemy come to you. Similarly for American armor --- of course Shermans and Hellcats can knock out Panthers and even Tigers, but they have to do it from close range, shooting at the back of the German tank if possible, and preferably from defilade. After a few weeks of playing this game, I could win any of the scenarios, and the campaign, as the Americans.... but the cost is high.

The best endorsement I can give this game is that in 2001, I had a business trip to Brussels, and made a point of spending a day in the Ardennes to see some of the places where these actions were really fought. Go and see the monument raised by the people of Belgium to the memory of the victims of the Malmédy massacre, with its inscription about Nazi bestiality, and just see if that doesn't charge you up to win as the Americans the next time you play.