Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far

The Good
CCII was a massive improvement over the original. The graphics were absolutely stunning, and just about everything looked and worked better. I should point out that I don't typically rate looks very highly, but when you saw CCI and CCII one after the other it was mind blowing.

But what made CCII the best of all was the frantic activity. You absolutely have to get the tanks to the bridge or you would lose. I'd had more than one occasion where one of the bridges en-route was blown, or the paras were pushed back from the bridgehead, and that was pretty much that. On the other hand I had another mission where the paras managed to capture the 2nd bridge (the RR one) and that mission was trivially easy - with two supply points they had no problems.

The Bad
Once again there was no artillery, and all we got were excuses why you couldn't possibly put artillery in the game. Of course CCIII included it, so that was all the more annoying.

Another issue is that the maps are spread apart. A small patch of land over here is in the game, and a small patch over there. The massive amount of land between the two isn't. There's no "strategic" part to the game at all, it's purely a fight on this map, then a fight on that map. I also found the jumping from location to location to be rather annoying. Of course it might be difficult to have a strategic game and a unit-based game together, but they almost pulled it off in CCIV so I'm not convinced this one had to be the way it was.

The Bottom Line
Of all of the CC series, I enjoyed this one the most. I highly recommend it.