Close Combat: First to Fight is a first person tactical shooter from Destineer Studios. It operates more as a simulation for real combat under the pretext of combat tactics of the United States Marine Corp. You are the commander of a four man fire team, sent into hostile territories to perform whatever task that your superiors deem necessary, and with the least possible loss of life.
I really was impressed with the game play graphics, but the cut-scenes left my feeling a little dry. There are just too many games out there that use cut-scenes to capture the eye. Here we are treated to a mock-up news network's coverage of the different scenarios that the marines have, or will soon embark upon. However, all of the cut-scenes are sub-par compared to the in game graphics, and I found this left me a bit upset, seeing the glamour of the engine in game, then the rather bland cut-scenes between the stages. The sound was a good mix of background noises and some music, enough to not detract, but it rarely added to the game-play experience.
Now, at first glance installing this game I was not really looking forward to it. I like First Person Shooters, but have never really enjoyed the over burdened play of strategic first person shooters, but First to Fight had a simple enough interface to pick up and go from the start. Most of your tactical decisions are made form a radial menu via the right mouse button. There are separate commands you can give from that radial menu asking your fire team to either cover a specific spot, provide suppressions fire, or advance to the selected spot. The fourth selection varies depending upon the situation you are in. You can call in a sniper team to cover your exit, call in air support to take out a hard to clear spot, or mortar fire into an area. These are determined by the situation for said area, and can only be done so many times per mission. Then there is the room takedown command. When your team is facing a door, with little to no idea what is waiting on the other side, you can select the room takedown command. This queues the Marines to the door or entryway and awaits your go command. On your signal, each Marine enters the room and takes up a strategic position and beings to clear out the room.
I rarely had a problem with the marines themselves doing anything that was wrong, and the AI seemed to perform well in situations like a room takedown. The only other command at your disposal is the Comply command. You can use this in situations where you have routed a large group of the enemy, and give them an option of dropping their weapons, then cuff them to remove them from the equation. I like the option of this command, but found it very hard to use in the middle of a fire-fight where someone is shooting at you to take the time to right click, ask him to surrender, and hope he does that, and not continue to shoot at you. It also seemed that this would happen very rarely in the situations I found myself in, call me gun crazy, but I tend to shoot first if they are pointing a gun at me.
Where I was most impressed by the game was the AI of the three support marines in the group. They are not totally mindless automatons that are just there awaiting your orders. They can, and do help with the missions, and rarely did I find myself in a sticky situation facilitated by the other three marines in the fire team, although there are a few times you need to circle back to let them catch up with the squad.
Multiplayer for this game would be much more likeable if the other players actually worked the way the AI does in the game, but in my searches for a group of people that played this game as it was meant to be (a strategic first person shooter), and not as a run and gun mission came up mostly dry.
From my experiences, Close Combat: First to Fight does everything the designers wanted it to do. It is a superb first person tactical simulation of marine combat. The well designed AI in the single player version makes the game more enjoyable by the simple fact you do not feel like you are babysitting your AI teammates as well as doing your part, they are actually there to help you get your job done. The only detractions I have towards the game are the cut-scenes. I really think those can add to a game's flavor, and the quality of those found here did not deliver on the visual standpoint. I would recommend this game to anyone who is interested in the tactics of a firefight, as opposed to just running in a shooting everything that moves, while hoping that your armor holds up.
