Editorial Review
Atomic Games's
Close Combat series, now published by the war-gaming veterans at SSI and Mindscape, continues with its fourth title,
Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge. Atomic Games stands by an old adage by not messing with success;
Battle of the Bulge retains many of the interface and game-play elements of the first three
Close Combat titles; only the scenarios and geography have changed.
For its latest installment, Atomic Games focuses the battles (across several dozen campaign and individual missions) and geography around the historical Battle of the Bulge. Players can command American or German troops and control a variety of military forces, including infantry, snipers, machine gunners, and flame throwers, as well as order air strikes and artillery deployment. Overall, the graphical detail of the terrain and pyrotechnics are quite good, but some players may struggle to locate the tiny military units on the murky mud terrain or bright white snow.
Computer-controlled artificial intelligence provides a formidable challenge during the single-player game. Along with the solo campaign, Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge offers both an Internet multiplayer option and a complex scenario editor for hours of additional playability. If you're a fan of the first three Close Combat games or searching for an in-depth military simulation, check out Atomic Games's Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge. --Doug Radcliffe
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Customer Reviews
Is defense really necessary? 
2006-04-30
This game was sooo aggravating. It's one of the most poorly designed WWII games I have ever played. During the real war, most casualties were caused by artillery. However in this game your artillery is little more than a fireworks show for the enemy. Your tanks and AT guns spend more time spinning around while the Germans always hit you right on the mark. What happened to the overwhelming superiority that the Allies had during the later stages of the battle? In this game, the Allies rarely get even a 2 to 1 advantage in tanks. Even when you do get an advantage, your tanks get picked off with ease while your crewmen spend their time rotating the turrets. What's the point of the "ambush"? You can start a battle with your AT guns poised , aimed, ready to go and on the defensive. However, the Germans still manage to get off a first shot and knock out your gun even though they are attacking. What a load of crap! What's the deal with the German Rocket artillery? They never miss and always seem to know where your main guns are no matter where you put them. Make sure you put a time limit on each battle. Otherwise you may be in for a battle that never ends. For some reason, the Germans will simply stop attacking and do nothing. I thought the Battle of the Bulge was supposed to be about a major German OFFENSIVE in 1944. Sometimes they will just sit back and wait for you to come to them. This is when they are supposed to be that attackers!! What a waste of a game.
CC3 is better...this is...aggravating 
2003-09-09
I found this game more aggravating than enjoyable, and was constantly reloading maps to try and place my units in a more strategic area...which I wasn't very successful at. When my units did have LOS enough to "fire" they spent most of the time yelling about "no clear shot". Meanwhile, the Americans can do little to nothing to stop the German tanks, while in reality a well placed round from a Sherman, AT gun or even a bazooka could at least immobilize a german tank. The computer controlled german tanks have 100% comprehension of the terrain and even the layout of units they shouldn't be able to see, firing all the way across the map. The computer controlled mortar crews can knock out every half track and armored car you own, while in reality they shouldn't even be able to see them yet, while your mortar crews are useless most of the time. The player controlled units are slow, their turrets are usually traversing the wrong direction and they are always "aiming" and rarely firing. A target can come around the corner, its turret already rotating and knock out a sherman before you can even make its turret line up to fire. Very, very annoying when American armor is in such short supply...but it lacks punch anyway. Watching the historical accounts of tank battles, 5 shermans in real life could knock out even a tiger...in this game they can only draw fire to themselves while not doing a bit of damage to the enemy...can't I at least immobilize a panzer once in a while...throw me a bone here. However the infantry units are great, fighting a hopeless battle until the panzers show up to blow 'em to hell.
I found CC3 to be more forgiving to sunday gamers, with the russian T34's and tank destroyers being an even match for panzers. I would love to see an AT rifle score at least one hit on a tank though...some day maybe.
Historical accuracy in question from reviews 2003-07-21
I haven't played this game, but I am something of an expert on the
Ardennes Offensive (Watch on the Rhine/Autumn Mist) and judging by the comments of other reviewers, the game has the Germans with lots of Tiger tanks (they didn't say which version). Regardless of version, none of the three German armies that were involved
possessed much in the way of Tiger tanks. Peiper's Kampgrup had
about three dozen, almost all of which broke down. Overall, the
attacking Germans were estimated to have less that 300. Nor did
lack of gasoline have a great deal to do with the halting of the German attacks - Peiper, for example, was waylaid and slowed down and eventually stopped by all those bridges the US engineers
blew up in his face, and US Armor and artillery. The Germans had
plenty of gasoline accumulated for the operation - over a million units - but trying to get it to frontline units was practically impossible - small road network and traffic jams (the Germans had
too much horse drawn equipment for mobile warfare). The old and
historically nonsensical Battle of the Bulge motion picture had
promulgated a lot of innaccurate beliefs about the battle.
Probably Good If It Works 
2003-07-04
This would proably be a very good game, like the others in the series, if you can get it to run! I have tried it on two Windows 98 machines and my new XP PC. It will not run on any of them. Buyer beware...the online help is also useless.
Getting better and worse 
2003-03-02
I'll start by saying that the game play has gotten a lot better. Tank battles make sense unlike in CC2 where you could send 4 Shermans against a Panther and have them blown up even before firing a shot, it took them hours to load. The tank battles of CC4 are a good evolution on those of CC3. Infantry battles are also very good. In CC3 the infantry fell like vietcongs in a Rambo movie, in CC4 it is a lot more balanced. I have some reservations about the artillery, it never seems to hit anything, air support on the other hand is very effective.
For the rest the gameplay is excellent. From the military and historical point of view however, they have taken out several features. With tanks you never know the caliber of a gun or even the actual name of the tank, its just middle, heavy or light. If you are an expert the graphics allow you to distinguish them. They have also done away with the original names of the infantry units and the small arms that they carry.
Infantry tactics are absolutely realistic and they have also inserted the historically factual lack of fuel in case of the Germans. If you are playing for the first time nothing will save you from a shock when the first time your forces are wipped out but once you get used to it the game is just great.
The gameplay and the background are incredible and it remains the best WWII strategy game around.
as good as any other close combat game!! 
2003-01-18
Atomic Games's Close Combat series, now published by the war-gaming veterans at SSI and Mindscape, continues with its fourth title, Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge. Atomic Games stands by an old adage by not messing with success; Battle of the Bulge retains many of the interface and game-play elements of the first three Close Combat titles; only the scenarios and geography have changed.
For its latest installment, Atomic Games focuses the battles (across several dozen campaign and individual missions) and geography around the historical Battle of the Bulge. Players can command American or German troops and control a variety of military forces, including infantry, snipers, machine gunners, and flame throwers, as well as order air strikes and artillery deployment. Overall, the graphical detail of the terrain and pyrotechnics are quite good, but some players may struggle to locate the tiny military units on the murky mud terrain or bright white snow.
Computer-controlled artificial intelligence provides a formidable challenge during the single-player game. Along with the solo campaign, Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge offers both an Internet multiplayer option and a complex scenario editor for hours of additional playability. If you're a fan of the first three Close Combat games or searching for an in-depth military simulation, check out Atomic Games's Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge. --Doug Radcliffe
as good as any other close combat game!! 2003-01-18
I have played close combat II (trial version only), III, and IV. I got close combat 3 a few years ago off of the internet and loved it i played it on and off ever since. One day I decided to get another one of the close combat games. I looked at many reviews on amazon.com and ign. And i finally decided to go with close combat 4. I also downloaded CC 2, i liked it but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. CC 4 has better grafics then all of the previous close combat games and better sound. you can see a puff of smoke come from a tank when it moves even. there are cut screens and they are real footage of WWII but the sound isn't original! i meen come on they use the sounds from the game for the guns. now it is great when you are playing the game but it just doesn't go at all with movies. your infantry has a chance with killing a tank if it has an anti tank weapon (ex. panzerfaust germans). the battles are real from WWII. you can create your own scenario but I found it tricky because I didn't get the manual with mine (I think it will come with it from amazon, I bought it from compusa. the maps are good, i know in other reviews they said that they got repetitive, well i have been playing it for a few weeks now and they are different despite all of them being covered in snow.
Not enough battle groups. 2002-02-14
Close Combat Battle of the Bulge is a good game compared to Close Combat 1,2 or 3 but it still needs improvements like more battle groups in the battle maker. Although there are a lot of maps to fight on they get to all look the same after while with all that snow. There are just not enough types of infantry or tank units to keep your attention for very long. But I suppose I might be asking too much from a $20 game. I say if you're looking for a small-scale strategy game, go with Close Combat 5.
Try out CC-3 the Russian Front 2002-02-05
I thought this game was kind of fun to play. Yet, it deserved a 2 star rating because it is actually worse than its predicessor close combat 3, the russian front. This is unforgivable as the gaming industry is probably one of the most competitive of all software industries. When I was playing this game I kept thinking about "why don't I just uninstall this game and go back to play 'the russian front' instead" The two sides are more evenly matched in the russian front. The role of the tanks and infantry are more realistically modelled in the russian front. (Sure it's no fun when you have 20 men chopped to pieces by a single tank when deployed improperly, but that's what happens even if your infantry got a couple of AT-rifles or Panzerfausts). You could actually tell what's going on in CC3. With battle of the bulge, most of the times you just send in your troops and hope for the best. Many of my favorite features in CC3, like requisition your own units is unavailable in this game. And the heavier German tanks rumored to be available to you in this game is actually not, well I haven't seen one King Tiger or Ferdinand yet.
Try out CC-3 the Russian Front 2002-02-05
I thought this game was kind of fun to play. Yet, it deserved a 2 star rating because it is actually worse than its predicessor close combat 3, the russian front. This is unforgivable as the gaming industry is probably one of the most competitive of all software industries. When I was playing this game I kept thinking about "why don't I just uninstall this game and go back to play 'the russian front' instead" The two sides are more evenly matched in the russian front. The role of the tanks and infantry are more realistically modelled in the russian front. (Sure it's no fun when you have 20 men chopped to pieces by a single tank when deployed improperly, but that's what happens even if your infantry got a couple of AT-rifles or Panzerfausts). You could actually tell what's going on in CC3. With battle of the bulge, most of the times you just send in your troops and hope for the best. Many of my favorite features in CC3, like requisition your own units is unavailable in this game. And the heavier German tanks rumored to be available to you in this game is actually not, well I haven't seen one King Tiger or Ferdinand yet.
