TheFjordFox

I wholeheartedly agree with the statements towards EA. F them. "It's in the game"... not anymore! Now it might be in the fifteenth DLC!

I've just started playing through one of probably the top 10 CC mods of all time - Meuse Crossing for The Longest Day. And I must say, it's a treat! Such a beautiful gem of a game! Contrary to most other vanilla CC games, this one is set during the invasion of France in 1940, as opposed to late-war like most other, if not all, official games of the franchise focused around ww2. It's such a blast using early war equipment, and seeing French tanks I've never seen before!

Hello there, good people!
So, let me cut to the chase! I have recently taken upon myself a mission. Perhaps a calling even, some may say.
Are we talking a noble pursuit for the betterment of mankind? ...No. Certainly not! If anything, quite the contrary! I have decided to fight my way through all the war that the Close Combat franchise has to offer! Well... All the war that the singleplayer grand campaigns have to offer, anyway.
My goal is: Play through every single Close Combat game to ever exist. With both factions in the longest campaign the games offer up, on the hardest difficulty there is, making things even harder for myself than the developers originally intended for it to be, as we move along!
I figured, instead of posting about each game separately... Why not have a project collection, where everything can be located as it comes out? And so here we are! I might even throw in some reviews of the games as time goes by, as I certainly am getting a good sense of what is what, and the differences between the various iterations as I progress through my personal mission!
Now, I am a seasoned veteran of the franchise, and have been playing Close Combat games for, at the time of writing this, around two and a half decades. My first experience with the series was with the Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far demo. This was back before everyone had "the internet". Whatever that place was. However - a friend of mine, when I was in my early elementary school years, had gotten his hands on the demo from a CD in a gaming-magazine! He told me about it, and I through it sounded amazing. So we went to his place, and I was not wrong! Instantly hooked me right in like a true sucker! And here I am, 25 years later and still playing these dang games! I have for a while been considering playing through them all with both factions, and put the playthroughs out on youtube. And well, I finally got to it! Why the heck not, right!? It's somewhat of a niche game, and some of it's iterations barely have any LPs of them, so I enjoy the thought that one day, anyone will be able to come to my youtube channel and have all the games laid out for them to choose from in a let's play type format! With some reviews, when the time comes, and heck - even some of the better mods out there being played through as well!
Why do I bother with this? Well. As you will surely figure out for yourself if you watch any substantial amount of these videos, it is simply because I am insane, and don't have my priorities in life straight!
Close Combat. A love and hate relationship that has it's ups and downs. It has me jumping out of my seat screaming in joy at unsuspected victories. It also, on the other end of the spectrum, have me close to beating a hole through my screen at the utter unbelievability of it's BS at times! So... come along from the rides, and see the best and the worst sides of me as the journey goes!

I will now list the four playthroughs I have already got out there below. In the future, more will be added. If there is a specific CC game you'd like to see next, that I haven't played already, I am certainly open for requests on that part. However, I am likely to finish the vanilla games before I dip into the glorious mods that are out there! You can suggest those too - it will just take a while until I get to them!
Either way! I will list them like this; the aggressor in the campaign first, then the defender second. So for the Normandie landings - the Allies, then the Germans. For the invasion of Russia - The Germans, then the Russians. Alright! Here we go!

Close Combat: Wacht Am Rhein (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Wacht Am Rhein (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: The Longest Day (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: The Longest Day (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat 3: Cross Of Iron (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat 3: Cross Of Iron (Allied Grand Campaign)

That is the four iterations of the franchise I currently have available out there at the time of making this post. More is sure to follow soon, and I hope some of y'all will want to come along for the ride! If you got any questions, suggestions, hate or love, I am receptive to it all! Let me know what you think, wether you think I'm doing allright, or you think I need to make some changes to how I do things! For all I know, you might be right!
Oh well! If you're still reading at this point, I would like to thank you for your attention, and I sincerely hope your time spent with this does not feel wasted! Y'all have a good one, folks! And may Cthulhu bless you!
Cheers!

Hello there, good people!
So, let me cut to the chase! I have recently taken upon myself a mission. Perhaps a calling even, some may say.
Are we talking a noble pursuit for the betterment of mankind? ...No. Certainly not! If anything, quite the contrary! I have decided to fight my way through all the war that the Close Combat franchise has to offer! Well... All the war that the singleplayer grand campaigns have to offer, anyway.
My goal is: Play through every single Close Combat game to ever exist. With both factions in the longest campaign the games offer up, on the hardest difficulty there is, making things even harder for myself than the developers originally intended for it to be, as we move along!
I figured, instead of posting about each game separately... Why not have a project collection, where everything can be located as it comes out? And so here we are! I might even throw in some reviews of the games as time goes by, as I certainly am getting a good sense of what is what, and the differences between the various iterations as I progress through my personal mission!
Now, I am a seasoned veteran of the franchise, and have been playing Close Combat games for, at the time of writing this, around two and a half decades. My first experience with the series was with the Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far demo. This was back before everyone had "the internet". Whatever that place was. However - a friend of mine, when I was in my early elementary school years, had gotten his hands on the demo from a CD in a gaming-magazine! He told me about it, and I through it sounded amazing. So we went to his place, and I was not wrong! Instantly hooked me right in like a true sucker! And here I am, 25 years later and still playing these dang games! I have for a while been considering playing through them all with both factions, and put the playthroughs out on youtube. And well, I finally got to it! Why the heck not, right!? It's somewhat of a niche game, and some of it's iterations barely have any LPs of them, so I enjoy the thought that one day, anyone will be able to come to my youtube channel and have all the games laid out for them to choose from in a let's play type format! With some reviews, when the time comes, and heck - even some of the better mods out there being played through as well!
Why do I bother with this? Well. As you will surely figure out for yourself if you watch any substantial amount of these videos, it is simply because I am insane, and don't have my priorities in life straight!
Close Combat. A love and hate relationship that has it's ups and downs. It has me jumping out of my seat screaming in joy at unsuspected victories. It also, on the other end of the spectrum, have me close to beating a hole through my screen at the utter unbelievability of it's BS at times! So... come along from the rides, and see the best and the worst sides of me as the journey goes!

I will now list the four playthroughs I have already got out there below. In the future, more will be added. If there is a specific CC game you'd like to see next, that I haven't played already, I am certainly open for requests on that part. However, I am likely to finish the vanilla games before I dip into the glorious mods that are out there! You can suggest those too - it will just take a while until I get to them!
Either way! I will list them like this; the aggressor in the campaign first, then the defender second. So for the Normandie landings - the Allies, then the Germans. For the invasion of Russia - The Germans, then the Russians. Alright! Here we go!

Close Combat: Wacht Am Rhein (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Wacht Am Rhein (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: The Longest Day (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: The Longest Day (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat 3: Cross Of Iron (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat 3: Cross Of Iron (Allied Grand Campaign)

That is the four iterations of the franchise I currently have available out there at the time of making this post. More is sure to follow soon, and I hope some of y'all will want to come along for the ride! If you got any questions, suggestions, hate or love, I am receptive to it all! Let me know what you think, wether you think I'm doing allright, or you think I need to make some changes to how I do things! For all I know, you might be right!
Oh well! If you're still reading at this point, I would like to thank you for your attention, and I sincerely hope your time spent with this does not feel wasted! Y'all have a good one, folks! And may Cthulhu bless you!
Cheers!

Hello there, good people!
So, let me cut to the chase! I have recently taken upon myself a mission. Perhaps a calling even, some may say.
Are we talking a noble pursuit for the betterment of mankind? ...No. Certainly not! If anything, quite the contrary! I have decided to fight my way through all the war that the Close Combat franchise has to offer! Well... All the war that the singleplayer grand campaigns have to offer, anyway.
My goal is: Play through every single Close Combat game to ever exist. With both factions in the longest campaign the games offer up, on the hardest difficulty there is, making things even harder for myself than the developers originally intended for it to be, as we move along!
I figured, instead of posting about each game separately... Why not have a project collection, where everything can be located as it comes out? And so here we are! I might even throw in some reviews of the games as time goes by, as I certainly am getting a good sense of what is what, and the differences between the various iterations as I progress through my personal mission!
Now, I am a seasoned veteran of the franchise, and have been playing Close Combat games for, at the time of writing this, around two and a half decades. My first experience with the series was with the Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far demo. This was back before everyone had "the internet". Whatever that place was. However - a friend of mine, when I was in my early elementary school years, had gotten his hands on the demo from a CD in a gaming-magazine! He told me about it, and I through it sounded amazing. So we went to his place, and I was not wrong! Instantly hooked me right in like a true sucker! And here I am, 25 years later and still playing these dang games! I have for a while been considering playing through them all with both factions, and put the playthroughs out on youtube. And well, I finally got to it! Why the heck not, right!? It's somewhat of a niche game, and some of it's iterations barely have any LPs of them, so I enjoy the thought that one day, anyone will be able to come to my youtube channel and have all the games laid out for them to choose from in a let's play type format! With some reviews, when the time comes, and heck - even some of the better mods out there being played through as well!
Why do I bother with this? Well. As you will surely figure out for yourself if you watch any substantial amount of these videos, it is simply because I am insane, and don't have my priorities in life straight!
Close Combat. A love and hate relationship that has it's ups and downs. It has me jumping out of my seat screaming in joy at unsuspected victories. It also, on the other end of the spectrum, have me close to beating a hole through my screen at the utter unbelievability of it's BS at times! So... come along from the rides, and see the best and the worst sides of me as the journey goes!

I will now list the four playthroughs I have already got out there below. In the future, more will be added. If there is a specific CC game you'd like to see next, that I haven't played already, I am certainly open for requests on that part. However, I am likely to finish the vanilla games before I dip into the glorious mods that are out there! You can suggest those too - it will just take a while until I get to them!
Either way! I will list them like this; the aggressor in the campaign first, then the defender second. So for the Normandie landings - the Allies, then the Germans. For the invasion of Russia - The Germans, then the Russians. Alright! Here we go!

Close Combat: Wacht Am Rhein (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Wacht Am Rhein (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: The Longest Day (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: The Longest Day (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem (Allied Grand Campaign)
Close Combat 3: Cross Of Iron (Axis Grand Campaign)
Close Combat 3: Cross Of Iron (Allied Grand Campaign)

That is the four iterations of the franchise I currently have available out there at the time of making this post. More is sure to follow soon, and I hope some of y'all will want to come along for the ride! If you got any questions, suggestions, hate or love, I am receptive to it all! Let me know what you think, wether you think I'm doing allright, or you think I need to make some changes to how I do things! For all I know, you might be right!
Oh well! If you're still reading at this point, I would like to thank you for your attention, and I sincerely hope your time spent with this does not feel wasted! Y'all have a good one, folks! And may Cthulhu bless you!
Cheers!

There is an absolute zero of pay-to-win features in the game. Except you can purchase a larger pack of the game when it releases, including all future DLCs, which will give you a bit more inventory space. That can be unlocked quite fast by just looting some stuff and crafting the space tho. The currencies are USD, EUR and Roubles. There will never be microtransactions. 

Contrary to what it might sound like, I am more worried for when it leaves beta - because if they don't continually reset the game as it is now, it gets stale. They change things, balance out things, reset, give all players the same start, but a bit different set of viable attachments and such, so that the meta doesn't stay stale. You COULD buy anything you want from "real money traders", but it is against the game rules, and if you get caught spending money to get an advantage over other players, you get banned. 

It might sound awful, but it really isn't. I don't think anyone that plays it actually cares about it being in beta. They keep adding more stuff and maps all the time, and the game is far from being abandoned. They want to release a few more maps before they go out of beta, as far as I can gather.

Realism is a big thing in Tarkov - and it's lovely. You aim somewhere, as long as you have your sights set correctly relative to the distance you're shooting, the only thing preventing you from hitting your target is your own skills of aiming. 

It does not favour players that pay - quite the opposite. You can go Rambo and have a good time guns blazing, but probably die a lot, or you can do what I do - lurk in the shadows, and strike at my unsuspecting prey while gathering up loot to extract back to my hideout with to profit. Ammunition is a big part of the game. You can have the best gun, with the fanciest attachments, but if you're using terrible ammunition, it's gonna be bad. However, if you use a crappy single-shot shotgun, but load it with the correct slug ammunition and aim well, you can devastate the enemy with it.

The loot system is the best I've ever seen. You kill someone, you can take their face-accessories, their helmet, gun(s), body armour, backpack, every single piece of random garbage in the backpacks etc. 

It's not so much "bad balance" that makes the game hard for newer players, as it is lack of map knowledge, and what ammo to use in what situation. You can stack bullets individually if you want, so that say every third round you fire is a tracer, or armor penetrating, or hollow point, or whatever you need/want it to be. It's actually great. I'm currently waiting for the game to reset again, because when that happens... it's honestly such an awesome gaming experience. Everyone running around with sub-optimal gun-builds, whatever ammo they can get a hold off, trying to slowly progress the gear that they can take with them into raids, while also focusing on the numerous tasks in the game that various traders have for you. The traders also are your main source of ammunition, and all other gear until you hit level 20, when you can access the flea market and trade with other players. The before you hit level 20 gameplay is what I wish the entire game always was. Struggling to get by. Saving up ammunition and weapon attachments you manage to find so that at some point you can use a certain weapon in a certain configuration with a certain type of ammunition. Early in the game you can't just kill someone who has extremely durable body armour, and a seriously pimped out weapon, as there isn't anyone that has these things. And that keeps the game going at an interesting rate, where everyone's fighting for survival, and scared out of their wits trying not to lose what they have already acquired. I love it. As the game progresses, everyone starts using the best type of gear, and armor becomes irrelevant as everyone's using ammunition that goes right through it anyway, making the game kinda stale and boring, imo. But the months after a reset leading up to that... it's pure gaming gold. No ridiculous spray-patterns to learn. No bullets going above your crosshair. Heck. There even is no crosshair. So you better be real confident in where you're pointing the gun if you don't want to properly aim. When you do properly aim - the bullets will go exactly where you point the gun, unless targets are far enough away for you to have to worry about bullet-drop, or having picked up a weapon from someone that didn't bother maintaining it in good condition.

Really an awesome game. Worth giving a shot.

There isn't actually any planned DLCs atm, but when they get around to them, you can have already unlocked them. 

But yeah, I don't disagree with what you're saying. There are a lot of practices like this that I certainly have an issues with. Strangely enough, the way they do it with Tarkov... I don't really mind. I don't think anyone that plays it really does, it's not often a topic anyone touches on. We just play it and enjoy it for what it is. Heck, they could just call it "released" already, it's a fullworthy game in my eyes. Certainly a lot of shady business practices out there, and a lot of gaming companies that I have no respect for how they do things, but this just is the one that does this, but does it the right way. My biggest fear in regards to Tarkov is that they actually release the game one day... and don't find a good way to implement something like the resets they do now. The resets are what gives the game it's longevity, and keeps it fresh. There's generally an insane amount of hype when reset time comes. People love it. It's great.

As I said tho, what you're saying is not something I'm disagreeing with. Quite the contrary.

Have you had the joyful experience of growing up in the 90s? Or even being a grown-up in the 90s?
Have you then also had the not entirely timeless experience of playing Wages of War: Business of Battle, made by Random Games, and published by New World Computing? If yes - what an awesome experience we share! If no - what were you even doing with your life back then?? Establishing a family??? Busy not even being born yet!?!?!?!? Pffff...
This game, although dated by today's standards, and not really aged all that well, was (and still is, in my opinion) a true gem of a game! I shudder at saying it's XCOM-like, or Jagged Alliance-like. It's in the same genre, but it certainly stands on it's own feet! I remember coming over to a friend's place one day, and he had somehow managed to acquire a pirated copy of this game. And we played it. So. Damn. Much. He gave me a copy of it, but over the years I lost it - but not my wish to play the game! So, when I found it in a working condition after some googling, as it is now abandonware, I just had to get into it again! Playing it on a modern computer has it's issues, but nothing game-breaking. 
So, have you been able to experience this, like me, when it was fresh and new, before it's mechanics got dated?
If not, I have a few videos out of it on youtube, and I intend to play through the entire campaign and upload an episode of each of the 16 total missions it has to offer. I've been trying to find some videos over the years of it on youtube myself, but there has never really been any out there. There was for the longest time just a one minute clip of some gameplay, and a video of the intro of the game. There's been some video uploads from an American guy about a year ago, but... and I'm not trying to bash him or anything - the quality of those videos are not the best (probably mine aren't either). In videos of the game, he has the TV running in the background at all times, and even plays other games in the same videos!
No! I couldn't take it! I had to make some videos of a proper playthrough myself! And hopefully I have been able to do so in a way that respects the game. Youtube was lacking content on this game, and I will now provide it! Certainly someone can come along and do better - and I encourage anyone to do so!
Here is the first couple of videos I've got out - more will start appearing rapidly. Heck, by the time you read this, I might have already finished the playthrough!
Let me know; did I respectfully present the game? Do you have any stories from the game yourself that you'd like to share? I'd love to hear about them from someone that might share my fascination for this beauty of a game!
Well, that's all I've got for now. Have a good day, folks!

Nope - I have never played it before...I think? Why does the name sound so familiar?