Close Combat let us relive D-Day battles, but unfortunately its shoddy graphics and limited play mechanics aren't aging too gracefully. The original just isn't in the same league as its superb successors, Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far and Close Combat 3: The Russian Front. Both upped the graphical ante for war games, serving up beautiful terrain that becomes scarred with pockmarks from mortar shells and tank fire as the battle progresses. The computer opponent is tough, and your own troops act in an eerily believable way. In a scene that could have been taken straight out of Saving Private Ryan, we had a few squads occupying a building, shooting it out with some Germans across the road, when one of the enemy soldiers scored a lucky hit on the soldier carrying the flamethrower. The fuel tank on his back exploded, taking out half the squad surrounding him, and that was it for the rest of the GIs in the building. No amount of cajoling could get them to stop running away from the scene of the disaster, despite the German machine guns chewing up the dirt around their feet. Moments like this, both panicked and heroic, happen all the time in these games.

Some gamers are put off by this series because it doesn't let them micromanage individual soldiers, and the morale model means squads sometimes do not follow orders. Those folks should stick to the sci-fi real-time strategy games. Anyone who wants a better appreciation for what combat was like in World War II (according to the accounts we've read) will find that the Close Combat Trilogy is one of the best bargains in gaming. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Games span three famous World War II battles
• Morale model makes this real-time game much more realistic than other strategy games
• Sound effects for the newest titles are terrific

• Realistic morale model may frustrate some players
• The original Close Combat hasn't aged well