Xbox

Close Combat: First To Fight is the reason why the US Army should NEVER permit their marines go to war, because if this game is based on a training tool developed for the US Marines, they’re all going to get their asses whipped. It’s really an exercise in why you shouldn’t use words like “realistic” and “authentic” and phases like “Created with the help of more than 40 US Marines fresh from combat in the Middle East” on a game. Because you simply can’t believe it once you start playing the game, either that or you have to believe the US Army is totally inept.

You guide a team of marines through the streets of Beirut in the ‘near future’ and you’ve all heard the same old tired story before – some Middle East whacko has taken control of an unstable country and it’s up to the US Marines to go in and free the people for the good of justice, liberty and all that bullshit.

The marine squad you control does use authentic Ready Team Fire Assist (RTFA) commands and positions, where your team moves with a 360 degrees fire arc, protecting it from all directions. This look pretty cool and works reasonably well to protect you, but if one of your team goes down, you may as well give up, as the team AI goes down the shitter. It’s a bit absurd that your rear man can’t aim another 40 degrees so well that your team goes down rather quickly.

Good thing the pathetic enemy AI means you’re able to see the enemies shadow through walls, expect them to spawn out of previously impossible to open doors, and also to spin around on the spot when targeted by marines. When the AI is this bad, is it any wonder that the US and Allied forces expected Iraq to be such a push over when this is supposedly a training tool?

I didn’t even bother going online with the game – what’s the point when there are so many other better games like Rainbow Six: Black Arrow. I actually had more fun with Spy Vs Spy – at least that didn’t have the egotistical pretensions of being ‘realistic’ when it clearly wasn’t.

Maybe if this game didn’t claim again and again and again how realistic it was, how it used real training, how the US Marines are the most elite force in the world, blah blah blah, that I could like it more, but it doesn’t let up and I can’t see past it’s obvious flaws, especially when there’s so many better, more realistic and more fun games out there.