Wargames have fallen out of favor in the PC market lately - especially given Talonsoft's recent pull back from the turn based market. It's sad, really; wargaming is one of the most noble and intelligent pursuits you can engage in on a computer. The march of technology and expanding marketplace shouldn't harm them; it should give us better wargames. Instead, the genre has been slowly dying - at best forming a niche unto itself. Titles like Sid Meier's Gettysburg and Antietam, Atomic's Close Combat series and the very recent Shogun: Total War mark what looks like the future of wargaming: a pseudo-real-time strategy version that models the tactics and chaos of warfare but fails to provide all the minutia a true wargamer gets off on. Leave it to an independent to come out of nowhere and show us we can have it both ways.

Interestingly enough, Combat Mission actually began as a PC version of Avalon Hill's popular Advanced Squad Leader game for Hasbro, a company which foolishly let this game go. The plucky development team quickly founded Big Time Software and three years later Combat Mission was born. You won't find the game at retail; it's only available at Battlefront.com. This illustrates just how much the genre has shrunken, because the game itself is more than impressive enough to merit a full retail release.

Combat Mission covers the war from D-Day to the conclusion. It divvies up the battles into small-scale scenarios of varying length. Through the course of the battle you can play as the Axis or as one of many Allied sides. American, British, free Polish and free French forces, depending on the battle you choose. Battlefields range from building to building city slugfests to open fighting in the great outdoors.

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