Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord

This review is less about 'the game' and more about 'this version' of the game. I was there for the original game, and played the original game when it released around the year 2000. I played it extensively solo, and against others - including official leader boards (our version of them back then atleast). CMBO was unlike anything any of us had played before. Many of us were coming from Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) and wanted this to be the computer version of it. CMBO was fantastic. But that was 25 years aog. What about now? After 25 years of CM developing, expanding, and moving forward, is the original still fun? Simply put, yes, CMBO is still fun and engaging today - even in light of CMBB and CMAK, let along CMx2, and the someday forthcoming CMx3. If you played CMBO back in the day, and are looking to try it out again, its worth it. Especially at this price. If you never tried it, I would say to play them in order: CMBO, then CMBB, then CMAK. But start here I would say - again, especially at this price. So what about this version? Compared against the GOG version? This is the best version out there, by far. They have coded in modern screen resolutions. WASD camera controls. Played a scneario right after buying it - no issues at all. Ran wonderfully. In short, this is by far the best version of CMBO - I would not recommend buying it used online, or on GOG. But this version - it is better and has been updated from what the other versions are. And its a great, fun game - even after all these years.

Just started it up to make sure it runs on a 4k 240hz display. The older gog version would bug out and never load into the main menu for me. This one loads fine, it doesn't change the resolution of my other displays which is good. The menu and briefings are small but once you're into the game it utilizes the full display. The game became unresponsive when viewing the hotkeys menu and alt-tabbing but you can avoid those easily. Everything else seems to perform just as you'd expect it to. Played this game a ton in the early 2000's. Hundreds of battle scenarios to play through. It has a unique turn based we-go system where both players choose to move their units at the same time in 60 second intervals and let it play out. So you had to commit to your orders and couldn't adjust quickly on the fly, so if you ran into an ambush you had to wait for the next 60 second turn to make adjustments. The delay it takes for the units to acknowledge orders based on access to radio and proximity to their CO; plus the way they would dynamically react to suppressing fire and be routed if they were overwhelmed made it fascinating for unit AI behavior in those early years.

If you're a fan of the original, it's worth the price for support for non-4:3 resolutions and the mouse wheel zoom. There is a new feature in these Combat Mission Steam releases that let's you move the camera left and right instead of rotating when holding shift and panning the mouse at the left or right edges of the screen. This feature is most helpful in Beyond Overlord since you could only rotate in the original.

Yeah, it's an old-looking, "old-school" game. Yeah, it's got graphics that "inspire imagination" rather than stun. But here be some mystery: why am I finding its use so intuitive and smooth (once it gets past the tiny initial screens and blossoms across my fairly large monitor). Why am I pleased enough with my first impression of this so that I'm currently sitting here, writing this review, in the wee hours of the morning rather than going to bed? Why does this seem to me like a bargain and make me happy, after I snapped it up today? I suspect there will be others who won't really find any of that to be a mystery.

Everything about this game is better than the Combat Mission 2 game engine. The new and improved camera controls are a nice welcome for the game as well as the modern-adaptation for screen resolution. I wish we had Shock Force adapted to this game engine.

The original CM games are a little rougher around the edges compared to the CM2 games, but excels in a couple areas. Namely, [b]independent Strategic AI[/b] for units actually exists! Maybe not the most advanced AI, but at least it can operate fairly competently on its own. CM2 made the baffling decision to eliminate Strategic AI and rely on a scripting/trigger system, or "AI Plans." This is reliant upon a person to manually create an overall plan for the AI. However intricate this Plan system may be, if an enemy is unscripted, their strategy ranges from nonexistent to extremely basic/dumb (however, the Tactical AI is the star of CM2 and is much better than CM1). The other great thing that the independent AI of CM1 allows for is [b]randomly generated maps[/b]. CM2 does not offer this option, since the AI is so dependent on the Plans. I hope CM3 has both independent AI and scripting options, so we can have the best of both worlds.

I played CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK for 10 years, then was shocked that as PC's advanced and Windows got more screwy, it stopped running, mostly due to not being able to working with the updated OS graphic libraries. Finally had to give up. Don't like CMx2 system at all, even though I own them all, CMx1 was just so much more a wargame for single player for me. When I saw this title on Steam, I couldn't believe it. Bought it, installed it, and played on my 57" ultrawide and it played beautifully, though the UI was really small, but glasses helped that. UI is minimal on gameplay anyway. Been years, but I found myself remembering everything, it was so simple to play. But oh my goodness, the textures for grass, trees, vehicles, uniforms, all were horrible. Was it really that bad? Then I remembered I had a ton of mods for all three titles replacing most of the bmp files, but that was installed on an old PC long gone. I rummaged. I can't believe I found an old drive key stuck in an office drawer and it had all three titles installed folders stored on it! So I copied over CMBB's Bmp folder from it to the matching installed steam folder and wow!!! The game looks great again. All the buildings, trees, grass, flags, vehicles, uniforms, etc. updated to higher resolution textures and was so much more pleasing, especially the tanks. I should put the Bmp folders in a compressed file and make available for others for CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK. It vastly improves the look of the game and a lot easier than looking around for each mod, there was ton of them. Big time saver to just rename your old Bmp folder so you don't lose it and just copy over the one I used years ago. In no time get a face lift that you won't believe. So glad I found these gems on Steam. Back to playing them again.

This aged well Worth buying just for QOL improvements in this version

This has been one of the best tactical games I've ever played

Combat Mission Beyond Overlord is an old but pretty fun game in the Combat Mission series. If you've played the more modern versions and wondered what the originals were like then here you go, here's the first one as far as I'm aware. +While definitely looking old the graphics aren't bad in any way. I think the vehicles especially look really nice. The big guns firing effect like artillery landing or tank cannons firing have their own effects that I think suit the general look of the game really well. Same for sounds and gameplay, its what you'd expect out of a modern game. Its old, sure, but its been upgraded and runs without any issues. The only controls you need to know are to go into the settings and look at it and after that you know everything. Just select the unit, press space, choose what type of order you wanna give and give it. Simple as that. +So graphics, controls and sounds aside how's the rest of the game? Simple but good. There's single missions, quite a lot of them, and then there's campaings. Campaigns take several battles while single missions are well you go in, do whatever you can in the turn limit you have, see the end result. Campaings are same but it just has several battles back to back. There's quite a lot of campaings as well so you won't be running out too quickly. +/- The scale of it is really surprising. It feels like a very you know big scale game and to some extent it is with the maps and how much place your units actually take up in this map but I mean it more as in it feels as if you're supposed to simply give the orders and the commanders on the ground will figure out the specifics and do things but its not really the case. You can tell your unit to go somewhere and they will. You can tell them to watch a certain direction and they will. But if you didn't do this properly you'll just have your guys looking at a small bump 5 meters in front of them, unable to see anything past, not looking in the actual field you want them to look at. Your unit doesn't go "oh commander said look in that direction, maybe he means I look in the big open field and I can move a bit to get better eyes" no your unit goes "oh commander said look in that direction and I will even if there's some micro terrain I'm in that won't actually let me see past 5 meters" I find this to be a little silly because the game gives the feeling as if I'm meant to give the general orders and the units are smart enough to handle the smaller stuff like that but no, I handle all and it can get a little annoying at times. -While its definitely a fun game its at the same time more of a curiosity then an actual game for me. The newer games look much better and while that might not mean much, I'm not someone that focuses on graphics that heavily, the new games looks just gives them more... more fun? I'm not sure. There's smaller stuff like in this game a squad may be made out of 12 men sure but you'll only see 3 on the map at all times. Its nothing big at all but there's something about the newer games showing every single soldier that I just like more and coming from those to this doesn't feel like an "I'm playing something new and different" it just feels more like "I was curious on how this series started to become a thing so I'm checking out the earlier games" its a curiosity and not much else. Its definitely a fun game. Don't let the graphics and older style fool you, if you've been interested in the Combat Mission games then this is a pretty good pic. I wouldn't consider CM games "hard to run" you shouldn't have any issues running the more modern ones but I would consider them "hard to buy", I wouldn't call them cheap games. If you wanna get a feel or see how the series started then these earlier games are not just fun with lots of missions and campaings and units but they're a great way to decide if you'll enjoy CM series without spending a lot of money up front.