Firefight - WW2 12+

Surprised that this game hasn’t gotten much attention, as it is a very detailed and accurate portrayal of WW2 strategy. But like in any other game there is plenty of room for growth and improvement. Some annoying problems are that somethings troops and tanks do not move back when ordered to when they are fired upon, and tanks may actually expose themselves despite the order to move back which results in their destruction. The Tiger I and II have very slow turret traverse, despite having electrical turret gear in reality. This has proved to be a major disadvantage in many missions involving close combat, as Fireflies can easily knock Tigers out before they can even turn their turrets. Other than that the game works pretty well. I think an Eastern and African campaign should be added, as well as more Western maps such as Bastogne and maybe even Normandy. More units would definitely be appreciated, such as the Sherman Jumbo, Sherman 105mm, M8 Greyhound, M16 MGMC, M26 Pershing, Matilda, Valentine, M10 with 17-pdr, A34 Comet, Dicker Max, Nashorn, StuH 42 G, Wirbelwind, and the Jagdtiger. For infantry units medics, US and British Paratroopers, British Commandos, US Rangers and such would be great additions. A mission editor would be pretty cool too. I also think that there should be different game modes, for example defending a certain point or capturing multiple points. Other then that this is a fantastic game, and I hope to see more updates in the coming future.

One of my favourite game series of all time is Close Combat. These games showcased different campaigns such as the British operations in Holland, Russians vs Germans in the Eastern Front, and the Normandy campaign, and gave top-down views of the battlefields. I spent hundreds of hours immersed in these games, and was really bummed when the franchise moved away from that format into more modern, fire-team tactical games. Then for work reasons I switched over from PC to Mac, and since then haven’t been able to find a good MacOS or iOS port of the games.

Until now. I first downloaded Firefight a few years ago, and it immediately scratched that itch for me. Sean O’Connor has done an incredible job creating an entirely new game that feels very familiar. With core game you get one or two maps, and you can unlock other map packs for the European theater, Russian front, and Pacific theater (which I don’t believe was ever included in the original Close Combat series). Sean has also done an incredible job designing the iOS controls. It did take me a little bit of time to figure out the small details, but they were designed intuitively enough that it didn’t negatively affect the amount of fun I had.

If you are a fan of the Close Combat series and miss playing it, give Firefight a shot.

It’s a nice game, needs more maps. But mostly zero thought has been put into the armor and main gun values of tanks, or historical unit purchases. Stuart’s, ordinary Sherman’s and Churchill’s can penetrate a Jagdpanther’s frontal armor, while shrugging off multiple hits from it’s higher velocity 88. R35’s with their stubby 37 have the same penetrating power as a pzIII/35/38t. Churchills and Fireflies zipping across the battlefield killing everything like they’re an Abrams, or chasing off better armored tanks by just hitting them a few times. Infantry morale is consistently bad across the board, with little backbone unless it’s SS Grenadiers, who apparently are armed with modern small arms, night vision, etc. Turret traverse appears to be equal for all varieties regardless of whether they’re heavy, light, manually or mechanically operated. No tank was using APCR in 1940. Units are rarely damaged, when even a KV-1 that absorbs 30+ hits would lose a track. Lack of radios in early war tanks has been ignored, they all coordinate like it’s 1990. And suddenly the Japanese have the best tanks in the world in 1942, with a dozen showing up on what would have been Guadalcanal, where they had practically none. Artillery is basically useless unless it’s smoke or against infantry running in the open, or it’s the game’s artillery against a human player. Pretty game, mechanics seem to work, just not historically.