This game comes on a DVD, so the installation is as simple as popping in the disc, and running the installer. No disc swapping is necessary.

As soon as you start playing Close Combat: First to Fight, the level of detail and realism is extremely evident. The graphics, sounds, artificial intelligence, and pretty much everything else about this game gives you the feeling of really being a part of the urban combat. Fans of the war genre will be very pleased with the attention to detail the game designers put into making this game.

Of course, what's a first person shooter these days without great graphics? Close Combat: First to Fight certainly has some of the best gameplay graphics I have seen. Everything from the weapons, to the camouflage, to the facial expressions looks wonderful. Even most of scenery looks good (normally, game designers seem to create lower quality scenery to reduce the system requirements a bit). Furthermore, the player movements look very real. Crawling, running, aiming, climbing ladders, and every other movement looks natural.

To go along with great looking graphics are sound effects that are just as great. The in game music adjusts to your current situation. If there are no enemies around, the beat is very slow and relaxed. But as soon as you hear a shot, or see a bad guy, the music picks up to get your heart racing. Also, your teammates are constantly shouting out their current status in actual Marine jargon. For instance, you will know exactly when they are reloading, or when they have spotted a target. Keep your ears open, as often your buddies will let you know what is happening before you see it.

Unfortunately, the between mission movies just don't have the quality of the gameplay graphics and sounds. The movies are similar to watching a national news channel. The news caster tells you what is going on in the world, using the playing cards metaphor to describe your next potential target. Sadly, the movies look like they were created in the early 90s. They are blocky and full of artifacts, making it hard to see what is going on. Seeing as this game ships on a DVD, they really should have gone with a better codec for encoding the movies.

Let's move on to the actual gameplay. Since you are the leader of a team of Marines, you have three excellent fighters to work with. While walking around, your team will adapt to the surroundings, covering all directions, taking cover, and constantly working together. Each member has a specific role, and will conduct themselves with the level of professionalism that the Marines are known for. Plus, you can command them (as a team or one at a time) to do such things as hold their position, lay down heavy cover fire, suppress an enemy from moving, and other combat tactics. As you play the game, it will be essential to use your teammates to help you complete your tasks.

Besides your teammates, you also have the aide of the Marine Air Ground Task Force. You can use the task force to send in a sniper, launch some mortars, or provide an air strike to take out a particularly difficult target. This type of support becomes essential with some missions, where the enemy has too much of a strong hold or some big guns which can potentially take you down in a split second.

Obviously, to complete this game, you are going to need use some Marine like strategies to get out of some tough situations. One of my favorite commands is the room take down. When you get to a closed door, you never want to rush in, as their could be a contingent of enemies which will put more holes in you than a block of swiss cheese. To account for this, you can issue a normal take down, or a frag take down. Either way, your teammates will all get ready, and wait for your command to secure the room. In a normal take down, they will all rush in, find the nearest cover, and start firing. In a frag take down, one member will open the door, toss in a grenade, and wait for it to explode before rushing in. If you don't take advantage of such tactics, you will never make it through the game, and never preserve the peace in Beirut.

Possibly the most disappointing thing about this game is the method of commanding your team or calling in support. Some of the actions can be issued through the keyboard, but most must be done using the radial menu. The radial menu is an adaptive menu, which will provide up to four options depending on what your cursor is pointing at. Once you bring up the menu, you then have to move the mouse until one of the options lights up, and then you can issue the command. This is a very slow technique, and I was often taken out while trying to call in air support or trying to give first aid to a teammate. At the very least, the game could pause while you are trying to select something from the menu. This really detracts from the gameplay, and makes the game more difficult than it should be.

Another unsatisfactory attribute of this game is the linear story line. You are directed from checkpoint to checkpoint, with only a single path to take. It would be nice if the game world was a little more open, and let you decide between a couple different techniques for completing your objective. In real life, there is always multiple ways to accomplish something, so I am very surprised that isn't allowed in this game.

Finally, a short stint on the multiplayer aspects of Close Combat: First to Fight. There are three types of multiplayer game play: cooperative (each player takes one of the four available roles to go through the single player missions), modified cooperative (similar to cooperative, except you get to choose your weapon instead of your role), and Fire Team Arena (two teams of four battle it our in deathmatch arenas). Personally, when I play multiplayer first person shooters, I don't normally want to play the same thing I can play myself (i.e. the same single player missions). This type of play would be great at a small LAN party, but really doesn't conduct itself to Internet play with strangers.

The main problem I had while playing this game was with auto restarts after losing a mission. It's supposed to restart from the beginning of the mission (or checkpoint), with you team members at the health level they were when you reached that point. However, if one team member had to be carried off by medics, he gets restored with no life, and just stands there, doing nothing. The only way you can get your man back is to load from your last save. I wrote to MacSoft about this problem, but they did not seem to have an answer.

The extreme realism of this game makes it a great strategy based first person shooter. It's a fun game to play through, but it does have its quirks which makes it a little clunkier than I like. I would recommend it to anyone who likes war based first person shooters.

Pros	Cons
Extremely realistic The team players are very smart, and act like real players Requires much more thinking than most first person shooters Great looking graphics Sounds effects are a great key to what is happening around you None of that wimpy stealth stuff: shoot at almost everything that moves	Some parts are so difficult, they take many tries to complete The story line is more linear than I would like It can be difficult to issue commands without getting shot The multiplayer game types aren't enough to keep me playing after completing the single player missions
7/10 stars