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(Update: Whoops. Panzer Command Kharkov! Not Winter Storm. Kharkov. Sigh.)
I have to admit the idea of comparing these two game franchises isn't original, there's a comparison of the old Combat Mission & the current Panzer Command by Kevin Prouty that's an interesting read already online.
But like all good ideas (and some bad ones) the day isn't over just yet for these comparisons. Here goes another one, looking at the two games as they both exist in January 2009. (After a whopping 129 MB download that means version 1.11 for Combat Mission & after a more modest 10 MB download that's version 1.01 for Panzer Command.)
You can read my earlier reviews of both Panzer Command (3 stars) and and Combat Mission (2 stars) to see my history on this. But to kill any unnecessary suspense for my older heart attack prone readers - that score at the top of the page is the same score I'm awarding to both games. That's right, as of now they're neck & neck in my book. As to why, well read on.
DRM
For those who don't know, DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It's the catch-all 1984-like phrase used to describe various methods some wargame & other publishers have tried to use to screw consumers out of their digital rights.
Battlefront, the publishers of Combat Mission, have the second worst DRM scheme in the computer wargaming world, second only in sheer awfulness to Storm Eagle Studios. Combat Mission needs to be activated online on each install. The EULA tells you outright: you do not own this software.
Matrix on the other hand, the publishers of Panzer Command, are hands down amongst the best publishers on DRM: their games are activated offline with a simple serial number, and you can do that as many times as you want from now till the end of time. For many gamers Combat Mission's intrusive DRM alone will be enough for them to decide which of these two games not to purchase. A clear win on DRM for Panzer Command.
Setting
Which do you prefer, the same weird made up war in Syria, or the Eastern Front? Another clear win for Panzer Command in my book. Asymmetrical warfare really isn't that interesting to play out at a tactical level. The bad guys blow up one thing, overwhelming force arrives and pummels anyone left standing around. Repeat. First world vs. third world engagements are similarly underwhelming, so all sorts of "for some reason we don't have all our airpower today" and "for some reason there are hardly any of us here today" scenarios ensue in an attempt to make things more even. Give me panzers, lots of panzers, any day of the week.
Content
Lots of panzers, not a couple of them ... Panzer Command Winter Storm was a decent enough tabletop-like system but was rather light on content. Panzer Command: The Sequel adds quite a bit of content & do dads like random scenarios, but rather disconcertingly almost all of the additional content that's worth paying for was put together by a lone fan working at home with Javascript & saved web pages. Not really much of a feather in Koios Works' cap. If you don't have Winter Storm, then Kharkov is the better of the two Panzer Commands to get, but don't expect to be getting all of Barbarossa, it's still only a fraction of what the old Combat Mission BB offered.
Combat Mission 2009 covers its rather limited setting more expansively, I suppose, it's hard to say what with its setting being made up (did I mention that already? A few times now?) Added to the US Army & some generic thirdworlders painted as Syrians we now get the Marines & their vehicles, which is nice but still not a great deal of hardware to play with.
Adding new content & maps yourself in Combat Mission is really, really hard. In Panzer Command it's just really hard (cause it's 3D it's always going to be a lot of work).
All up Panzer Command wins this round too, but not by very much. Small modules several times a year may be what it takes to make this sort of game viable nowadays. It's certainly a long time between drinks for panzer Command fans.
Watching time pass
The once & future blue WEGO bar is back for Combat Mission (I only play it WEGO, so I still don't know what the story with the real time version is) and playing & reviewing turns is a snap, including fast forwarding through the boring bits.
Panzer Command on the other hand still has its original rather fiddley two phase/it's often not clear where we are in a turn/is this the replay?/why is nothing happening? setup. If you've played Winter Storm it hasn't changed, my patience with it has just waned. As often happens in game design: I can see what they were trying to do, I just wish they'd done something else.
Combat Mission wins one.
Maps: Size matters
The maps in Panzer Command are stupid small. One kilometre square. Most of them used diagonally to try & squeeze out another 400 metres at the widest point. It's the edge of map problem found in boardgames, multiplied by the setting up too close to each other problem from the Close Combat games, squared, and then some. And if I have to order another platoon to 'mount' a building in Panzer Command I'm going to wet myself laughing. To top it all off, weather's built into the map, so each map's season specific. Dumb.
Maps in Combat Mission are at least big enough, but the terrain is bleak & I suspect deserts were chosen cause they're easier to draw. But at least there's room to move & the weather changes. Panzer Command in the desert would be unthinkable due to its map size restrictions.
Combat Mission wins another.
Vehicles
Speaking of mounting, why am I still unable to order my mechanised infantry to get back into an APC in Combat Mission? The rationale given in the manual (that it's very, very complicated) is beyond stupid. I hope this design decision goes the way of the blue bar. But the vehicles in the current Combat Mission, as with its famous ancestor, are modelled as facings & thicknesses & at least you know there's some serious physics going on when shell meets glacis.
Panzer Command on the other hand has this maths worked out ahead of time & rounded down & fudged & rounded some more so the data of the computer game could easily be used on a tabletop & vice versa. Roll d6, 4 gets you a kill ... there's nothing wrong with this approach per se, but if I had to choose one I'd choose the Combat Mission approach. Call it a personal preference if you want, otherwise there's not much in it.
Unless you find the animations of supposedly killed vehicle commanders happily bobbing about in their burned out wrecks in Panzer Command too much. In any case, for me Combat Mission wins.
Infantry
The men in infantry squads are modelled individually in Combat Mission, they walk through doors one at a time, and duck, shoot & die as individuals. In Panzer Command they're congealed together into a platoon level amalgam that walks through walls in a blob, and for a computer game that's pretty lazy design. I can see the arguments for the approach, and I'm not saying it's a major factor, but it's another thing Combat Mission just does better. When it works.
There are (probably) still cases of guys shooting through walls & other bugs. I've seen these come & go so much over the course of the different versions I've played that I've lost track. I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if all of the bugs were gone; I suspect they're still probably around in some form. Combat Mission wins this one in any case, at least they're trying.
Command & control
The way Panzer Command handles giving order to platoon groupings is OK as far as it goes, and it's not bad in itself, except it's hard to imagine the justification for using the same restrictive system for the German army at the peak of its prowess & the Soviet army close to its nadir. It's just a little too one size fits all.
Combat Mission units have varying states of how incommunicado they are: my CO's in my face, or I have a radio & I'm not afraid to use it, through to I have no idea what's going on or where my CO went - with a commensurate range of responsiveness or not from the subunits concerned. Sides with more & better leaders & radios will have a distinct advantage. Once again it's an approach less based on a tabletop games where players had to do all the book keeping, & more one that recognises that this is a computer game where the bookkeeping comes relatively free.
And now the spacebar stands in for a right click to get at the different parts of the orders tree I'm happy enough with the interface too.
One more for Combat Mission.
And finally: the pretty, pretty graphics
It's not the most important thing in the world, but these are 3D games after all - and if what the game looked like didn't matter, why bother with all that 3D stuff in the first place?
Combat Mission is much prettier. Much. To my mind there really isn't even a competition on this point, the graphical engines used in the two games belong to different generations of games. Different epochs even. Combat Mission's round, hands down. Easily.
So, in conclusion
I haven't added up the scores for each of the above categories here, cause they're my conclusions, based on what I value. If the reasoning seems right to you and you have similar preferences you can go ahead and do it (hint, it rhymes with six to two), but the point I hope you'll take away is there are still problems aplenty in both camps.
There's so much missing from both games, and so much that's boneheaded or strange about both of them they both only get three stars all up. A more positive way of saying that is that while there's plenty of fun to be had in both (if you forget about what's missing), at this point in their development the areas that Combat Mission does worse -- the faux contemporary setting & the DRM -- seem easier to fix. Panzer Command's problems seem much more a product of its tabletop design & seem much more like they'll be there till the bitter end.
For me, if Combat Mission moved back to WW2 & lost its intrusive DRM it'd be the clear winner. I imagine the former is going to happen before the latter, but how quickly either will transpire is anybody's guess. I can dream can't I?
Both games are OK as they now stand, but neither's nearly quite as good as it could be. Buy them, what else are you going to do, together they're the only shows in town.
There were some OK games that came out last year, and some games that might eventually aspire to being OK when they're patched enough that came out last year, and there was the usual mixed assortment of games that were downright awful that came out last year. But I think you and I can both admit that 2008 was a distinctly subprime year for computer wargames, and that there were no outstanding games in 2008 at all.
