eace in the Middle East has been shattered.  The small country of Lebanon has become embroiled in a massive civil war and the leader of the country has been evacuated due to a medical emergency.  Sensing their chance to strike, a rogue band of soldiers goes on the offensive with one main objective: capture the capital city of Beirut and secure the country for their own sinister goals.  But, success doesn’t come quite so easily.  Thanks to timely press coverage, the world has paid witness to the violence erupting in the small nation and NATO has dispatched the United States Marines to quell the uprising and maintain political stability.  But then again, victory for the Marines won’t come so easily, either.

The moment you fire up Close Combat: First To Fight you’re given a healthy dose of reality.  The world is a dangerous place.  Enemies lurk around every corner and even the most unassuming environment can become a veritable deathtrap.  But, even the most dangerous situations can be tackled with the right tools.  First To Fight, while a video game, is also bound for use by the U.S. Marines for use as a training tool for their own troops.  And, having gotten a chance to experience the game first hand, I can see how this relationship will prove fruitful for both parties.

Developer Destineer Studios has set out from the beginning to create an authentic and realistic military shooter experience.  A great deal of time has been devoted to research and development in terms of actual military authenticity.  On a regular basis, the developer has welcomed actual Marines into their studio to talk to them about their combat experiences and get their feedback on how their game is coming together.  Often times, the Marines who visit are fresh out of battle in Iraq, giving them that much more expertise in the field of combat.  Taking their input, they’re aiming to put together a military title in which you’ve probably never seen before.  Tactics, maneuvers, movement, and intelligence are all at the forefront of First To Fight and thankfully, they all seem to be working in tandem quite well.

At the most basic core, First To Fight is built around the Marine system of “ready, team, fire, assist,” or RTFAS.  This term refers to the distinct roles and duties of a typical four man Marine fire team.  The ready position, the team leader, is the man charged with issuing out orders for the rest of the team.  He’s the leader and the brains behind how the team works together as a single entity.  The remaining three team positions are essentially support, but each of them does serve their own unique purpose.  The fire member, for example, is usually the soldier carrying the heavy firepower and is also the one usually in charge of laying down massive suppression fire on enemy locations.  Each soldier in the four-man team has a distinct role to play, but as expected, none is more important than the other.  The team may be made up on individual men, but in the field of battle, they’re meant to be a single force.

Coming from this theme is a distinct attempt on Destineer’s part to create combat tactics and situations that mimic real life Marine actions.  When putting the game together, they looked at the two possible routes they could take: annihilation or maneuver warfare.  Annihilation warfare refers to the process of defeating your enemies by simply inundating them with enough firepower until you destroy them.  But while it sounds fun, it’s not necessarily the most realistic take on combat.  Maneuver warfare, however, deals directly with suppressing the enemy using more psychological means.  For example, say an enemy is taking cover behind a burnt out car and there seems to be no direct way to eliminate him.  Your first gut instinct would be to charge in and try to take him out in a flurry of gunfire.  While it might get the job done, it would also probably end up being a suicide mission.  That leaves you looking for a more discrete alternative and that’s where the psychological warfare begins.  Destineer is currently working hard at incorporating a realistic psychological model in the game for both your soldiers and the enemy so that they’ll react realistically under diverse conditions.  That enemy bunkered down behind the car, while impervious to direct fire, may give up his cover if you lay down heavy suppressing fire from your gunner, referred to as the combined arms effect.  Likewise, while you may not be able to call in a direct mortar attack on his position, you may be able to call one in on the area surrounding the enemy.  Either way, the resulting barrage of attacks will more than likely cause the enemy to grow frightened and back away from his cover.  Your soldiers will also behave in a similar manner so instead of having allies that simply stand in one place until they take too many direct hits, they’ll actively seek out cover to protect themselves.

Psychological warfare can led to enemy surrenders

This strong sense of ally AI is perhaps the most impressive feature in the game so far.  Team mates aren’t simply bodies that you can direct around; they’re intelligent, thinking entities that will follow orders but also act on their own.  As the team leader, you have the ability to issue commands to your squad, either as a group or to individual soldiers.  Using your reticule and the A button, you can issue forth a multitude of different orders.  If you aim your reticule over a specific location and tap the A button, you’ll issue a quick command for your squad or individual soldier to advance there.  If you hold down the A button, a special radial command menu will appear, giving you more advanced orders such as suppress and cover.  Thankfully, the order system is quick and extremely easy to use, requiring little more than you simply pointing in a direction and hitting the A button.

To take more advantage of the team dynamic are some special situations that Destineer has worked closely with the Marines in creating.  The most notable inclusion is when you need to storm rooms with closed door access.  Using real-life Marine tactics, you have two options: storm the room using quick and brutal efficiency or use a grenade to suppress hostile forces before you enter the room.  Either way, once you choose to storm a room your team members will take the appropriate positions out the door.  The key to room storming is getting in quick and quickly neutralizing any threats inside.  Amazingly, the system seems to be quite competent in this regard.  When I stormed a room, my fellow Marines ran in and laid down fast and accurate fire, taking the enemies by surprise and securing the room in a matter of seconds.  Likewise, when using a grenade, the Marines used the resulting explosion as a valuable tool, first waiting for the explosive to detonate and then rushing in and cleaning up while the enemy was still confused. 

It’s where the ally AI kicks in on its own that really sets the game apart from other military shooter titles.  Allies possess such a high degree of artificial intelligence that without orders, they’ll still do what you would want them to.  They’ll advance forward and use cover to their advantage.  Like the RTFAS team dynamic in real life, they’ll take their pre-determined support positions, such as in alleyways that lead out to wider open environments or even the infamous “fatal funnels,” which are more commonly known as staircases.  Unlike other military shooter games that you’ve played, and their often lackluster AI, the soldiers in First To Fight aren’t just pawns that you command at your leisure.  In fact, most of the time that I played the game, my soldiers were spotting and engaging enemies before I even knew they were there.  The only noticeable aspect of the game that requires to you take a very hands-on approach is with healing.  During the course of any level, you’re team mates will take damage and their health will deplete.  You start off each level with a certain number of first aid kits and you can either use them on yourself or use them on allies.  The system is easy to use and requires that you only stand near an ally and then hit the White button on the Xbox controller.  While I do find it a little odd that your squad mates don’t go about healing each other by themselves, the entire system of distributing health is easy enough to manage on your own.

Allies and enemies will use cover to their advantage

Despite the tight and realistic AI, there will be some situations where you’ll find that you simply can’t get the upper hand on a group of enemies.  In these circumstances you have the option to call on what’s called the Marine Ground Task Force Access.  This includes being able to call in mortar or sniper support, and even bring down Cobra gun ships to lay down cover and suppressing fire.  So far it seems that situations like this aren’t too frequent, but having the ability to utilize them brings quite a bit more realism into the fold.  You’ll also notice while you’re playing through the game that you’re often not the only fire team in a particular area.  Other team will sometimes join you in battle.  Once again, thanks to the great AI, they’ll act like you would expect them to - laying down cover fire and engaging the enemy.  You can’t actually control other teams, but they act with enough intelligence so that they’re always helpful and never a detriment.

In terms of actual gameplay, it’s pretty apparent that First To Fight is coming together quite well.  While the game is in a first person perspective, it plays much differently that what you would probably expect from an FPS.  While there’s a ton of action and lots of fighting, the overall tone of the game is much more strategic in nature.  The entire team dynamic works well in giving you that feeling that you’re not in a dangerous hot zone babysitting your team members, but are instead working with them to survive.  Control so far follows the usual FPS standards in regards to movement.  You can go prone to crouch by clicking in the left analog stick and can also click the right analog stick to zoom in with whatever weapon you’re using.  Weapon switching is also easy and is mapped to holding down a controller face button until a radial menu appears with your weapon inventory.  This menu also houses secondary weapon options, such as fragmentation and smoke grenades.  So far, the game seems to control quite fluidly, albeit it at a bit of a slower pace.  But, the slower speed of movement makes sense in the grand scheme of things.  After all, in a real-life combat situation it’s not very wise to run around at full speed.  With enemies potentially around every corner, you want to be in a constant state of alertness, your weapon at the ready and your body in a low center of gravity position.  In this respect, the slow movement speed seems to make more sense, giving you the feeling that your character is always at the ready for potential hostiles, not just running carelessly around.

"Ready, Team, Fire, Assist" ensures that everyone is where they need to be

Visually the game is touting some pretty impressive graphics.  The Xbox version will support 480p high-def and widescreen support, but it’s the little nuances that really stand out.  Character models are so far well rendered.  Animations are life-like and realistic, particularly during strategic maneuvers such as bounding (the act of advancing in an alert state) and taking and using cover.  There are also some realistic animations for becoming injured, as you’ll notice soldiers and enemies try to limp away after taking heavy fire.  Environments are probably the most visually appealing facet of the game so far, with levels filled with enough detail and cover to make each engagement different.  Levels usually contain a wide variety of layouts, from multiple-story buildings to courtyards filled with market stands and a random assortment of wares, which make for good cover spots and sniper positions. 

While the game is going to contain 22 single player levels, Destineer has made it a priority since day one to incorporate a robust multiplayer experience for the Xbox and the PC (as well as the Mac).  First To Fight will contain a multitude of multiplayer modes, many of which tie directly in with the game’s team-based structure.  First off, the game will support multiplayer gameplay using split-screen, System Link, and Xbox Live.  Up to four players can play split-screen on one TV in either cooperative or competitive gameplay.  Feel like running through the game with three friends, adding a whole new dimension to team gameplay?  Well that’s a reality and easily doable in First To Fight.  Up to eight Xboxes can be combined for System Link, with each player having a television for themselves.  The real multiplayer draw so far, in my opinion, is the competitive mode which has two teams of four vying to garner the most kills in a certain amount of time.  Dubbed Fire Team Arena, the action is fierce and thanks to the diverse level maps, offer up lots of opportunities to create distinct battle strategies.  When playing a competitive FTA game, you have the freedom to set a wide number of different parameters, from weapon selection, map choice, and even team order options.  Each player on a team can take on the role of team leader and actually issue out orders to other players on their team.  If you know an enemy is hunkered down in a tight cover spot and see a teammate near that location, you can issue out a command for him to lay down some suppression fire so that you can try and flank the position and take him out.  Regardless of whether or not you actually obey the command, the feature adds a new element of strategy to a game mode typically associated with simply running around and shooting everything in sight. 

To expand on the multiplayer experience even more, First To Fight will take full advantage of Xbox Live 3.0 functionality, particularly in terms of starting up your own Platoon.  Much like a clan in other online games, your Platoon is a unique team that you can create and fill with either friends or other players you come across while online.  Starting up a Platoon is easy and offers a number of different customization options, including the ability to choose a Platoon name, signatory icon, play style, language, motto, description, messages, and even a common website you may all share.  In all you can recruit up to 32 players to join your Platoon  Come battle time you can only have four members of your team in a battle at once, but being able to create a unique Platoon filled with your friends will undoubtedly end up being a popular option to have.  From the Platoon menu you’ll also have access to a wide variety of statistics which display how your group has fared in past battles and Destineer is also planning on utilizing online stat tracking.  As the creator of a Platoon, you also have the freedom to boot players that you no longer want in your group, which may lose you some friends, but given the easy system of recruiting more Platoon mates, doesn’t seem like such a bad thing after all.

Overall Close Combat: First To Fight is shaping up to be one heck of a promising game.  Perhaps it’s the well crafted approach to melding traditional FPS combat with highly intuitive team-based gameplay.  Or maybe it’s the diverse environments and robust Xbox Live experience.  Either way, the game offers up a unique opportunity to take the military shooter genre in some new directions, ones that actually emphasize the true-to-life workings of the military itself.  You may be a soldier, but you’re also a cog in the machine that is your team.  And thankfully, it’s looking like we can rely on Destineer to make sure when Close Combat: First To Fight is released, that machine will be strong and capable.