Combat uses two four-directional joysticks, one for each player.[2] The game has several modes of gameplay: "Tank", "Biplane" and "Jet" and with variations of the above models.[3] The tank and jet modes are viewed from a top-down perspective while biplane games are side view.[4] In all forms of the game, pushing the button fires a missile. Hitting the other player with a missile scores a point. The player with the most points at the end of a two minutes and sixteen second round wins. Variations of the gameplay in Tank mode include adding obstacles to maneuver around, having the missiles rebound off of walls (referred to as Tank-Pong) and a mode where the tanks are invisible except when they are firing a missile or are hit by one.[3][5] In the other two modes, Jet and Biplane, there are no obstacles, and both aircraft continuously move forward.[3] These levels have options for obscuring clouds that the planes can hide behind.[5] The original 1977 Atari VCS has six switches in front, including left and right difficulty switches and a game select switch. The difficulty switches change the range of fire of the missiles and in the plane-based games also changes the speed of flight.[6]
In his article "Combat in Context", Nick Montfort stated it was difficult to place the game genre to Combat as assigning one to it would be considered anachronistic.[6] AllGame would later categorize it as a shooter game.