An almost phase based wargame, with modern 3D graphics. Outside the pure top down wargames, probably the best you can find for your money. Just remember, it is mostly based on realism, don't go rushing in hoping to make the enemy just die on seeing you.

This game is for those who prefer to think more than watch the action, even though the action is hot and heavy too.

Great game.

There are a list of glitches and problems with the game, graphical or coding wise, but if you can get beyond that it's a good game. If you're into tactical military simulations this is a great game. It gives you a chance to control realistic combat troops in different scenarios, rather than the sci-fi of most RTS games out there. It's a lot of fun like I said, if you can get past the bugs and glitches.

Probably the finest battlefield simulation out there.

Fully patched and with all the modules, this game is brilliant. If you like tactics and simulation, this is the game for you. Units, weapons and vehicles are realistically depicted along with correct weapons and ammo types I have yet to experience a bug on the new 1.32 patch. It also has a good community that has produced several really good mods.

However, be warned, this game does require patience and can be extremely frustrating when things go wrong for you. Also it can feel quite clunky.

The base game has only 1 campaign and only about 10-15 single player missions, therefore it will only be a matter of time before you buy the modules, in the end you could end up with 6 campaigns, 8 armies, and over 50 single player missions, along with a random mission generator, a scenario creater/editor and multiplayer.

I own all of the original Combat Mission series and this one, while quite different, doesn't disappoint. Like all of the CM games, it is great for pbem.

The game engine has been updated and the graphics and command controls as well. You also have the option of playing either real-time or turn based.

The only drawback to this game is that Gamersgate is no longer supporting it. Battlefront has made patches past 1.2 but you must purchase a $1 upgrade if you wish for their patches to work.

I was suprised how much I liked this game. Anyone interested in this game be warned though, it takes a great deal of patience and time to figure out how to properly play this game and do it effectively.

Pros: Great features and interesting battle scenes.

Cons: Hate time limits on anything (every mission is timed), feel too limited

Frequent crashes (not sure if this is because its an old game on a new gaming computer

Really want more depth

Can be slow at times (In fact, most of the time!) but if you're looking for a nice little tactical game, then this will suffice.

Having said that, it gets old a bit quickly, but if you're willing to learn then it can be pretty fun.

This game is great! It has its downsides with some minor bugs and what not but what game doesn't? it will have you hooked for hours, a must buy!

The "combat mission" series is a very well-successfull attempt to model tactic warfare. Basically what you have here are real scale terrain, units and combat - and what is even more important, a real time flow where reactions, speeds, movement and fire rounds works in a very realistic timing. In my point of view this is the best feature of the combat mission series. All of this flows in a perfetcly controlable 3D envoiroment. To manage all of this could be difficult, so this is how the game works: you have an orders phase, where you tell your units what to do. Then you just click "play" and you sit back and watch one minute of combat. After this one minute elapses, the game pauses and you remake (or keep) your orders. This may sound weird but actually it is a great sistem, since it also recreates the difficulty involved in giving orders and having your troops to respond to them.

Units are perfectly - I mean perfectly - depicted, specially vehicles, their speeds, armaments, reactions and etcetera. This is a must-have for strategy gamers.

For $5, it was worth it to see the new CM engine. The game never particularly interested me before; to be honest, I've been really waiting for a World War II CM2 series.

Good things: graphical updates are nice (not amazing, but a great improvement for this type of game). Real-time / Turn-based option is also nice, though I expect most players will prefer classic We-go style. Accurate and realistic game. A slightly stronger map/scenario editor. If you're sick of Battlefront's WW2 games, it is something "fresh"

Bad things: the premise of the game doesn't fit my tastes personally; again, I would be much more excited to see the return of WW2 era games under the CM2 engine. I feel like there is still room for optimizations as well (scrolling lag).

The new iteration of the CM engine is a bit clunky, and to be honest not particularly better looking than the old one. It does allow for real time play, however given the nature of the game (it's lost none of it's ultra deep mechanics) I'm not sure if it's even feasible to play in real time. Thankfully, the we-go option is retained (you plot out your moves in advance, and at the end of the turn both you and your opponent's orders are carried out).

The setting may be off putting for some; you have the US army taking on the Syrians, which leads to what you might call a slight imbalance in force quality, but nontheless it's no walkover for the blue forces. Battlefront have also released two force packs (British forces and the US Marines) with a third on the way (NATO) which add a little variety to the game, although it would be nice to see a little equalisation in the Red force.

One thing to note is that Paradox no longer support the game, so further patches beyond 1.21 will require you upgrade to the Battlefront license, which they fortunately allow you to do for a measly $1.

Excelent war\stratergy that doesnt just boil down to send everything at once and wait till the enemy is dead. If you use that stratergy in this game you will be in big trouble. The graphics are a little dated, but who really cares if your looking for an in depth game. Every game in the combat missions family is fantastic. Battles can take hours to complete and acctually give you a sense of accomplishment when you finish as opposed to the boring, build as much junk as possible and start armagedon. In fact you only start with a finite amount of soldiers\armor\ammo and thats it for the mission. (like a real war). soldiers get paniced and pinned at which point the become highly inaccurate and will refuse to move. (as if anyone would when pounded by mulitple enemies.

Recommend to anyone who likes deep stratergy games. With NOT recommend to people that like pure carnage stratergy games.

I thought this game might actually be decent, but the gameplay proved to be very primitive and difficult. It was hard to move your troops and you can only move one at a time, you have to send your units to fight and then they kill only two infantry men and then tank blows up and your enemies get revived. I found the game to be overly difficult and the graphics to be pitiful. Performance was not very good and the DRM seemed too harsh (I doubt I shall ever purchase another game with a Starforce DRM).

Battlefront debuts its CM2 engine, which will be used on future WWII games (Sequals to Combat Mission: Overlord, Barbarossa, and Afrika Korps)

Shock Force's setting was one thing that turned me off, as a made-up near future war simply isn't as compelling as a historical setting, and the game's campaign and pre-packaged missions are both few in number and unremarkable.

Pluses include each soldier being individually represented, exhaustive accuracy to both the US and Syria's armies, and both real time and turned based options.

Verdict: 3/5, but a steal at $5

At first I was a bit disappointed with this game, but once it was patched a couple of times, and I got over the learning curve I have come to love it. It has a deep tactical depth, and an awesome "immersion factor". There is a good community of map makers, and it is easy to find online PBEM games. Overall I gave it 5 stars, and consider it a bargin at 20 euros.

Whoa boy, this game is awesome. Me, I like tactical games, most notably XCOM, and this game is just what I needed for a fresh Tac-Fix.

The graphics are really good and the game runs smooth. At first I thought the game ran really slow and jagged a lot, but it was the scrolling that was actually jerking a lot. If you get this game, don't use WASD to move the screen, its not smooth and is kinda frustrating, the mouse is much better. The mouse works like the Total war games, up scrolls up, same with the other directions, but top-left rotates the camera left and vice versa.

As for the other controls, you can use mouse, keyboard, or both. I use both and don't know why, but once you hit a button on purpose knowing what it does, it sticks in your head and is quite easy to remember.

Now the gameplay, this game is medium-easy to learn, but you will need time to master it. Usually covering techniques work well. Say theres a trench with infantry in it. You move a Stryker (a new fast APC for those who don't know what it is) up to the trench and then have it stop say about 100m out. You drop off the infantry squad in the Stryker while the main gun is giving cover and possibly killing the enemy. Usually Strykers have 50.cal machine guns on them, but some have the automatic 40mm grenade launcher :) :) The grenades are best for smoking out entrenched infantry and really rip up anything that sits still. Anyhow, while you give the infantry cover, maybe pop a few smoke grenades, then you have the infantry move up for the mop-up on a flank while the Stryker keeps enemy busy.

Oh, and this game was designed to run in real-time, but apparently all Combat Mission games vefore this one used a turn-based hybrid system, where you give orders and it plays for a minute real-time without your input, then the next minute-turn order phase starts again. This game was made ground-up to run Real-Time and it shows as Real-Time fights are smoother (gameplay wise, not performance) and all the speeds stuff moves are optimized to let you think in real-time, but in turn-based it seems the infantry run way too slow.

Overall, I'd say if you like XCOM or any tactics based games at all, this is a must. I give CMSF a 4/5 with the only negative being the scrolling and it is currently a tad overpriced at $40, $30 would be buches more reasonable. At $40 I am still very happy with it thoughh :)

Overall, if it wasn't for the jerky