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