The series moves into the future but not without some serious shortcomings.
Battlefront's award-winning Combat Mission series set a high standard not just for the wargame genre but for the developer as well. Over three separate releases covering three different theaters of World War II, the series managed to offer some of the most accurate and intense tactical experiences we've ever seen. So when it was announced that the team would be creating an entirely new engine and focusing on a more modern war for Combat Mission: Shock Force, we were definitely excited.
Unfortunately, while Shock Force manages to capture the high level of realism found in previous games in the series, the poor interface design and lack of a flexible or responsive AI makes it difficult to appreciate the things that the game gets right. Moreover, the graphics, though capable of displaying great until detail in extreme close-ups, don't scale very well and don't run very well at any setting.
Each mission presents an intriguing tactical challenge, mostly concerned with securing objectives and eliminating a certain fraction of the enemy force. More interesting objectives will ask you to discover intelligence or destroy enemy buildings. Success here is measured in degrees and it's very refreshing that the game lets you continue on to the next mission even when you fail. Most missions however are structured to take quite a bit longer than necessary so there's plenty of downtime.
As with the other Combat Mission games, there are plenty of individual missions you can play outside of the campaign. Scripted missions, a mission generator and a full editor give you more than enough options to extend your enjoyment of the game beyond the campaign. It would have been nice to see a little more variety in terms of the random maps' geography but what really disappoints is the inability to create your own forces for these random battles. You can select general unit types to include, but it would still be preferable to assemble your army by hand.
The US makes use of Strykers and Abrams tanks and a range of infantry units. They'll also often have the option to call in off map support in the form of artillery or air strikes. We particularly like the option to set a linear target for this fire; it comes in very handy when trying to bust up trenches. The demands of accuracy mean that the Syrian forces are quite a bit less powerful than the US troops but they do have some interesting units -- technicals, IEDs, RPGs -- that can give them a slight edge.
Shock Force offers up the standard turn-based modes of the previous games, but also introduces a full real-time mode as well. It's exciting to play Combat Mission in real time but it doesn't include the standard RTS conventions, like creating hot groups, creating formations, or drag selecting mixed groups of units. As a result, you'll have to micromanage things a bit too much. On the plus side, you can issue orders in paused mode to get things the way you want them.
The real killer here with regard to the missions is that the red force AI isn't very active. The missions are designed to hide this by forcing the player to assault fixed positions, but even so, you'll eventually discover that the AI just isn't inclined to move to retake objectives or flank advancing forces. We've blasted through roadblocks and never been pursued; we've left small forces at objectives that were never assaulted by nearby enemies; we've called in artillery strikes on enemies that never even tried to find cover.
This deficiency can be hidden a bit when the player is assaulting fixed defenders but it's really apparent during meeting engagements. Most of the time, the player will be free to march right up to the objective, take it, and then shoot any enemies that he can see from there. An after-action review of the map will reveal enemy infantry and vehicles just sitting idle.
The levels are very well designed with plenty of tactically significant locations. Crossroads, fortified barracks, narrow defiles and such all make for some interesting playgrounds. On the downside, the game seems married to a very monotonous desert theme and an endless succession of bland, boxy buildings. Perhaps the worst aspect of the maps is that they just give out at the edges and float over a huge sandy texture. We much prefer the way that the battle areas in Theatre of War blended in with more realistic horizons.
Animations and unit detail are really fantastic up close. Infantry outfits and vehicle detailing are very high, so you can definitely get lost in the action when viewing things from ground level. The animations of soldiers running or tanks rocking back and forth after firing their guns definitely adds to the realism here. The interface doesn't really work at this scale, however, so you'll have to bounce back and forth between this and the more traditional high-level view. As you move out, the graphics get scaled way back; textures get blocky and animations for some of the units disappear altogether.
The high system requirements for Shock Force are out of line with the quality of the graphics and the game's overall performance. There's apparently an issue with nVidia cards that cause significant stuttering, which can make issuing commands and moving the camera more difficult than it should be, requiring you to pause the game just to get your orders right.
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