ArsGeek

Today, Arsgeek.com begins the first (of hopefully many!) game reviews. We choose games based on both our interests, and what we expect our readership to be interested in. Let us know if you find this review helpful, not helpful, or if there are other products out there you’d like us to review!

We’ll begin with Combat Mission:Shock Force (CMSF) - a game that simulates a near-future conflict between the United Stated and Syria. The game revolves around the Striker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), which is backed up by heavy infantry and armor assets. In CMSF, after years of state-sponsored terrorism the United States, with the mandate of the UN, invades Syria with the intention of cutting the country in half to prevent movement of the Syrian army. This will enable the UN forces to take control of the country.

Battlefront.com has a history of putting out good-to-great computer wargames, starting with Combat Mission:Beyond Overlord, to Combat Mission:Barbarossa to Berlin and Combat:Mission Afrika Corps. All of these games focus on World War II, and were generally received by the war gaming crowd very enthusiastically. I’ve owned and played all three – while CMBO had some teething problems, the series is very solid, and remains on my hard drive today, for the occasional game.

Thus, it was with great anticipation that I installed CMSF and activated it using the eLicense key provided, which was a very easy process. I immediately fired the game up, and started a quick battle scenario, just to take a look at the graphics, get a feel for the controls, and a quick first impression.

First impressions were favorable – the graphics are good – specifically the vehicles are very well done, the personnel are good looking, the building are average, but the terrain is slightly sub-par. There appears to be no terrain shading, so it is tough to get a ‘lay of the land’ without going to the lowest camera setting, and flying around, looking for the dips and rises to hide your assets behind. But there is something special in seeing a Javelin anti-tank missile fly downrange, or the tracers streak across the screen, or tanks fire a main gun round. The game is definitely good looking, with great atmosphere - a large step up from the earlier CM games. However, I had some serious performance issues - trees flickering in and out, and very poor FPS. Perusing the forums, I found out that I had to install a patch for Windows XP - something to do with dual core systems and power management (Microsoft KB896256 for those interested). Once the patch was installed, the game ran much better. Interesting to note that none of my other games I play and have installed required that patch.

If you are used to the controls from the previous 3 CM products, you are in for a shock. The keymapping leaves something to be desired - Battlefront went with a strange keyboard layout (several different tabs, accessed by the T and Y keys, and then a 9-block of keys for the commands). But they offer no in-game method to remap the keys to something more palatable. If you want to remap keys, you have to find the .txt file on your hard drive, and remap them there. There is also no right-click available to issue orders, as in the past games of the series. Previously, you could right-click on a unit, and a menu would pop up, and you could issue orders from there. Now you are forced to hunt with the mouse, or use a fairly complex set of keystrokes to get the same results.

Perhaps the biggest change to this CM product is the introduction of Real-Time mode. Traditionally, the CM games were played in what is known as WEGO mode. You have unlimited time to issue orders to your units, and when done, the action resumes for a minute, while the units perform the orders you gave them and you watch the action play out. WEGO still exists in CMSF, but it is obvious that Real-Time is the way Battlefront would prefer you to play the game. For an example, planning an ambush is next to impossible in WEGO. You have to get your troops to where you want them, then issue a ‘Hide’ order. You can chain the ‘hide’ order on the end of the movement command, but you have to plan the movement, then select the last waypoint, then select hide. However, even if you set a ‘cover arc’, your troops will not engage until you manually unhide them. Unfortunately, you can’t time this perfectly in WEGO mode, as the enemy might be beyond your ambush zone by the time you get to issue orders again. In previous CM iterations, you could place an ambush marker, and your troops would unhide and ambush the target at the appropriate time. In Real-Time mode, you can manually unhide your troops at the appropriate time. Unless of course, you had multiple ambushes going on, or if your focus was elsewhere on the battlefield.

Another large change is to the way Quick Battles are presented and run. You no longer have a point system to purchase your units with – you simply specify map size, and unit composition (Heavy Infantry, Armored, etc.), and the game chooses a ‘balanced’ force for you to fight with. One of my favorite aspects of the previous games was choosing the specific force that I wanted to utilize - now I am forced to use what the game wants me to. The second big change is to the map system – random maps are completely gone. You can only use pre-made maps, with pre-made AI paths built into them. Combine these two, and the replay value of Quick Battles is close to nil. Once you have played a map once or twice, you know the lay of the land, you know the way the AI is going to attack or defend. Quick Battles now only use the AI programmed by the scenario author/map creator - so if you have a poor map creator, the AI is really going to stink up the joint. This is the case with several of the Quick Battle maps that shipped with CMSF - the AI was given poor instructions, and either does not move on the attack, or moves so slowly that the mission basically ends before you even see the enemy. On the forums, the creators of those maps are giving instructions on how to fix them (by using the scenario editor), but this should have been fixed for the release of the game, and not left up to the gamer to fix manually. Quick Battles are my preferred way to play the CM series, and with their limited replay value now, I’m not sure how long this game will remain installed on my hard drive.

I started the Quick Battle that I had chosen which sets my platoon of M1A1 tanks near a bridge to defend the crossing. Immediately upon starting, my tanks start taking incoming fire from 400m away – apparently the AI setup zone overlooks my setup zone. A short sharp battle ensues, with one M1A1 dead, and many Syrian infantry lying on the ground. I call in mortar fire, and set the fire mission up. The fire mission menu system is pretty well done – you click on the mortars, then click on the type of target you want – point, area or linear. Then you click on the map where you want the fire, choose how many guns are to fire, the intensity and duration of the fire mission, and finally confirm. It is actually easier than it sounds, and works well. I then changed my mind, and canceled the fire mission. Clicking on the mortars again, to setup a new fire mission, and CRASH.

“Combat Mission Shock Force has generated errors, and will close”. My first (of many, many) ‘Crashes to Desktop’.

I fired up CMSF again, and this time chose to do the training campaign. Flying through the first two missions (one was a movement to contact tutorial, one was a firing range for heavy weapons), I moved onto the third mission in the tutorial campaign, fire support training. Click load, and CRASH.

“Combat Mission Shock Force has generated errors, and will close”.

*Sigh*. Not a good start. I reloaded CMSF, and decided to try another quick battle. I found that choosing the ‘Hills’ map will always bump you back to the main CMSF screen – apparently they forgot to include this map, or it is corrupted, and you can’t play on that map. Starting to get frustrated, I decided to load up the main campaign, and give it a whirl.

The first mission of the campaign was actually a lot of fun – you have to assault through a berm and attack a Syrian barracks, destroying at least 75% of the enemy forces. I thoroughly enjoyed this mission, and played it through to the end (a US Total Victory, if you must know). The second mission completely kicked my butt – and part of the problem is the fairly poor AI path finding in CMSF. Without giving spoilers away about the mission – I brought a platoon of Strykers full of infantry behind a large three story house. There was an entrance on the back of the house, and I instructed my infantry to dismount, and assault the house. Well, that was a big mistake – all three infantry squads completely ignored the door that I dropped them off in front of, instead choosing to circle around the front of the house to enter that way. Problem was, there were tons of enemy combatants in front of the house, and all three of my squads got slaughtered. In reading the forums at Battlefront.com, this (and other poor AI issues) is a common problem. I also had issues with vehicles crashing into each other, circling the long way round to get somewhere, or one vehicle just choosing to stop in the middle of a breach in the wall, causing the other three Strykers to attempt to circle 2Km around town to get to my ordered destination rather than waiting for the vehicle to clear the breach. Which it did ten seconds later. By then, it was too late – the three other Strykers were well on their way to the other side of town by the time the turn ended and I could issue revised orders. The AI is also fairly poor at protecting itself. Several times, I had Strykers hit by RPGs that didn’t kill the Stryker. Rather than returning fire or popping smoke and moving, they just sat there for the full 60 second turn doing nothing. Almost every time this ended up with a dead Stryker as the RPG team could pummel the Stryker until it was destroyed.

Im really getting the strong feeling that Real-Time is now the preferred method of play - in Real-Time, I could micromanage the Strykers reactions by pausing the game, ordering it to pop smoke, and reverse. However, I can’t stand Real-Time as I feel there is too much micro-management involved, and not nearly as much time watching the action. I much preferred the WEGO of the earlier CM games, to CMSF’s half-baked WEGO.

All in all this game has potential, and may live up to that potential after some serious patching. I did have some good fun when the game didn’t crash, and I didn’t need to use the broken or missing features. But in the state the game is in right now as released, it is almost unplayable. Between the multitude of CTD’s (one leaving me unable to continue with the campaign), the AI pathing issues, missing features (no smoke rounds for artillery, ‘adjusting fire’ for artillery missions doesn’t work), missing maps, the Quick Battle losing almost all of its replay value, and the near demise of the WEGO system (due to poor command ability), I can’t recommend this game. Almost every time I fire up the game to play some, I end up closing it down in frustration. In addition, there appears to be significant problems with the multiplayer aspect of CMSF - specifically there is no WEGO whatsoever for TCP/IP play, and PBEM (Play By EMail) files are too large for most mail systems to handle. However, both those issues are outside the scope of this review (I don’t play multiplayer at all, hence did not reveiw that aspect).

Perhaps a patch or three will fix the game – I will definitely be keeping an eye on that, as I really want to like this game, but can’t in its current state. Should a patch be released that significantly adds features, or fixes the issues I have above, I’ll revisit the game for a ’sudo-review’. I won’t officially change the score (I feel that games should be reviewed on their merits on release - many game companies nowadays feel the need to release buggy games, and patch later), but will update on the progress of the game.

Score: 1.5/5

The Good:
Graphics
Sounds
Atmosphere and ‘feel’ of a combat situation

The Bad:
Very poor AI
Crashes
Missing features (smoke rounds, adjusting fire, etc)
WEGO is an afterthought at best
Clunky interface, with no mouseover tooltips.
Limited to no Quick Battle replayability, without relying on the community for quality maps