Combat Mission Shock Force: British Forces
Developed & Published by Battlefront.com. $25.00 download (hardcopy add S&H)

Passed Inspection: Amazingly detailed and playable expansion to the Combat Mission: Shock Force line of games. Campaign is very challenging. High replay value.

Failed Basic: Limited control over unit choices in quick battles. Fuzzy objectives.

The heart of the expansion is not just the instant battles and missions but a thoughtfully designed new branching campaign which follows the Highlanders Battle Group, 7th Armoured Brigade in its battles through Syria.

Battlefront’s Combat Mission line of games have been the true gold of PC war games for the last 8 years. The original trilogy of Combat Mission games took us from France in 1944 to North Africa, Italy and the Russian Front. With Combat Mission: Shock Force, Battlefront has updated the game engine and moved the game’s scope to a modern war against Syria. Combat Mission: Shock Force – British Forces is the newest expansion to the franchise and will not disappoint. (The first expansion in the series was CMSF – Marines; see ACG review. – Editor)

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The expansion is easy to install and set up. The user can control the graphic scope of the game to conform to their computer’s power. From high-end systems to the system I tested it on (a Frankenstein’s monster computer with 1.5 GHz, 1 gig of memory and a 64 Meg graphics card), the game plays fast and furious and looks great to boot! It uses the standard Combat Mission: Shock Force interface.

The game’s premise is that in 2008, while the US Marines and the US Army invade Syria from two different directions, the British forge a new front in order to pin down the Syrian military.

The British forces have all their standard equipment including the Scimitar, Spartan and Warrior infantry fighting vehicles as well as the Challenger 2 main battle tank and Jackal patrol vehicle. In fact, the British seem to have a large amount of IVFs in their orders of battle-making for some very interesting variations during battles. The infantry uses variations of the L85 assault rifles as well as the L22A2 and the L86A2. This game also adds on-screen mortars for the Brits to pound their enemies with. Of course, the mortars have to be effectively deployed or else they and their crew are sitting ducks for enemy fire.

Also included in this expansion is an addition to the American order of battle, the Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT). The IBCT philosophy dictates a force which can deploy rapidly like a light assault force but pack heavy firepower like an armored force. The IBCT’s main vehicle is a version of the LAV III.

The expansion includes amazing new graphics for the British forces as well as British-accented voices for added realism.

The heart of the expansion is not just the instant battles and missions but a thoughtfully designed new branching campaign which follows the Highlanders Battle Group, 7th Armoured Brigade in its battles through Syria. During the first two campaign battles, many little details will surprise gamers. From Iraqi dissidents to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the players will have to be on their toes to avoid messy situations.

For example, in one mission, I split my forces in to a pincer action. One group came upon three strange looking piles of rubble near a suspected Syrian command post in a city. I sent a fire team out from inside their vehicle and they managed to snipe a dissident in an adjacent building who was spotting for the IEDs. We managed to avoid what could have been a devastating series of explosions. After neutralizing the IEDs, we stormed the command post and removed its occupants from the fight.

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