{"id":756,"date":"2007-09-05T10:41:51","date_gmt":"2007-09-05T14:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/05\/combat-mission-shock-force-review\/"},"modified":"2007-12-06T15:01:39","modified_gmt":"2007-12-06T19:01:39","slug":"combat-mission-shock-force-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/05\/combat-mission-shock-force-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Combat Mission: Shock Force Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My long delayed review of <em>Combat Mission: Shock Force<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gameshark.com\/reviews\/2732\/p_0\/Combat-Mission-Shock-Force-Review.htm\"> is up at Gameshark<\/a>. Apologies for the crappy screenshots.<\/p>\n<p>The 1.01 version I played was a significant improvement from the 1.00 version that I derided a couple of months ago, derision that led to an influx of visitors from the Battlefront forums. (&#8220;Few stayed to bowl.&#8221;) It&#8217;s amazing what a few performance tweaks and pathfinding alterations can do to make a game better. I&#8217;ve no clue why Paradox decided to send out a clearly incomplete version for review, leading to scathing reviews from Eurogamer and Games for Windows Magazine. (The Gamespot review was based on 1.01, though Brett Todd&#8217;s very critical review is as puzzling to me as all those sevens and nines that 1.00 got.)<\/p>\n<p>CMSF is an above average wargame, but barely. I go back and forth on whether it is better than <em>Theatre of War<\/em> or not. CMSF tries some new things and the unconventional war stuff is more interesting than I thought it would be. ToW&#8217;s soldiers, however, act like soldiers &#8211; they respond to threats, they run when scared, they seek cover. They used to do that in <em>Combat Mission<\/em>, too.<\/p>\n<p>Since this review was written, two patches have come out, and I haven&#8217;t had the opportunity or desire to try them. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.crypticcomet.com\/\">Armageddon Empires<\/a><\/em> is catching my attention at the moment (I&#8217;m reviewing it for PTD Magazine) and it is a game as far from Shock Force as you can possibly imagine. Grab the demo and be sure to read Bill Harris&#8217;s tutorial at <a href=\"http:\/\/dubiousquality.blogspot.com\/\">Dubious Quality<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My long delayed review of Combat Mission: Shock Force is up at Gameshark. Apologies for the crappy screenshots. The 1.01 version I played was a significant improvement from the 1.00 version that I derided a couple of months ago, derision that led to an influx of visitors from the Battlefront forums. (&#8220;Few stayed to bowl.&#8221;) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[64,6,99],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-cc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}