Combat Mission: Shock Force 2

This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most realistic war-based game that you will find anywhere. Don't expect an RTS. This game will take you through how real armies fight. You will realise the futility of sending troops out into the open without sufficient cover. You will learn how to implement real world tactics into your play, and most importantly you will learn how deadly the modern battlefield really is.
There is a reason why professional militaries use the game to prepare their troops. The detail put into the game in terms of ammunition, vehicles and morale makes this the closest that you would want to get to real combat.
I have been waiting for the steam release with baited breath, having collected all of the other Battlefront titles and I hope that this move opens up the game to the wider public. This truly is one of the all time classic military simulators and I am now going to continue the British campaign slogging through the Syrian defences with my Scottish Reg't.

Absolutely amazed to see Combat Mission on Steam. CM is still the best at what it does.

Honestly, how best to describe Shock Force 2 as someone who's recently been dipping their feet into the Combat Mission genre? It's a hell of a game, unlike anything I've played or experienced. So let's try and divvie it up into smaller pieces to comprehend.
SETTING
The year is 2008 and NATO forces have moved into Syria in a blitz attack not too uncommon from another certain Middle Eastern conflict coalition forces have battled in. In an attack from all sides, forces from the US Army, Marine Corps, the British, the Germans, the Dutch and the Canadians move into the country, their goal to defeat the opposing enemy forces. The enemy consists of the Syrian Army and Unconventional forces, though they're underequipped and inferior to their NATO counterparts, but they have the homeground advantage and they are more than prepared to fight for their homes.
The game and its DLCs represent all of these forces in a stellar fashion. Shock Force 2 employs a vast variety of units, each one different from the next, giving the game a remarkable amount of variety in its units and how you employ them. Realism is taken to massive undertakings to accurately replicate every nitty gritty stat on this equipment, and the soldiers using it. Healthbars and bullet sponge infantry are left at the door, and in their place is modifiers and a variety of factors to take into account to give a sense of unique to every soldier or tank (though these stats will be covered in another part of the review.).
GAMEPLAY
Of course, setting isn't everything in a game, even the greatest of game worlds can be undercut by terrible gameplay or horrid balancing. So.. how is Shock Force 2? It's quite good, as far as fringe simulator games go. As stated prior, every unit in Shock Force 2 is given a variety of traits and factors from morale, experience, competence and their equipment to accurately replicate their skill in battle. Combat Mission's scale is very tailored to what the player wants, which can range from dealing with small infantry skirmishes of at most a few squads on each side, to micromanaging massive battlefronts with entire battalions of tanks, aircraft and soldiers taking to the frontlines. Every soldier is taken into account in the game, from the lowliest grunt to the biggest battle tank.
Combat Mission takes you through two separate modes; the standard real time, for people who don't quite enjoy waiting their turns, or the more unique and fitting WEGO. For those who don't know, WEGO is a turn based mode where both sides plan out their strategies in 60 second 'turns'. When both sides click the ready button, you get to watch a minute of your little pixeltruppen moving about the battlefield, taking cover, doing advances or laying down fire on the enemy. It's the most recommended mode for the game, given the utter complexities of the controls each unit has.
Speaking of units, very typically the average unit size is a single squad. You can break these squads up into individual pieces, but in the end the largest unit you can individually command is a squad of soldiers, or a single vehicle. Each unit has multiple tabs of controls to take into account, with various orders to specify how they should move across the battlefield, fire upon targets or do things such as call for support. As stated prior, these units all have their own little modifiers and stats attributed to them, which one can take into account. Maybe the squad is lead by an inexperienced sergeant? maybe they're tired from sprinting from one objective to the other? what about night vision, maybe the squads equipped with it will have better times fighting than those without it? It's all represented here.
Combat Mission has 3 individual single player modes; campaign, battle, and quick battle. Campaign is self explanatory, and in the base game you will have access to two; the training campaign to help you learn the ropes (read the manual for it though), and Task Force Thunder, a campaign depicting the struggle of commanding a US mechanized force spearheading into the country. Naturally the other DLCs add more, but these are the ones you're stuck with if you buy the base game. Battles meanwhile are depicting staged fights between you and the enemy, typically with their own backstories and unit compositions. As with the campaigns you get more with the DLCs, but the ones in the base game aren't bad. Finally there's quick battles, which is effectively sandbox mode. You can design your own unit composition from scratch, including what goodies you'd like for both sides. Though because the AI is more or less clueless without the scripted battle/campaign stuff, you won't play this mode for a challenge. There's also the multiplayer, which is basically quick battles but with actually competent enemies.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
The game, graphic wise, isn't anything to behold. It's got its fair share of excellent designs, with well textured vehicles and nice little soldier models, but don't expect the game to be Crysis levels of well done. Shadows don't load past a certain point and a lot of graphics only really load if you get close to them, so unmodded the game isn't the best looking (though it doesn't need to be, given how that's not the game's focus).
The game does well to model sound design though, and the fights in the game can be awesome to watch. Tanks roll out firing shots into trenches and at other tanks, aircraft and UAVs bomb enemies while Infantry squads move through the carnage to secure objective zones. There's not a moment where you can't do something or watch another firefight take place. Engine noises, guns firing, soldiers communicating; the game has plenty of good sounds that make the game very chaotic and immerse you into the battles you wage.
OVERALL
Combat Mission Shock Force 2 is a wonderful simulator game, a great strategy game, and a very welcome addition to Steam's collection of fringe strategy games. Though the 60$ price range is steep, the game's likely going to have its fair share of sales, so I'd recommend picking it up during those times if possible. It's a really good game depicting the equipment modern armies fight with, the attritional slog of unconventional warfare and the challenges any army has to face in modern times.
Though the game isn't without its fair share of problems (slow development times from a small dev team namely, though it has its notable bugs mixed in too), they're more the exception than the norm. Plus with Slytherin helping Battlefront out in this endeavor, one can only be hopeful for the roads ahead.
Now.. if modern warfare doesn't catch your fancy? Combat Mission's not a single game, but a wide assortment of them. It's got its fair share of World War 2 games you can play around in, from the Normandy Front to Italy, to the Eastern Front or Bastogne. Though Shock Force 2 is the first game on Battlefront's agenda to make it to steam, it's definitely not the last.
tl;dr? every grognard's dream game, and definitely a good addition to any person's library if they fancy realistic simulators or strategy games.

Make no mistake; this game is resolutely anti-modern. It demands patience and completely foregoes the kind of hand-holding that can be found in many contemporary video games in favor of hard-boiled tactical gameplay. As such, to critique it for its outdated controls, graphics, camera view or similar features would be to greatly mistake both the developers’ aims and the intended playerbase.
The above being said, the game neither wholly shuns nor courts realism. Instead, reality is treated as one would expect it to be within the confines of a video game, i.e. while much is left to the player’s imagination, nothing that a computer cannot figure out is left unaccounted for. Projectiles, vehicles, soldiers, buildings, etc. are all affected by the laws of physics, and each event on the battlefield is well-documented. Every soldier is a human being; brave, terrified or somewhere in-between. The player who is not expecting to be spoon-fed by the game will therefore quickly realize that, excepting visual fidelity, there is no lack of detail in the game. Given enough time and interest, one can spend an entire day analyzing the minutiae of a single well-planned maneuver in Combat Mission.
In short, then, Combat Mission is a game for those who are ready to invest time into a tactical warfare simulator which does not forget that it is just that—a simulator. If you do not live for great graphics, instant gratification, ubiquitous assistive hints and HUDs and other similar modern tropes, Combat Mission is the game for you. It does exactly what it says on the tin. If, however, you are looking for any of the aforementioned, steer clear of CMSF2.
Whether you should buy it at its current (rather expensive) price or wait for a price cut is up to you.
NOTE: Those of you using Linux should know that the game does not (yet) function with Proton.

Its the game I bought in 2007 that I never tell my friends about because they just wouldnt get it ;-) Yes I am still in love

This is not a Command and Conquer RTS. This is a realistic Company command level tactical command simulator. The learning curve can be a bit steep initially and requires a more Chess like approach. If you enjoy the Close Combat series, Wargame AirLand Battle/Red Dragon/European Escalation or Steel Division, you will like this game. I have few if little complaints and have enjoyed this game immensely!
PS for those of you put off by the Windows 10 min. sys. requirements, don't be! I run the game with full features on a Windows 8.1 laptop and haven't encountered any issues.

I have played CM:SF, CM:BN, all prior to this Steam release of CM:SF2 (which is visually near-identical to V1), so the low hour count is not indicative of my actual playtime with this series.
DO NOT BUY if you're looking for some kind of military RTS *GAME*. CM:SF2 is an attempt to realistically simulate the subject matter, not provide a click-fest, apm game. It is expensive, clunky, the interface takes getting used to, the graphics are very dated, and it runs slower than you would expect, even on a modern system. Actual combat is brutal, entire truck loads of your men will get KIA by some random dude with an RPG, air support and arty takes what would seem like forever (but is actually realistic) to actually come down etc etc. You will also need to know a lot about the subject matter if you want to master the game. For example, what is the difference between an M1A1 and an M1A2 (and even sub-variants), or how is the USMC M1 different from the US Army M1, and that's just one tank, on the Blue Force side. How are USMC fireteams organised, and why are they different to to US Army, and so on. ELINT, night vision, FAC's, communication networks, ammunition count etc are all included, the list really does go on.
DO BUY if you like wargaming and military simulation. There really isn't any other software product that I'm aware of that does what this does. It simulates a small chunk of battlefield down to individual men and individual bullets. Units don't have 'health bars', vehicles have systems to be damaged or degraded, and men will behave like actual humans, running away or trying to cower behind a tiny bump of ground. It's not fast-paced, and favours correct tactics and knowledge of your own and the enemies capabilities.