The realism doesn’t stop there. Artillery often needs to be adjusted before it can properly fire for effect, and takes a few extra precious minutes before fiery death can rain down upon your targets. Nothing in the game is ever really easy, as IEDs can fail to go off and airstrikes can miss their intended targets and hit friendly troops. Adding to your tactical worries are limited supplies of ammunition and the very realistic problem of fatigue. No one has an infinite supply of ammo, forcing both sides to refrain from ordering artillery; airstrikes and small-arms fire to hit random targets. Anti-tank teams have finite supplies of their precious missiles, ensuring that it is impossible to spam attacks against these rather expensive units. You might need a missile to take out a T90 from the front at 1500 meters, but you only really need a grenade launcher or heavy machine gun to cook off the ammunition inside a BMP-3. These details keep the game fresh and exciting, and they force you to be on your toes.

The game comes with both lengthy campaigns and shorter, individual battles. The main campaign traces the full evolution of the MEU’s invasion of Syria, starting with early reconnaissance and leading to large battles. Units in the campaign carry over from one mission to another, so squandering your troops early in the campaign will make life painful as it progresses. The campaign does not last for years, so you cannot expect reinforcements and replacements from home.

What you can expect is plenty of command/control support when playing as the U.S., with some nice defensive advantages available to the Syrians. The shorter battles focus on a variety of tactical situations and usually have very specific and narrow victory conditions that bear no relation to the other short battles. It is also possible to set up randomly generated quick battles that give each side a starting force and a map.

Battlefront is a company whose mission, in their own words, is “to provide the challenging military-minded computer gaming experience that has all but disappeared from the face of corporate gaming today.” It’s a tall order, so let’s see if CMSF – Marines lives up to this design philosophy.