As you might notice pretty quickly, Combat Mission isn't the kind of game that holds your hand- it's straight in at the deep end.

Hopefully these videos will help, but there are a few things you can do to make life easier:

Play in Turn-Based mode. Realtime might be familiar and attractive, but you're incapable of being everywhere at once and it's impossible to get the whole picture. Turn-based mode splits the game into minute-long chunks, letting you replay each minute from whatever angle you like as often as you like. This is pretty much the only way you can get round every squad, team and vehicle and get all the details of what happened. Once you're done, you have as long as you like to sort out your orders for the next turn.

Start off by playing as the US or NATO. This is a realistic game, not a balanced one: Syrian Army and Unconventional forces are completely outclassed by the Coalition. It's much easier to get to grips with the game when your troops aren't losing every single firefight.

Be patient. This is an old game on an old engine that's simulating something extremely complex: it takes time to get used to the controls, then it takes more time to get used to the game mechanics, then it takes even more time to develop enough tactical sense to play the game to a decent standard. Hopefully these videos and tips will help a bit, but bear in mind that you really do have to learn how modern warfare works and that's not easy.

A quick and dirty tactical primer.

Some of these videos are filmed in other Combat Mission titles, but they all deal with the game engine, so they'll apply to Shock Force 2 as well.

More in-depth looks at different vehicles and formations.