When the brain trust behind the hardcore flight sim Il-2 Sturmovik joins forces with wargaming powerhouse Battlefront, you can pretty much predict the outcome: a beautiful and detailed game world that tries to model everything from vision through a tree line to the kinetic energy of a round fired at a 45 degree angle.

That’s precisely what you get in Theatre of War. The developers have a special love for their machines. They’ve even included an in game encyclopedia of weapons in case you needed to know just how much damage that T-60 can take before it conks out or how much damage you can expect your AT rifle to do to those self-propelled guns coming over the horizon.

Those horizons are some of the great glories of Theatre of War. The accurate weapons models mean that if you can see it, no matter how far away, you can usually shoot it. Even if you don’t expect to hit anything, having one tank or gun provide covering fire for your advancing troops can be a winning strategy. So, you need to duck in and out of sight, slowly making your way to your objectives.

This is harder than it sounds because, as the ostrich finds out to its peril, just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they can’t see you. The developers defend this as being realistic, but in the end this realism proves frustrating. Your infantry may see an anti-tank gun from their vantage point, and the gun can see your tanks, but the tanks can’t see the gun. They can target an area, but you often have to settle for one well in front of the harassing artillery. The proper tactical decision is to hightail it out of there, preferably behind a building.

In addition, the commitment to realism only goes so far. There is no hunkering down in buildings to ambush approaching enemies, like you find in Combat Mission or Close Combat. This is not a game about urban combat, says Battlefront. It’s a game about stopping the enemy as it comes at you through villages, forests and plains. In fact, it is so completely about that that almost every scenario plays out identically. Sometimes you get trenches, but by and large the battles are all about spotting the invaders and then surviving through careful approaches. There is some variety in force compositions, but for the most part you make do with a vehicle heavy army. Even if you start with a bunch of paratroopers, before long they’ll give you a bunch of tanks to help out. There’s little real variety in the maps – Poland and Normandy don’t seem that different – but it’s not clear if that’s a limitation of developer imagination or player perspective.

But the fact that you play it and want more of it says something positive about the game. The look is obviously part of the appeal. Though the icons can be a little distracting, the visuals are very impressive. From men jumping out of a burning tank to a squad taking position behind a captured gun, Theatre of War is full of life, and, of course, death. Tanks mow down trees in their path with a satisfying crunch as the leaves hit the ground.

The five campaigns and six battle scenarios run the gamut from stopping the Germans in Poland to stopping the Germans at Market Garden. Your troops gain experience through the campaigns, leading to promotion and medals along with the usual skill building. Need a better gunner? Take that private and pump newly won experience into that skill. Medals and promotions contribute to leadership ability (people like following war heroes). The survivors will not necessarily follow you to the next mission. You may need to wait a while, especially in the Allied campaign that alternates between British and America perspectives. This attempt to build continuity through the war is a nice idea, but battles often happen too quickly to pay a lot of attention to whether you can get your good marksman in place before your position is overrun. Your soldiers get better, but so do your enemies and that means the playing field stays fairly level.