Close Combat: First to Fight (PC, 15+)

Herald rating: ***

At the huge video games expo in Los Angeles last month the US Army was out in force to push its patriotic video game America's Army . It was all a bit technical and earnest for me and their stand had too much khaki.

Close Combat: First to Fight is the type of game developers make when they don't embed themselves with the Army. It draws on the modern technology of war we have seen in Splinter Cell as well as the combat situations we have grown familiar with from the TV footage coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And it is based on a software training program set up for the US Marines.

But First to Fight creates a number of fictional scenarios the Army probably wouldn't be comfortable with. The game starts benignly with a UN mission in Beirut. You command a four-man team of marines.

You give the orders but your underlings are controlled by artificial intelligence.

Hairier missions ensue and you will eventually have to call in air support. The level of detail is tremendous and the world's hot zones are nicely recreated.

First to Fight also plays like all the other first-person combat shooters we're well acquainted with so you don't have to learn a whole new set of controls.

* $100