Thought I’d forgotten about this, eh? Of course not! Having experienced all the fun of fighting against a legion of Down’s Syndrome soldiers solo, I an only imagine that commanding more guys will work absolutely flawlessly. Pardon me a moment, I have to go laugh until I pass out.
Oh, I actually finally remembered to thumbnail all the photos, so click them to see them big. I can learnz stuff!
First off, I noticed something when the game was loading up that hadn’t previously caught my attention. This is the ratings screen that pops up during the load sequence…notice anything a bit odd?
Mild sexual themes??!! Did they discard the Army’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy at some point? Weird…also, if you see a scenario entitled ‘Exploiting the Rear’, maybe you should avoid it…
Anyway, that juvenile attempt at jocularity out of the way, on with command!
Look upon my squad. Now, this is where things immediately started to fall apart for me, because the black dude in shades WAS MY COMMAND SERGEANT EARLIER IN TRAINING! What the fuck happened?! Perhaps something involving mild sexual themes and a misplaced touch, things get a little playful sort of scenario whilst ‘helping a comrade’?
So, the second thing that got me about this sequence was the horrendous dialogue. It’s been bad to this point, but the unbelievably stilted nature of the speech really shines now that guys are doing a lot of talking. Remember your old Speak & Spell? That motherfucker is the most natural speaker on Planet Earth next to the jabbering twits here.
Okay, so I learn basic orders like telling guys where to go. This is where things go paranormal. I clearly see 2 guys listed at the bottom of the screen there, and 2 guys to command, right? Now I give orders to another soldier and…
Who the Hell is this guy?! He basically appeared from nowhere. I looked down to point at the area where I wanted someone to go, I look up, and here’s this dude. And the other two are still standing in front of me…yet I still have 2 tabs for people. I can only hope that this means the inclusion of a zombie army…
So I now have to tell this guy to drive 500 meters in a Humvee and get another dude (who may or may not be alive…I don’t know yet). Surprisingly, IT ACTUALLY WORKS.
Look at that! The bastard is actually going where I told him to on the map! Woohoo for progress in basic motor skills! And the guy at the other end actually gets in the stupid vehicle! Well actually…no, the first time I clicked on it WITH the order to Mount the Humvee (Minor sexual theme???) selected, he was about to open fire. I pressed it again and was actually a little disappointed when he just got in the stupid car. Now, here are a couple of shots of the map as they drive back…
Now, aside from my mad circling skillz, notice anything weird there? Why is he cornering at a 45 degree angle? Is this a drift racing circuit? That wasn’t even the weirdest graphic anomaly as every now and then the Hummer would just vanish, appear several hundred meters away, then reappear back on the road again. Is it phase shifting? This is what happens when we employ ghosts to take driving jobs away from good American soldiers!
Anyway, they successfully made it back, I had four guys surrounding me, and only three of them showed up as order options. OH! About the ‘quick order’ system…it has TEN SUBMENUS OF ORDER OPTIONS! Yes, TEN! There is nothing quick about this!
So, the tutorial just kinda stopped at this point. I mean, with the others it actually says it’s finished and you can practice if you want or quit, but this just stopped as my troops stared at me…
Please stop undressing me with your eyes!
So, I quit and move on to commanding multiple units.
Check out this scintillating view!
Wow…a bunch of camo netting and…a bunch of stuff partially obscured by camo netting. I think we need to find a new subcontractor to build command bunkers…and without warning, I am hit with screen after screen of unit info!
This stuff isn’t a worry…I’ve played enough games with overhead maps that I know my basic NATO symbology. If you don’t, you better have a photographic memory, because I don’t see this shit written down anywhere.
THIS presents more of a problem. So I’m in the middle of a huge firefight, and I need to squint to see if that’s a big dot, little dot or tiny line that looks dot-ish over a unit? Nice design, fucktards! I’m sure this is a realistic depiction of what commanding a company in the field is like, too.
“Sir, what do we do?”
“Dammit Corporal…is that a dot or a tiny fragment of a line?!”
Ugh. Okay, fuck it, let’s go.
Like this screen? I hope so, because it’s basically the only one you will ever use. Remember those ‘quick commands’ from earlier? They’re here again…ten submenus worth FOR EVERY DAMN UNIT. How convenient. And you use the number keys to bring up the submenus with no way of knowing, beyond pure memory, which is for fire orders, which is for movement or anything like that. Plus, some things that to anyone with sense would fit in one area are in a completely different spot…always a good design decision. AAUGH! I missed the ‘action shots’ as a triangle symbol representing an enemy helicopter moved in. I was supposed to issue orders to fire on it…I never could. My guys still shot it down though in exciting action that I could sort of hear at a distance. All this AFTER a thrilling set of waypoint assignments, then hammering the right mouse button to bring up my ability to change waypoint-specific sub assignments (REALLY…I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP)…no need to worry about that level of needless confusion because it doesn’t work.
Finally, we have base building. Yep, in the interests of PURE REALISM, Bohemia Interactive decided to include this staple of RTS games everywhere. Pure joy.
The build interface! This finally came up properly on my third attempt…the first two times, despite it being picked in the context menu, my soldier decided to blindly fire rifle rounds in to the air anyway. So, let’s build us a light factory! Is it just me or does $400 seem incredibly cheap?
Considering that it exploded the instant I built it, I guess there was a reason for the low cost. I immediately assumed the OpFor guys from the earlier training sessions had broken out and gone on the offensive again, so I readied myself to…I dunno, build a barracks on their heads or something? Anyway, turns out it’s part of the game that teaches you to repair buildings. Okay, study that picture…now here’s the after repairs shot…
Uhhh…what? The smoke cleared, but I’m pretty sure that’s the work of the wind, not a repair crew. NOTHING IS FIXED, yet the game is ready for me to move on to the next step and learn to delete structures? Well, I fucking guess so seeing as it’s a burnt out hulk of shit!
And so ends my experience with command training. Clearly, I’m ready to go on an op!
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