Blog Post Number 19 Written:06-05-21 Uploaded:05-27-2022
I know this seems kind of off topic since I am a sci-fi author and this is about video games, but I am also a PC gamer, and I love me some hardcore first-person shooters. Tittles Like Squad, Arma III, Insurgency Sandstorm, Ground Branch, Hell Let Loose, Post Scriptum, Cold Waters, and so on.
So… from my experience, these are a few tips and tricks if you’re going to get into these kinds of serious, ReAlIsM based games.
If someone is in charge, like in Squad or Post Scriptum for example when there are assigned Squad Leader roles, if you aren’t the Squad Leader, then follow the squad leader’s plan.
From my experience there are three reasons plans fail, 1 is not having enough information, 2 is the Squad Leader is dumb and it’s a bad plan, and 3 is that no one listens, not enough people work together or follow the plan and work as a team and so you lack the power to pull it off, even if you are in the right place at the right time… So be a team player, play the objective and use the equipment for your roll. What is also often a common occurance, is that the other Squad Leaders or team mates have already screwed the pooch, wasted supplies or lost a vehicle or relative equipment.
Mostly I just want to rant about style stuff.
Be patient, and go slow. Roughly half of the players at any given time seem to be transplanted from other more arcade and action-packed FPS games like Battlefield or COD and they’re just going to run off to get kills and do lone wolf stuff. Let them go first, let them draw the attention, move slowly, carefully and precisely. Strike when the enemy doesn’t have a chance to strike back. there is always some cringy pre-teen player who’s hopped up on Takis, Mountain Dew and COD killstreaks that will be faster on the draw and outshoot you. Don’t use rely on your skills as a shooter with your mouse and keyboard to win, rely on your brain to win, decoys, feints, flanks, suppression, tricks to make the enemy give themselves away. Leave a buddy team behind enemy lines to harass the shit out of them. make them go slow, check their corners, clear every room, check every intersection for mines, never let them be comfortable, keep them looking over their shoulder, make them devote time, people and resources to hunt you down. A good buddy team can take an entire squad off the enemy’s front line because they have to go find you. (And to be clear, I have nothing against any players of any age, who come from any game or experience or style background. I love teaching tactics and game play to people, I was simply pointing at a stereotype of players who often feel they don’t need to learn the ropes. And while they are often racking up big score numbers, that’s because they are farming kills, and not actually capturing objectives. they often have lots of deaths too. Gotta watch those ratios.)
Use free look, where you can move your head independently of your body. Lay in the bushes, suck dirt, stay hidden, watch and look where they are going, see which way their logistics vehicles are headed, use that to estimate where they have set up FOBs and radios and strike from the wrong direction at an awkward moment. Entire enemy squad just spawned on the HAB? Use your discression, don’t shoot anyone, let them auto walk off to their objective in peace, and dig down their radio behind them, then lay in wait to ambush them from behind when they come back to fix it.
I guess that’s the biggest word to get my point across “discretion”. Play slow, careful, and make sure of your footing before you jump. I know those games take wild turns and chaos can easily ensue, don’t be afraid to retreat, to give up ground, to let them cap an objective. You know where they are and what they’re doing. And you can call in the big guns. That’s the modern escalation just like on the real battlefield. Does the enemy have rifles? Bring something belt-fed, they have a belt-fed? Use a launcher, they have launchers? bring an IFV, they had an IFV? use a tank, they have a tank? call an airstrike. If they call an airstrike… probably too late you’re dead, but you get my point.
You must be like water, fluid, pliable, always there, impossible to catch, fill in the gaps behind them, leaving no crack untested, but able to grind away relentlessly when a fissure is found and make that unprotected doorway into a canyon and funnel the whole team through it into the little camp.
Be the snake in the grass, and let them pass. Strike after they have moved beyond you and they think they’re safe from that direction. I know, the more and more I am going on the less and less I am making sense, my apologies it is very late, as of my writing this I am on night shift and my thinking isn’t 100%,
Long story short PFTO, but with discretion, don’t be in the front but don’t get left behind, be where you are useful, and fight with your head just as much as your guns, be creative. Work with and listen to your Squad leader and share as much correct and relevant information as you can without spamming the comms channels. Play games, make friends, join a discord, get whitelisted have a good time, and stay tactical.
Chace Randolph 