Hamburglar

20/20 hindsight is also called Monday Morning Quarterbacking. After Sunday's US football game all the guys get together at work and talk about what the coach should have done. The thing is, you only know what he should have done because you're looking back on it - at the time, what he did might have seemed a good idea. This applies to OpFor in that people are saying a "real" Resistance Commander would try to take zero casualties at all costs. But the way these people get zero casaulties is that they play the mission and reload a saved game every time one of their guys dies. So after playing the same scenario half a dozen times, you know exactly when, where, and how many Russian reinforcements are coming and where ambushes are etc. This way you can basically just constantly play it till you get it perfect, which I think is NOT realistic. I tried to play it as (in my opinion) a real Resistance commander would. Do the mission - if guys die, then that sucks, but we might as well go one with the mission. I'm not going to restart the game if a guy gets plugged by a sniper 30 seconds into it. Its just shit that happens. Anyone can get through the campaign with zero casaulties if they know exactly what they're facing.

I've been thinking about the single player campaigns and what I liked about them. Cold War Crisis: I really liked this campaign because it was interesting in how you started out as a lowly grunt and then got to rise in rank as you played - you weren't always "the man in charge" and that kind of added to the uniqueness of the missions in that you had to follow orders. I really liked the way it kept track of the war as well - I always knew what was going on. What I didn't like were the Tank missions. They kind of disrupted the continuity of the game and the missions weren't all that fun. Plus the tank driver character was kind of a dork - I just didn't really like him. Red Hammer: This had promise. It really did. I loved the idea of being on the Russian side and playing with their weapons and fighting against NATO. I was really loving the campaign up until you switch sides. I have no idea WHY they made that happen. It really took me out of the campaign to see Lukin decide on a whim to just start fighting his own men. He acts as if they're all horribly guilty down to the lowest grunt even though he was one of them moments before. Plus this change of affairs really just made it a CWC rehash. The whole point of me playing Red Hammer was that I wanted to FIGHT against NATO troops and the Resistance instead of just killing Russians again. I think BIS really dropped the ball on this one. It was challenging but the plot twist was uninspired. Can't we just be the bad guys for once? Resistance: I had high hopes for this one too. I LOVED the opening in which you just start as a civilian and then join up with the Resistance, ultimately leading it. I LOVED the new island - it just seemed so much better. What I didn't like was that the campaign turned really sour right after the mission where you ambush the truck convoy. My question is: WHY IS THIS A TANK CAMPAIGN. I was looking forward to hit and run guerilla tactics: Lots of fighting in the woods, ambushes, assassinations, escapes, sabotages, etc. BUT, they change the ONE campaign that should have been predominantly infantry into a tank campaign. Almost every mission you NEEDED to load your guys up into tanks or fight a zillion tanks etc. When I saw the capital, Lipany, and the other huge city, Petrovice, I had visions of awesome infantry street fights. What do we get? Pound the crap out of it with tanks from long distance. Tanks tanks tanks tanks. Not only was it not fun, its entirely unrealistic. The Russian airforce would have obliterated any Rebel tank column because the rebels had ZERO air defense or planes/helicopters. It really ruined the campaign for me. I only played it through once just to finish it but I don't think I could ever play it again. What makes me sad is how novel the concept seemed but how the execution in my opinion was atrocious. My basic opinion is that Cold War Crisis is the best of the campaigns, but Red Hammer and Resistance could have been better if they just stuck to their guns and let you play as the Russians and let you act as a rebel group instead of turning into the mess they were. Am I alone or do people agree with me on this?

I tried to play it through like a real Resistance commander in that: 1. I make my best effort not to get men killed. 2. Never restart a mission unless I die or the objective is failed. If people die, they die. I like playing it through realistically - it makes keeping men alive all the better when they DO stay alive by actually survivng instead of me playing the mission over again and restarting it if somebody dies. I lost around 38 guys over the course of the campaign on my first time through. If I walked into an ambush and lost 4 guys, well those 4 guys were gone. Play as you like, but that is the way of "realism". The real resistance commander doesn't have 20/20 hindsight.

Characters: I like sticking with the same one, but if its a very large campaign I wouldn't mind having a few main characters. It seems more realistic to play as a Special Ops guy doing covert stuff than having your Army guy suddenly start doing commando missions. War: I usualy prefer the war to be "part of something bigger". I like to think of myself fighting a small part in one huge war. On that point, I don't like to be winning the war by myself. I like taking part in more -team based actions and not ALWAYS being the leader of the whole operation. I don't like ALWAYS facing a zillion enemies. Fewer enemies but SMARTER and better placed seems cooler. Mission Variety: I like having differentiated missions, but there are definitely ways to keep realism in this. For example, in a Vietnam type campaign (playing as the NVA or Viet Cong) i could see these types of missions: 1. Surviving an artillery bombardment. Having artillery start falling on your base all over the place and you have to get certain trucks full of supplies or men out of the area OR find the guy with binoculars that's calling it in. 2. Scouting. Go out with a few men into the jungle and just report on enemy positions. If you make too much combat or spend too long fighting the enemy starts honing in. 3. Enemy Air Strike on you. Perhaps you're in a convoy and the only defences you have are a few truck mounted MG's and you have to escape or shoot down the heli's. 4. Ambush type missions. 5. Move into a village - maybe locals are hostile, maybe they aren't. (For USA, maybe there are Viet Cong in the village). Perhaps the mission could have you entering 3 villages and only one of them has a threat to keep the surprise. 6. (For USA) Defend an LZ that needs to be evacuated. You are the rearguard and can only leave once all the rest of the squads have left. 7. Sniper Hunt: Theres a sniper somewhere around pegging at your men. Go get him. (Only have like a couple enemy troops. Maybe a sniper or two, and a couple of troops protecting them). There's a couple mission ideas to keep things interesting but always being pretty realistic. None of them have really the objective of wiping out a million troops. The most hated type of mission to me is: You and your squad of 9 infantry must assault a town with 40 guards and 4 tanks in it. Its just annoying and extremely unrealistic to do. Continuity is very important to me - there should be a good idea of what is going on in the campaign in my opinion. Maybe ALWAYS have the map shaded to show Friendly and Enemy territory just to give you an idea of how the war is going.