Operation Flashpoint: All-Around Defeat.

The next day, storming the village, first attempt: sure enough, my squad charged over open country and was massacred. Did I mention the village is on high ground, and that there are machine gunners there?

Astonishingly, the game now expects me, personally, to work around the disasters of US tactical doctrine: I was hardly even attacked, but the rest of the squad was slaughtered, and when we got down to me and one other guy left (myself squad leader), I failed the mission despite still being perfectly capable of taking the stupid village. The "mission failed" summary had a distinctly babes-in-the-wilderness feel to it, too: "Nobody quite understands what went wrong..." I know perfectly well what went wrong, but the idiotic brass would rather continue to lose than let me apply that lesson!

The campaign game has an oddly sardonic sense of humor -- it knows perfectly well that US tactical doctrine doesn't work, and intends to show it. I fought the battle again (twice, actually, dying the first time); even in the successful version, the attack ended in the routing of our forces. One squad was wiped out, I think, and the other two were severely damaged (I saved my squad's bacon by moving with the squad, getting a commanding position backed by a shrub, and taking out no fewer than seven Soviet soldiers in the ensuing fighting, plus two more later in the mission. Tactical doctrine, by the way, exists to ensure that an army can win without individual soldiers achieving Terminator-like kill records like this one...

We then lost our troop truck, retreated to a static staging point, hung out without attempting to conceal our presence or set up sentries, and waited for a Blackhawk to arrive and ferry us back to the main town, since high command had decided to evacuate the island -- apparently they caught on that their casualty rate was unsustainable. It's a miracle that we didn't get wiped out by yet another of my hypothetical random guys with RPGs; but as it is, despite our Blackhawk's careful approach WITH CAT! LIKE! TREAD!, a Soviet Hind showed up and shot it down. Total casualties: five members of our squad, plus unknown numbers of squad 2, plus probably the entirity of squad three, plus at least two troop trucks and a Blackhawk (!!!). We knocked out two BMPs and killed what must have been ten or eleven Soviet soldiers, but even so, we lost more men and more expensive equipment (one helicopter versus two APCs) than they did, and as to manpower losses, they have the draft and we don't. Not to mention that we were repulsed from our objective.

Next mission opened with my soldier the only survivor of the amalgamated first and second squads, which is only too plausible (I guess the guy with an RPG showed up after all, between the two missions): total casualties now 29 out of 30 plus unknown further equipment and reinforcements. (I think our M113s are dead if they didn't retreat after dropping us off.)

Being alone is a relief: finally no one following Napoleanic tactical doctrine and forcing me to single-handedly wipe out large defending forces in the best Star Trek: Nemesis manner. Finally, I have the chance to show the game what Poolean tactics are good for... except that I'm alone, with no prepared underground position, with enormous numbers of Soviet squads are sweeping the forest and the surrounding countryside, complete with multiple BMPs and Hinds (although strangely, the gunships appear to have little interest in shooting at lone US soldiers running fully exposed through the open countryside -- I checked).

My way of looking at it is, in this situation, I'm dead -- I have yet to figure out which hoops the game wants me to jump through in order to win the mission, and really, a situation of one man against an ocean of enemies is (a) unrealistic and (b) generally fatal, if the soldier's not adequately camouflaged. (The airman who was shot down in an F117 by the Serbs, and subsequently escaped a cordon by lying in a depression with his green gloves pressed over his neck -- his only non-camouflaged skin that was showing -- comes to mind as proof that enough camouflage can work wonders. There was a fascinating story about him back in a Reader's Digest in '97... As to how Serbs shoot down an F117, I'll give you a big hint: the F117 is jet-black, and is designed as an invisible night fighter, or rather, night attack aircraft. It's less invisible when it's flying sorties in the middle of the day.)

However, I don't think I can do that. I count the fact that I took _nine_ Russian infantrymen with me when I died, in one of my passes through this mission, as victory enough for anyone to expect (raising my total kill count to something like thirty men in two days -- but again, if tactical doctrine were better, I wouldn't have to work action-hero miracles along these lines.) It's ridiculous how much effort they're spending, with a company plus of infantry, at least one Hind, and multiple BMPs; who do they think I am, the Terminator?

Oh, wait...

Right...