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Gust Reckon Fewer Solder or whatever it's called! Here's a YT vid from GameSpot to make us all feel slightly soiled: This is particularly cringeworthy: Not quite as tactical as it used to be, seems to be the consensus opinion, but still, it looks a little better than your average fare, and by all accounts the online MP (thanks for those crappy servers, Ubisoft) is very objective-based, it's not about kills. Sadly, the CoD mongs seem to be keen on running about spraying lead everywhere but hey, they die all the quicker for it. I'm going to be sneaking about and shooting people in the eyes quietly very very soon. My favourite part? Ze Gunsmiss! Ahem. The Gunsmith.

Oh the pain of realistic hardcore games. Recently had a mission where I've died more than the rest of the campaign put together. Covert night insertion, sabotage mission. Take out a petrol depot's pump, but leave the depot intact. It's heavily guarded, of course. Bravo Two cause a distraction when I get on site, allowing us to get in. Two sentries are killed silently, one knifed, one headshot, and we reach the south-west point of the depot. Woods to the west, clear ground everywhere else. My fireteam is at the top of a gentle slope sparsely dotted with bushes and rocks. There are patrols all around the depot, and I can see a jeep with an MG at the north-west corner, and a Humvee at the south-east. This is where the checkpoint saves, and this is where it all goes wrong. Bravo Two's diversion amounts to firing a few rounds and running away. We are left to face the popular musical known as PLA Goes Bananas. Rounds come in from three sides, and we fade back into the trees to the west, taking cover behind the nice thick trunks and returning fire. A machine gunner runs up the slope towards us, and gets scarily close before he is dropped. We are lacking in firepower, wielding suppressed rifles and submachine guns, no MGs, no grenade launchers. Troops board the jeep, and I scour it with accurate semi-auto fire. Troops board the Humvee and promptly get out as I engage it at 200 metres, and take cover behind it. Another machine gunner gets close, and Morales, the medic, is cut down. Not good. A patrol slips through the trees behind us, and opens up at point-blank range. I hear a thud, and fall over, and that's it. Start again. My new best mate comes running up the slope towards us again, and I hack him down with 5.56mm, trying desperately to keep both north and east in view as troops flood in, again wiping out the jeep crew even as they get in, again stopping the Humvee even as it begins driving toward us. With only my rifle, and six mags, it's a bit of a tall order, and we take cover in a nearby hut, which is very little protection versus bullets but at least gets us out of sight. Unfortunately once we're in cover, the enemy take advantage and begin outright sprinting up the slope, and we are all shot up desperately popping in and out of cover trying to pin them down. An attempt to steal the jeep works, and I drive it back up the slope to my fireteam, reverse it amongst the trees, and man the MG. At last, enough firepower to stop the hordes! An anti-tank rocket, launched from the hill on the opposite side of the depot, is the last thing I see. Falling back into the woods makes things worse, as sight lines shorten, enemy troops spread out as they search for us, and we're engaged at close range from many different positions. Massacre. Charging into the depot and getting low behind the nice concrete barrier works for a little while, until we're caught in a murderous crossfire from the troops within and the patrols without. After about eight tries, it's beginning to feel like a time travel tragedy. I've quantum leaped into the body of a soldier, and I must save the fireteam, but Ziggy reckons I've got two hopes, Bob Hope and no hope. Morales quickly earns the Most Reluctant Medic Award, sometimes simply refusing to leave cover at all, no matter who is wounded or how bad it is. Sometimes he comes up to me, and as I bleed out, he stares at me, apparently entranced by my death. I can do without this. Again, this time switching my rifle to fully automatic (shut up). It makes the beginning easier, but throws ammo retention out of the window. Enemies I miss are suppressed quickly, and crawl for cover. My new best mate barely makes it out of a bush before I splatter him with lead, and something I should have done ages ago occurs to me. I sprint downhill, careless of incoming fire, protected a little by suppressing fire from my team mates, and grab the dead man's machine gun. Running back uphill, bullets chasing me, I switch to the MG, and get shot in the leg. Kneeling down behind a tree, I begin killing as Morales does his job for once, and three hundred or so rounds later, we're clear. The sheer weight of my fire killed or easily pinned each enemy in turn. That's when a heli turns up and drops PLA special forces into the depot. This is also, coincidentally, when I start melding individual swear words into each other, saying them so quickly they're gibberish. They prove to be just a little more challenging, moving faster, shooting more accurately, and attacking more aggressively. I discard my suppressed rifle for an enemy weapon, concerned more with the underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher than anything else. I'm hopping from enemy to enemy, stealing whatever ammo they have left and pouring it on, eventually running dry as the SF roar the jeep right at me up the hill. The rest of my team keeps firing, and I have time to wonder if the jeep will explode when it hits the tree in front of me and stops dead, though the engine keeps screaming. The crew are slumped over, dead. The Humvee is coming again, but a 40mm HE grenade direct hit kills everyone in it, and it rolls to a halt. I have become very, very skilled at estimating the 40mm's trajectory. I have had a lot of practise recently. Two enemy tankers, full of petrol, begin to ease out of the depot. At this point I firmly believe I am never ever going to complete this mission. A PLA SF soldier is sprawled nearby, staring up at the sky, AT rocket slung across his back. I steal it, prep the launcher, load a rocket, and swing it onto my shoulder. This has spent valuable seconds and the trucks will soon be out of sight around a bend in the road. I've never fired this weapon before, and have no idea what the trajectory of the rocket will be. I twitch the crosshair to the top of the truck's profile, lead it several metres, and fire. The rocket slaps into the side of the truck and it explodes. The truck behind it has to stop. This gives me time to reload, and fire again. Job done. The rest is an anticlimax. There's a lone soldier guarding the pump house, and his burst of fire sprays pieces of wall into my eyes as I round the corner, and I fire blind and kill him. I drop a demo charge and run. We steal the jeep and rewind our progress across the map to the LZ for extraction. There is an ambush waiting for us, and we take fire and swerve off the road, wrecking the jeep, piling out amongst the rocks and shooting it out, but after the bullet Hell replay I've been through, it's a doddle, and we have no trouble. We pile into the heli and soar away and I worry about the next mission.