TR - Report From the Field : FPS / MMORPG / RTS Discussion

May 18, 2007

A new AFS recruit blogs about his first day fighting for humanity:

I landed in the midst of mayhem; an outpost of sorts but with the enemy clearly seen lurking the borders, just beyond firing range. All my gear was new and took a little getting used so I went through my normal maneuvers and found that operations were pretty much standard with gear on other worlds. I talked to a few soldiers standing around and gleaned some information regarding my gear and ops.

Across the camp I noticed what looked like a commanding officer and saluted requesting permission to engage the enemy. He shoved me out a bit and two of the most hideous things I have seen in a while (other than my mother-in-law's toes) jumped out and me and I fumbled a little with my SI (standard issue) pistol but managed to dispatch them. Too bad it isn't as easy with my mother-in-law.

After dispatching the uglies, I reported back to my CO. He gave me some nice gear and a small promotion I was then instructed to blow some wreckage out of our approach and complied. Once again I was rewarded. Hey this was getting good! I now had a rifle!

The next mission was to take out some more baddies, but they ambushed me and I never made it across the bridge. I came to in a medic tent and saw someone that looked like they wanted to talk to me. They informed me that if you crouch you are harder to hit. Gee thanks, coulda used that intel before I hit the bridge!

Somehow I lost my CO and went looking for him but found another ambush, this time something VERY large swatted me back into the medic tent. I've got a hard head so I ventured out again. This time I found my CO and he instructed me to take a crew and take over a base located up on the hill. Sweet! Now thats what I'm talking about!

We made our way through the trenches picking off the Bane (as I learned they were called) and approached the base. All of a sudden I had incoming fire from an unknown source. I dove behind some sandbags trying to ascertain the source. I saw my crew under heavy fire and knew I needed to make something happen FAST.

Incoming fire made the sand dance around my ankles as I sprinted to the next stack of sand bags. I took one in the shoulder and leg but my armor held up. I switched over to my rifle and spied the source. Turret Gun!

I shouted to my crew to keep the soldiers off of me and emptied clip after clip into that steel bastid until it finally crumpled. My crew and I cleaned up the lingering trash and I approached the force barrier to the base. After we all tried our hand at shooting through it, I finally put a charge on the wall and blew it open.

The base was ours.

http://www.playtr.com/news/archives/2007/05/report_from_the.html