• son_named_bort@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Yeah, we had to take it in school as well. Since I had no interest in dying in Iraq, I just filled in bubbles at random. Still got phone calls and mailings aplenty begging me to join the military. They even mailed me a video game that the Army made, though I never played it so I don’t know how bad it was.

    • GCanuck@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Was it Americas Army? I played that when it released. Not bad. I’m not a fan of shooters, but it was at least interesting to see a game that had an honest attempt at making it as “real” as possible.

      The sniper mission was the only thing I didn’t complete. It had one mission where you had to sit and wait for up to 48 hours real time before you could take a shot at your target. Neat concept, but totally impractical for a game.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 months ago

        Americas Army stunk bad on release, but was pretty solid by the time that it got to 3.0.

        Recruits are trained on the engine used in ARMA by Bohemia Interactive. I played some of the scenarios on Operation: Flashpoint (which featured cold-war operations in the late 1980s).

        Eventually, when I got hit, I assumed I was dead, and occasionally be surprised that I’m not, in fact, falling over, and am still alive and still have functional parts.

        But yes, the most effective way to play seemed to be to hide in a bush and wait for minutes (hours if necessary) for the enemy to cross your firing line.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I guarantee you recruits are trained in the nearest forest. There’s edge cases where using a video game can be useful for testing new tactics with veterans. But recruits are looking for the basics. Like what does a platoon wedge look like in a forest versus the grass.

          War games are really useful for officers trying to plan things. That way they don’t need to pay for thousands of people to deploy to special training areas to figure stuff out. But even then it’s open to misuse, like when Rumsfield decided light infantry was a dead concept.