There's a mission in Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 during the Soviet campaign where your entire army is sent via paradrop right into the heart of the enemy base. It's almost hilarious watching such a huge army die before they even touch the ground because the enemy has such a huge defense around where you dropped your guys.
By the end of the massacre you only have one Conscript and one War Bear that safely dropped outside of all those defenses. Lieutenant Dasha comes on screen and is like "That... wasn't supposed to happen" haha!
Most video games don't feature sound tactical decisions. Game developers aren't soldiers. They know most people aren't soldiers either, so there's no reason to crack open one of the many field manuals available for free on the internet to see why charging a machine gun nest isn't a good idea. Some are so lazy in their research I've seen games where sergeants are saluted by captains. It's fucking madness.
I think the game which slaps all sense in the face would probably be Final Fantasy 13 in the opening sequence. I'd hate to be the officer responsible for losing what appears to be a battalion of supposedly trained soldiers against tourists with captured weapons. Seriously, tourists with captured weapons. Most of them probably wouldn't know which side the bullet comes out of, let alone how to aim and fire one. Why didn't they use the gunship from the start? With all that technology, you would think someone would have heard of teargas. And it isn't as if they weren't equipped for it; the soldiers had gas masks already.
Why did Snow and his friends jump into incoming fire? What idiot allows a woman with a child to go on a suicide mission?
I always scratched my head and asked where the mage volley was. There was such a big stink about the mages saving their spells for the darkspawn and I don't recall a single damn fireball, Inferno, tempest, Blizzard, or Earthquake. I just saw typical catapult barrages.
. I can agree with this in it's entirety. The mages could have done any number of things to turn the tide with devastating AOE attacks and the like but they appear to do absolutely squat in the course of the battle.
I've always assumed that the mages were with Loghain's party (hence Wynne's survival). Better than risking them on the ground with the "anvil" group, and they don't have the range to attack from the fortifications.
EDIT: As that one guard said, pretty much anyone who attacks my arcane warrior willingly should be put on suicide watch.
Fallout 3: Oh no, a highly radioactive chamber! Someone has to wade through the radiation to input the code, and most certainly die! Fawkes, step back, surely a radiation-immune mutant would be no use here. This is DESTINY.
Just Cause: We'd like to free these people from their oppressive leaders. Let's assist with the gang violence, and then blow up anything we see! Oh, the leader's dead now? Whatever, keep going!
Fallout 3 was at least remedied in Broken Steel, in vanilla you had to do that so you could die and therefore have a more meaningful and game-world changing ending.
Just Cause is (for me) represented (kinda) by this quote by Senator Charles Wilson:
These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the end game.
You go in and (especially in the second) overthrow a meglomaniacle dictator who is planning on upsetting the balance of power in the world and screwing with everyones economies. Then nothing happens (except some martinis on a barge).
Stammer said:
There's a mission in Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 during the Soviet campaign where your entire army is sent via paradrop right into the heart of the enemy base. It's almost hilarious watching such a huge army die before they even touch the ground because the enemy has such a huge defense around where you dropped your guys.
By the end of the massacre you only have one Conscript and one War Bear that safely dropped outside of all those defenses. Lieutenant Dasha comes on screen and is like "That... wasn't supposed to happen" haha!
Okay, utilising the combined forces of multiple assault carriers (massive spaceships) and a UNSC frigate we will attack the final bastion of this great and still extremelly dangerous enemy which could have the route in paved with Main Battle Tanks.
We will take seven dropships. Five presumably have/had 6 UNSC marines in (weak, but good in teams) two seemed to have like 5 elites in. Saying that an elite is worth 2 marines; we have 62 marines.
Company strength.
For a large siege on a well defended enemy.
Dropped in by heavily armed/armoured gunships. Which then bugger off.
With very little ground support (for the phase two assault on tower 1 (Master Chief's one) you get a jeep with a heavy machinegun on the back and an unarmed quadbike.)
Then you get a jeep, a quadbike and one Main Battle Tank. To push through around 60% of the enemies ground defences. At least for the final assault (against 2 scarabs) you get Pelican, Hornet and Warthog support.
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The gates to fucking Oblivion itself are about to open outside this town. How many men are defending it? Less than 2 dozen. How many are mounted? None. How many are in a tactical position (protecting the one hope to defeat Mehrunes Dagon) with him in the middle, swordsmen up front, archers at the rear? None. How many actually do shit to help you? None really.
If this is all an entire country can spare to help then no wonder Kvatch was razed to the ground.
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Getting into a helicopter gunship with an unknown quantity of fuel, ammo, rockets or 'health'. Smart move Woods!
I'm going to have to vote for Just Cause 2 again. Rico had Panay at gunpoint for like the third time and he just gawked as the person he spent an entire game hunting crawled up a ladder. What a tool.
chimpzy said:
Gears of War. Turning Sera's surface to ash with the exception of Jacinto Plateau.
Great plan. Effectively making your planet uninhabitable and concentrating all your remaining people and resources into a single spot.
Mmm the blast only hit the underground, but it's a Lightmass bomb. The radiation or whatever magic would still affect the surrounding areas like Imulsion does.
http://gearsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Lightmass_Bomb
There is a disease called Rust Lung thats caused by Imulsion exposure.
Mass Effect 2: Recruiting Jack. You should have left her to die.
Not using the derelict Reaper as evidence.
Not having an option at the endgame to turn over the Reaper IFF to the council so they could study its technology as opposed to destroying it or turning it over to The Illusive Man.
Big problem, his mechanizations weren't sound. He attacked a powerful lord and divided the country. He quit the field after he received the signal. So while you make a good argument for the necessity of multiple signals, one proved enough. He quit the field when he could have made a difference.
Leaving the Wardens to die nearly doomed the country. His assassination attempt caused an intracountry power play, doing nothing to stop it. So I don't quite get the whole Loghain was right side of things, I'm afraid.
EDIT: Also, his solution to dealing with people he considered treasonous is more treason?
The Entire Halo Franchise, while I love the games, the only reason Master Chief survives is because the covenant always supply him with an amount of enemies one guy can kill on his own.
I've never counted but I'm sure the number of kills goes into the hundreds, but they spread them selves over the whole gorram place. They could have just put all their people around In Amber Clad and waited for him.
And don't even get me started on the number of people who were sat in the next room of Truth and Reconciliation waiting for you to kill everyone and come to them.
Batman Arkham Asylum. Every time you are in a room, hanging from a gargoyal and the fool's with guns are talking to each other saying things like 'when the batman shows him self I am going to kill him cuz nobody has tryed shooting at him with a gun before'. Seriously do these guys never learn. IT'S FUCKING BATMAN!! He has been beating the crap out of nameless goons for years why have the not got the hint. You do not go up against batman and win.
The first one that comes to mind is the space battle in the beginning of Vanquish. For some reason, the U.S. army or whoever is in charge of the good guys (I cannot quite tell) decided to just charge the enemy fleet with everything they got. Then they decided that the only way to drop off troops in the space colony thing was to ram the space-ships into it. Yeah, good job with those tactics guys. If an 18 year old high school student can poke holes in your stratagem, you better believe you are in trouble.
Is that an exaggaration or something that can actually happen? Not using fire would be so obvious (as it is counter-productive)that it doesnt even count as a tactical choice and is more of a routine. Surely the A.I. can´t be THAT stupid?
i'm gonna say Bulletstorm. 3 people versus the entire planet. Whose smart idea was that?!?!
EDIT: Also Metal Gear Solid 4. To kill the most ruthless guy in the world, send an OAP with a bad cough. And a little robot that falls over if it turns to fast. That'll teach em!
EDIT again: I forgot about X-men origins: Wolverine. You've just seen all your friends shoot a guy and watched them all get ripped to shreds. You know for a fact that your people all have the same weapons as you. But MAYBE your gun will kill him. Not the other 40 megabazillion bullets that he's been shot with already. But maybe you'll be lucky.
Rico from Killzone is the physical manifestation of bad choices. I don't know if he thinks half the shit he does is a good idea or if he's just too much of a loose cannon.
Killzone 2. One of your teammates is being held at gunpoint. So your CO thinks the best idea is to run head on to where your teammate's being held and start unloading with an LMG. Needless to say, your teammate gets hit in the crossfire and dies.
Jade Empire gives you the option of letting the bad guy win. Just let that sink in. The guy disrupts the natural order of the world, commits regicide, then [spoilers] KILLS YOU. [/spoilers]
And after all that, you have the option to just let him win. Sure, he might make a decent argument for it, but it pales in the face of just how stupid of an idea it is.
Also, the way the COG go about fighting the Locust in Gears of War. First they use orbital satellites to destroy just about everything, then the fritter away their men by sending tiny squads, unsupported, into enemy territory for seemingly no reason. By the time they have their shit together in the second game, they send a very underwhelmingly small attack force into primary enemy territory, without ANY sort of intel on what to expect down there. Its no wonder they get slaughtered.
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