BATTLEFIELD DECISIONS

PIONEER writer Guan Wei takes a shot at the Singapore Armed Forces' (SAF's) Decisive Combat, a serious game in which he plays a young 2nd Lieutenant leading a small squad as a foreign militia invades Singapore.

"A third-person shooter on a tablet? How am I going to navigate and shoot without analogue sticks?!" That was the first thought that ran through my mind when I found out that the primary console of the game Decisive Combat was the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.

But with the touch-screen feature of a tablet, two virtual analogue sticks were replicated on the edges of the screen (left for moving and right for orientation), and I was able to move my character with relative ease.

Having played several of such games, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of realism, such as the static hostile targets and absence of weapon recoil.

[Spoiler alert!] However, as the end of the first mission approached, I was presented with two choices: save the hostages or defuse a bomb planted in the building. I chose the latter, despite being warned by my sergeants that it might be a hoax.

The bomb turned out to be real, but because of the time taken to defuse the bomb, all the hostages were killed. As a result, the remaining hostiles, along with their leader, were able to escape from the building.

It then dawned on me: this was not just a shooting game. It was one that trained SAF leaders in making the best decisions according to their judgement and the intelligence collected.

That aspect of the game got me hooked. The missions were all set in various key installations, ranging from the oil refinery to the airport, and the highways, which put into context the realities faced in the defence of Singapore.

And the decisions got harder as the game progressed. During the bridge campaign, I lost one of my sergeants because I took a gamble. That made me question the need to stick to original mission objectives despite changing circumstances.

It took about four to five hours to complete the entire game, but I felt that the duration and number of missions were sufficient (not too long, not too short).

Decisive Combat may not boast the best graphics and mechanics as compared to the best professional games out there like Call of Duty and Battlefield, but it certainly was one of the few games that made me go: "I'd better get this right; if this was real, it might be the last decision I make in my life."