Gameplay Continued

Fearless leader

In many of the missions, you can have a squad of up to 4 soldiers accompany you into the fray. Surprisingly, this is extremely useful. Not only do the other pilots, as previously mentioned, have different personalities, but they're smart as well. Unless you want specific help with something, like attacking a building or having part of the squadron guard the base camp while you forage ahead, you can leave them be. They'll follow you, mimic your movements when necessary, and help out a lot in battle.

Look at the blood fly

Bang! Bang!

If you do find yourself needing to give orders, you have a couple options. You can issue commands from your HUD screen or switch to an overhead-view tactical map, which allows a bit more control. In it you can set checkpoints, view the terrain, and issue all the commands you can from the HUD. (There is a third viewpoint, from an outside camera, but it's useless except as eye-candy) The tactical map is nice, but it takes far too long (read: two seconds or so) to re-draw anything beyond basic terrain features.