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Vice At its best, Hell Let Loose is full of these move-countermove dynamics. Every map features its own variable set of victory locations, and each one transforms the meaning and significance of other parts of the map. It's structured to help teams take advantage of them: each team is led by a commander who can call in special abilities and reinforcements using an RTS-like trio of strategic resources: manpower, fuel, and munitions. Mostly the commander functions like a central switchboard for all the various squad leaders they share the command comms network with. They can give orders to squad leaders but there is no guarantee those orders will be followed unless squad leaders decide to do so, and even then it depends on whether the other people in their squads also listen to their instructions. The command channel is mostly a place where information can be centrally located, with the map updated with fresh reports that filter from individual soldiers inside squads, up to their squad leaders, and then up to the entire team via command chat.
A good team has a commander and a few squad leaders who understand these dependencies and the potential for a little cooperation to act as a force multiplier. They will read the map, make educated guesses about what the enemy is doing next, and show up to the decisive battles that are occurring away from where the game is intentionally funneling the action. And when teams are decent, not even good or great, they just have to be decent, Hell Let Loose is one of the best multiplayer military shooters I've ever played and the first one I've loved since Red Orchestra 2.
But when it's bad, it's a frustrating meat-grinder where someone will yell at you to "get on the point" every ten seconds while the command comms descend into profane finger-pointing. Squad leaders will realize none of their soldiers are using voice comms, so they're not listening to anything squadmates are saying and are instead just looking for a squad with an open slot for them to play their favorite character class, so they can take the gun they like and vanish into the fog of war. Squad leaders themselves might get fed up and quit without warning, leaving their squad unaware that nobody is passing their info up to the rest or the team. Commanders will fixate on the next objective, ignoring any attempts to shore up flanks, establish map control, or scout the enemy. In those games, the experience for players is little different from Operation Metro in Battlefield as they spawn in waves, begin beelining for an objective, and get gunned down in almost the exact same place by the exact same group of enemies.
Here is where Hell Let Loose's focus on the team haunts it a bit. The tradeoff that Battlefield has historically made is that good teamwork isn't really required to have a great round. If you want to log into Battlefield and just be a one-person army, you can do that and in fact this is probably what makes it so hard for Battlefield games to pay off on their size and scale. It's a really fun shooter if you just grab your favorite weapon and head out to cause chaos. At the other end of the realism spectrum, Red Orchestra made using antique WW2 small arms so fussy and satisfying that even in the midst of a lousy round with a lousy team, you could still access the core Red Orchestra experience just by embracing the deliberate, procedural nature of its weapons. In a word, my memories of that series are mostly killcam highlights of single, exquisite shots with bolt action rifles. Who won those matches? Were they good? I mostly can't tell you, and I mostly don't care.
Hell Let Loose absolutely needs decent teams to sing. In this way its closest analogues aren't other military shooters but MOBAs. You are depending at every turn on other people knowing their role and being willing to play it. Not everyone needs to be on the same page: on any team of 50 players, it's a good bet 20-30 are mostly running around the battlefield trying to amass kills and ignoring objectives. But you need at least a couple people in your squad to pay attention to the map and the squad leader's information. You need someone who is willing to be squad leader, even if that means they're stuck with second-rate weapons for much of the game. You need people who are willing to work together to crew a tank. And you need a commander who is paying attention and helping people contribute to the big picture, and who knows that when they call a strategy or ask for help at a key location, most squad leaders will at least respond and try to make it work. When those elements are present, Hell Let Loose is incredibly dramatic as a spectacle and equally rewarding as an exercise in teamwork as all the complementary moving pieces of your team swing into action. It's a game that absolutely justifies its expansive maps and geological-scale match timers. When those elements are absent, Hell Let Loose is a decent but frustrating WW2 multiplayer shooter.
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