Constantly ask yourself: where is the enemy, why am I not under fire, why are my teammates not advancing and what would be the best way out of this (bad) situation. In games like Age of Empires, you should be conscious of the domestic situation (within your civilisation) and the foreign situation (outside your civilisation - i.e. with your enemy) With practice ('practice' is army-talk for 'a couple shots up your ass') this will happen automatically.


Be smart. You will get nowhere if you just run around firing blind bullets. Sure, it may get you a few kills (mostly because your opposition will not have foreseen such a stupid move) but it doesn't take a lot for the enemy to just step aside, be the calmer man and pop you with a shot to the chest.
Use what devices you have available, radar (especially on Halo games!) maps showing enemy bases and above all your own eyes and the eyes of your teammates.
Learn the army lingo; if someone gives you a heads-up saying '1 o'clock, AT soldier, 200’, you won't have enough time to figure out on the spot that he is talking about a soldier carrying an AT (anti-tank weapon) approaching at 1 o'clock to your current position and is currently 200 meters (656.2 ft) away. This would be pretty vital information if you were in a tank!;
, In games like Operation Flashpoint, always reload your weapon when there is a natural pause in the fighting; that preparation could give you the edge in a fire-fight as you will be able to keep firing longer than your opponent without reloading. Equip yourself with a variety of weapons, short-range (shotguns, knives, sub-machine guns etc), long-range (sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers etc) and other, ranged weapons, such as grenades, smoke shells, flash grenades etc. You may not always use all of the weapons, but it pays to be prepared.
 Take trial runs, experiment with weapons, and put in time in the training modes. Or just simply pick a target (a lamppost, street sign or any other stationary object) in play mode and practice hitting it while moving backwards, forwards, sideways and when doing other actions (sprinting, jumping, crouching, diving, etc). Remember, a bad workman blames his tools, the same is true for soldiers, it is your choice of weapon and your skill that matters, not how ‘good’ the weapon is.


Rifles, for example, would be useless in long-range situations because of their instability when firing; they are mostly used for providing cover fire (a tactic used to get the enemy to hit the dirt by firing bullets at them but not with the intention of killing them, rather to get them to hold their fire long enough for team members to escape). This is because of their rapid-fire rate.
Grenades are used to disperse enemy forces moving in groups; the fragmentation produced will wound soldiers within a certain radius.
 In every mission you are given an objective, and maybe a secondary objective, make sure you have fully completed your first objective before moving onto the second objective; even then, assess the situation. If you are aware, then you will already know which members of your platoon are injured, how much ammunition you have left and how likely it is that the secondary objective will be achieved without significant loss of lives. Always go through this checklist and you will never fail:


What is my situation? Am I injured from a previous mission? Where is the nearest enemy base from my current (insertion) position and where is the nearest friendly base (in that order)? Am I part of a team? If so, what position am I in the team? A number 2 soldier has more responsibilities than a number 8 soldier, the main one being taking command of the group when number 1 goes down. What type of soldier am I? AT? LAW? Machine gunner? Rifleman? Sniper? What position should I take up in a combat situation? What should be my primary target in a combat situation – for an AT soldier it would be any tanks, for a sniper it will be any particularly well-armed soldiers, like a soldier mounting a turret, for example. What are my objective(s)?
What advantages do I have over the enemy before I start? Examples are the cover of dark i.e. the element of surprise, superior numbers, a greater supply of ammunition, an extra type of soldier (e.g. AT, sniper, machine gunner, grenadier) and having vehicles (tanks, trucks, jeeps, helicopters) to hand. Of course, you will not always know so much about your enemy for you to make comparisons with yourself, war is not that easy. But it is better to ask a question and not have the answer rather than finding yourself asking the question as you stare down a gun barrel.
Which of these advantages is most important to my objective and thus, which can I afford to lose should it come to sacrificing one? For example, the element of surprise would not be as important to a search and destroy mission as it would be to an ambush mission and thus the loss of surprise would be affordable in a search and destroy mission, however, the loss of the advantage of having a superior supply of ammunition, for example, would not be affordable.
What will be my path to the main objective? What obstacles will I encounter on the way? Is it better if I keep a low profile and avoid any confrontations or is time too short to be sneaking out of my way? What formation will my team take (only when in command of a team, of course)? How can I use the relief (shape or lie) of the land to my advantage (cover of trees, buildings, hills etc)?
What will be my objective when I encounter resistance? Destroy? RRA (Retreat, Regroup, Avoid)? Or will I decide that based upon the situation and whether or not I have achieved my objectives? If so, can I afford to decide there and then based upon the situation? These are called ROEs, Rules of Engagement, which any soldier has to know how to follow and which any commander has to know how to implement.
What are my EVPs (Evasion Plan of Actions)? If you are well-prepared, then you should anticipate failure. Of course, certain things cannot be foreseen, and in those situations, the men will be separated from the boys, the seasoned veterans from the happy fairy cake newbies. If you encounter resistance and are beaten back, what will be your IEP (Initial Evasion Point)? An IEP is a location where members of your group will meet if the group has to scramble or is dispersed, from there, the EVP will be mounted. As a rule of thumb, it is always best to have 2 IEPs and EVPs.
 This may seem a very odd requirement for a smart, independent soldier who wants to survive, surely thinking is the first thing he will do. Wrong. Orders are given to be followed, superiors are superiors because they have enough experience to give suitable orders. What they don’t need is puny scum soldiers trying to feed their ego by answering back or questioning. Ever wondered why discipline and respect is emphasized so much at boot camp? Because the whole point of such organisations and the drills they do is to get you to submit wholly to the order, to get you to forget your opinions, your thoughts, your fear, your emotion, such things are irrelevant, your name is irrelevant, after a few weeks in the field, no-one has a name. Having said this, the soldier is free to use his individual store of reason and judgement to ensure he survives.
Be aware.
Be prepared.
Know your weapons.
Have a plan.
Follow orders without thinking.
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