Birth
of a Gamer:
Unreal
Tournament - A blow to my ego.
By
Heather "elki"
Haselkorn
|
Vol.
2, Issue 8
January 11, 2000
|
From
here on all, my previous thoughts about horrible and corruptive
mindless video game violence went out the window. Now, I was the
game. There was no Heather anymore, just a lean, mean fightin'
machine. And I won every deathmatch I played after that. When
the game announced that I was on a killing spree, I heartily and
gleefully agreed. In fact, when I played through three deathmatches
and I was able to switch to domination, I decided I didn't like
it. There wasn't enough blood! Not to mention the fact that I
really didn't like being on a team. So I went back to playing
deathmatch, where it was just me against the Enemy...and I couldn't
lose. I didn't care about any of the cheesy background information
that the game provided about my opponents or about the levels.
All I wanted to do was fight. Please don't remind me that I was
only playing on the lowest skill level. I rocked, and I don't
care what you say. I have no idea how many more matches I played,
but I didn't stop until my wrists hurt. And after winning each
match, I shouted and bounced up and down with glee.
I felt
great after all my bloody triumphs. I felt as though nothing and
no one could ever possibly beat me. I seemed to have forgotten,
though, that I'd only been playing this game for a couple of hours,
while most people I seem to come across have been playing games
like this for years. Feeling grossly overconfident, I challenged
loony to a duel. Maybe it wasn't the biggest mistake of my life,
but it was definitely not a smart move.
First
we set up a deathmatch with us and eight bots. I was great whenever
I came up against a bot, but good ol' loonyboi got me every time.
We then set up a one-on-one deathmatch on a USS Enterprise-like
level. I'm proud to say I blasted loony into space a couple of
times. And them blasted myself into space a couple more. The match
didn't last very long. What was happening? I was so great before!
Suddenly my eyes couldn't follow the action on my monitor. Loony,
who'd played the game through already, knew all the levels and
could find all the best weapons, body armor, and belts before
I could even figure out where to look. He'd sneak up on me and
start firing, and I was dead before I could even see him. At one
point he took pity on me and told me that I should probably pick
up some body armor before I start attacking anyone. Duh! Why didn't
I think of that before? So I figured out where the body armor
was and went for it. Unfortunately, it didn't help very much.
The worst,
I think, was capture the flag. Everyone tells me how much fun
CTF is, but I just couldn't do it. Within five minutes loony captured
my flag and won the game. Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure
out how to give orders to the bots on my team. Have I mentioned
yet that I hate playing on teams?
I don't
understand how anybody could become so good at these games. When
do you (the hypothetical expert gamer) have the time to practice?
I didn't fully realize the difference between playing against
bots and playing against a real, very experienced human. I guess
playing on the easiest skill level probably didn't help much;
how could I not have been good when I was playing against bots
who basically stood still? A real person is so much harder to
play against, because you can't always guess what moves an experienced
player will make. A real opponent moves faster, is smarter, and
knows the game much better than any preprogrammed bot. Of course,
I didn't think about any of this before I foolishly challenged
the most experienced gamer I know. I guess I'll just have to resign
myself to the fact that I'm unbelievably, laughably bad at computer
games. But I'm sure having a hell of a good time!
-Heather
"elki" Haselkorn
actually enjoys this.
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