Have you ever had an epic duel with a nemesis in an online game? Have you ever been totally focused on beating one person, who you've never met? Have you ever read Bow, ****** [http://alwaysblack.com/blackbox/bownigger.html] and thought "I remember a game like that"?
One of the best games of Halo I've ever played was one I had no chance of winning.
It began in the normal way, the Halo 3 online matching system throwing together a few players of disparate skill levels for a game of Slayer on The Pit. As soon as the game began, though, four players dropped out with network problems. That left me and one other guy. (It could have been a girl - we didn't speak - but I'm going to go with statistical probability.) Let's call him The Enemy.
The Enemy was good. Really good. He had an unnerving ability to appear briefly in the distance, disappear and pop up behind me. He could pull off headshots with the sniper rifle from any range on the run. He seemed to be able to spot the blur of active camouflage from across the map. I started to think of him as Darth Vader.
For the first five minutes I didn't get a kill. I would scurry down a corridor, up a ramp, scanning left and right while strafing from cover to cover, only to glimpse The Enemy falling on me from above, guns blazing, not a single bullet going astray. Or I'd step out into the open, hear a single BOOM and fall down, a fresh hole through my virtual brainpan. Once or twice I managed to stage an ambush, thinking I had him this time for sure when I had unloaded half a clip into The Enemy's chest from close range and he hadn't managed to shoot back yet - only to see a brief glimpse of shotgun barrel and hear that familiar single BRUNTCH that meant another round of waiting to respawn. Pwned, n00b.
I couldn't win. It wasn't a possibility. And I realised I didn't need to win: I needed to die trying.
My first kill was lucky. I got the drop on him with the needler; he was holding the sniper rifle at much too close a range. His first shot went wide, his second hit me somewhere non-vital and his third never came. Boom. Fear the pink mist.
I died. I died. I died. I got lucky with a grenade. I died. I died.
My third kill was overkill. After minutes of guerilla warfare - skulking, hiding, striking from cover - I changed up, going from Vietcong to US Forces. The Enemy saw me coming on the radar, but he expected me to dodge around with an assault rifle; he didn't expect me to jump down right in front of him with a heavy machine gun turret. Without the element of surprise I'd still be dead - the gun emplacement makes you too slow to avoid a skilled opponent - but before The Enemy could regroup he was riddled with holes.
After that, he got more cautious and I got more dead. I died and I died and I died. Boom, boom, boom, headshots. The Enemy's sniper rifle seemed to see through walls.
After a few short-lived rounds, I stopped, hid and devised a simple plan. First stop, the sword; second stop, the active camouflage; third stop, The Enemy's latest sniping nest. Knock knock, it's a lightblade enema.
By the end of the game I was almost matching the ruthless bastard kill for kill. I was afraid to show my face in the open, but that fear made me faster, made me more cunning, made me willing to use any tactic that might work.
I killed The Enemy twice in a row with the rocket launcher. Usually I'd feel vaguely guilty, because it's the rocket launcher. This game, I felt exultant. It's not cheap if it evens the playing field, right?
Finally the score sat at 9 to 24. The Enemy needed another kill to win. I needed another kill to make it to double digits. We all needed Bon Jovi lyrics to really capture the mood: I was living on a prayer, going down in a blaze of glory, wanted dead or... well, dead.
The ending was right out of a John Woo film. I was on a high ledge, holding the needler; I saw The Enemy on a slightly lower ledge, with an SMG in each fist, already spewing bullets in my direction. We leapt at each other across the gulf, three guns blazing, my shields melting away like butter in a bushfire, and collided in mid-air, each still firing point-blank into the other's midriff...
And I died. For the 25th time. My body fell flailing three or four metres to the floor. The Enemy landed lightly beside my corpse... and exploded.
I actually yelled aloud: "Yes! Suck my revenge, you evil bastard!" I was going combat-crazy. The round was over and I needed a breather. I went to the kitchen, put the kettle on, got out a cup and a tea bag and returned to the living room. When I got back, there was a message waiting on my Xbox Live dashboard from The Enemy:
"gg man"
One of the best games of Halo I've ever played was one I had no chance of winning.
It began in the normal way, the Halo 3 online matching system throwing together a few players of disparate skill levels for a game of Slayer on The Pit. As soon as the game began, though, four players dropped out with network problems. That left me and one other guy. (It could have been a girl - we didn't speak - but I'm going to go with statistical probability.) Let's call him The Enemy.
The Enemy was good. Really good. He had an unnerving ability to appear briefly in the distance, disappear and pop up behind me. He could pull off headshots with the sniper rifle from any range on the run. He seemed to be able to spot the blur of active camouflage from across the map. I started to think of him as Darth Vader.
For the first five minutes I didn't get a kill. I would scurry down a corridor, up a ramp, scanning left and right while strafing from cover to cover, only to glimpse The Enemy falling on me from above, guns blazing, not a single bullet going astray. Or I'd step out into the open, hear a single BOOM and fall down, a fresh hole through my virtual brainpan. Once or twice I managed to stage an ambush, thinking I had him this time for sure when I had unloaded half a clip into The Enemy's chest from close range and he hadn't managed to shoot back yet - only to see a brief glimpse of shotgun barrel and hear that familiar single BRUNTCH that meant another round of waiting to respawn. Pwned, n00b.
I couldn't win. It wasn't a possibility. And I realised I didn't need to win: I needed to die trying.
My first kill was lucky. I got the drop on him with the needler; he was holding the sniper rifle at much too close a range. His first shot went wide, his second hit me somewhere non-vital and his third never came. Boom. Fear the pink mist.
I died. I died. I died. I got lucky with a grenade. I died. I died.
My third kill was overkill. After minutes of guerilla warfare - skulking, hiding, striking from cover - I changed up, going from Vietcong to US Forces. The Enemy saw me coming on the radar, but he expected me to dodge around with an assault rifle; he didn't expect me to jump down right in front of him with a heavy machine gun turret. Without the element of surprise I'd still be dead - the gun emplacement makes you too slow to avoid a skilled opponent - but before The Enemy could regroup he was riddled with holes.
After that, he got more cautious and I got more dead. I died and I died and I died. Boom, boom, boom, headshots. The Enemy's sniper rifle seemed to see through walls.
After a few short-lived rounds, I stopped, hid and devised a simple plan. First stop, the sword; second stop, the active camouflage; third stop, The Enemy's latest sniping nest. Knock knock, it's a lightblade enema.
By the end of the game I was almost matching the ruthless bastard kill for kill. I was afraid to show my face in the open, but that fear made me faster, made me more cunning, made me willing to use any tactic that might work.
I killed The Enemy twice in a row with the rocket launcher. Usually I'd feel vaguely guilty, because it's the rocket launcher. This game, I felt exultant. It's not cheap if it evens the playing field, right?
Finally the score sat at 9 to 24. The Enemy needed another kill to win. I needed another kill to make it to double digits. We all needed Bon Jovi lyrics to really capture the mood: I was living on a prayer, going down in a blaze of glory, wanted dead or... well, dead.
The ending was right out of a John Woo film. I was on a high ledge, holding the needler; I saw The Enemy on a slightly lower ledge, with an SMG in each fist, already spewing bullets in my direction. We leapt at each other across the gulf, three guns blazing, my shields melting away like butter in a bushfire, and collided in mid-air, each still firing point-blank into the other's midriff...
And I died. For the 25th time. My body fell flailing three or four metres to the floor. The Enemy landed lightly beside my corpse... and exploded.
I actually yelled aloud: "Yes! Suck my revenge, you evil bastard!" I was going combat-crazy. The round was over and I needed a breather. I went to the kitchen, put the kettle on, got out a cup and a tea bag and returned to the living room. When I got back, there was a message waiting on my Xbox Live dashboard from The Enemy:
"gg man"
