Intimacy Issues
Over the years, my combat style has evolved … from indiscriminate blasting with beserker-like abandon … to targeted emptying of the magazine overkill … to ranged headshots … and finally faceshots at any range but a distinct preference for a silenced sniper rifle from a suitable distance.
For vicious, mean-spirited, vindictiveness/vengefulness … whether ranged (so coldly impersonal) or up close and intimate (with a point blank range shotgun blast) … nothing beats “In. Your. Face!!!”
Sure, it’s still fun to let loose once in a while … and there’s definitely a sense of it being hard to beat watching your target flail and wail in zoomed-in close-up when the incendiary takes hold … but years of practice mean that such moments are few and far between for me. That kind of approach draws attention and that’s seldom good. It means you have to act hastily … to be reactive instead of proactive … puts you on the back foot, makes you more likely to make mistakes.
And mistakes can be costly. Mistakes can be lethal. Mistakes lead to stupid questions like “Why am I dead!?”
It’s a lesson I learned the hard way, playing Blake Stone. In each area where there were scientists in white lab coats, if you approached them, half of them would give you information and resources but half of them would call for the security guards whilst drawing a pistol and shooting you. It took one experience of my having to backtrack to an area I’d previously completed, sauntering confidently towards my goal … only to be shot dead by a hostile scientist I had somehow missed … for me to learn that the best approach was to walk up to new people and, if they were friendly, pump them for all the information/resources they had then kill them. That way, you don’t have to ask stupid questions later, like “Who’s shooting at me? I thought I killed everyone!” because no-one is shooting you, because you have killed everyone. Did I miss out on anything that way? Yes … I missed out on a̶n̶ ‘̶a̶l̶l̶ i̶n̶f̶o̶r̶m̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ a̶l̶i̶v̶e̶’̶ b̶o̶n̶u̶s̶ .replaying the level (again).
Many years later, my niece was horrified when she saw me do the same thing to an allied character in another game. Once the dialogue was complete and I’d learned what I needed, I reflexively stabbed them and left them for dead in the street. “Was that you or the game?” she asked, taken aback by the wantonness of my actions and unsure whether it could have been of my volition — surely no-one could be so psychopathically heartless … surely it was scripted by the game designers and beyond my control. But, no … whilst reflexive and unpremeditated … the act performed before I knew it … it was I, not the game, who was responsible for murdering my ally in an, almost certainly unnecessary, act of pre-emptive self-preservation learned all those years previously and practiced ever since.
It bled into everything. Playing the Splinter Cell series years later, there was a section in which there was an indeterminate number of security guards to get past and I coincidentally had precisely ten rounds of ammo in my pistol. Naturally, therefore, I took my time, lurking in the shadows, took each of them down with a headshot (the only way to guarantee one shot/one kill) and disposed of the corpses in the darkness before progressing. To my very great relief, exactly ten headshots later l reached the end of the section.
Imagine my annoyance upon learning that I would not be earning a 100% score, because I was meant to deal with my opponents non-lethally.
So, I went back and replayed that section again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And each and every time, whilst I was stalking my next target, one of the others would regain consciousness, raise the alarm and, with grim inevitability, in no time at all I’d find myself (briefly) staring down the wrong end of an awful lot of gun barrels.
Eventually, I gave up in disgust, popped a cap in each of their asses again, disposed of the bodies and finally left the area once and for all.
It taught me some important lessons:
- Just like in Blake Stone, dead men not only can’t shoot at you, they can’t raise the alarm either
- You don’t need t̶o̶ b̶e̶ a̶ b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ s̶h̶o̶t̶,̶ y̶o̶u̶ j̶u̶s̶t̶ n̶e̶e̶d̶ t̶o̶ f̶i̶r̶e̶ m̶o̶r̶e̶ b̶u̶l̶l̶e̶t̶s̶ a lot of ammo, you just need a lot of one one-shot/one-kill.
- Stealth will get you through times of low ammo better than ammo will get you through times of … actually, it won’t … nothing gets you through times of low ammo better than not being low on ammo — so, conserve it (headshots it is then).
As a result, I am mean with my ammo and don’t like using it, if I can avoid it — if I can save a bullet I might need later by garotting, stabbing, slitting a throat or snapping a neck now, I’ll save that bullet. Consequently, upon stumbling upon an enormous cache of weapons and/or ammo, I am often
- left feeling somehow cheated, or short-changed, by the fact that I don’t need 75% (or even more) of it
- unable to fathom how people could find themselves in need of that many/much — who is that profligate with their ammo and/or that lousy a shot and/or makes use of such lousy tactics!? ¹
So, having discovered that a game gathering dust at the back of my collection has a cheat mode, I thought I’d give it a go for a giggle.
It’s been exhilarating using ammo with abandon, keeping the tempo high and the action flowing — it makes a real change from my usual … albeit still lethal … stealthy approach.
But I’ve been given a sniper rifle with a bayonet.
I’ve never used a bayonet before, so, when I used a melee attack because I couldn’t bring the rifle to bear fast enough at close range, you can imagine my surprise when, expecting to hit my opponent with the butt of the gun, I thrust it at him instead.
He went down clutching at his neck, gurgling like a draining sink as blood spouted from it like a fountain … an horrific way to die and likely terrifying as you know this is your brutal end, with nothing to be done to prevent it.
It was very impressive (very realistic) … and immensely satisfying ².
Fun though it has been blasting everything in sight with a rocket-launcher, I think I may have been introduced to a new favourite form of attack.
I must do it as often as possible.
Stealth mode it is then: you need to be up close to stab someone in the neck with a bayonet — it’s very personal … you might even say it were intimate.
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¹ If you can’t make it through the Borderlands games relying entirely upon conventional weapons, without recourse to special abilities, you really need to reconsider your approach.
² Like the plea for mercy in Rise of the Triad, the crippling of my victims in Messiah, or the fate of Miss Jones in Sim Tower, it’s the little, realism-enhancing details that elevate a game beyond Doom. not the frame-rate or polygon-count.
