Level Zero
My headshots aren’t flukes Melissa Low
As a kid, I wasn’t good at sports. All those
team games you were forced to play in PE class like basketball, football, or volleyball, I felt embarrassed to participate in. I don’t know which was truly worse, the lack of height and speed that I needed for these games, or classmates finding out that my lack of height and speed made me a liability towards winning. My solution to this problem was to be in the back and always play defence, keeping my fingers crossed that everyone else who was better would handle the situation and score all the points. I guess you could say I had the same mentality towards online gaming, which prevented me from ever attempting it (unless Neopets counts as online gaming?) To me, online gaming was another way of exposing my horrific skills to a judging global audience. I had always imagined that if I ever played a very intensive online game, the hardcore gamers would spot my n00b status like steak in a dog show. Easy prey. So how did I find myself playing Steam’s number one, online multi-player game, Team Fortress 2? Well I did not truly realise what I was getting myself into. On the surface, Team Fortress 2 looks like some industrial, wild-west cartoon. But it is in fact a chaotic world of brutal violence, containing characters like annoyingly invisible spies, evil looking medics, and scary gas-maskwearing pyromaniacs. This is definitely a game that the boys are meant to dominate in (this also emphasised by the non-existent female characters to choose from.) The concept of the game is simple – two opposing teams aiming to win against the other by completing the goal. For each team, you can choose what sort of character you play such as a front-line soldier or a defence demolition man. Then once you hit go, chaos is unleashed. The first character I chose was the big, machine gun wielding “Heavy”; some sort of
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chunky Russian man with ginormous muscles. Once established, I slowly ran to the front lines, and as soon as I passed the bridge, a flurry of bullets, knives, bombs and flamethrowers fly towards me. And of course I decided the best way to defend myself from all of that was to run away like the scared little girl I truly am. This was when I realised I needed to play to my strengths. My skills of running away and hiding were perfect for the “sniper” position. Being stealthy and quiet, I could happily avoid contact from the people trying to kill me. So renewed as a sniper character, I ran up to hide in a small upstairs loft in view of the enemy base. And as I readied my character’s gun, I waited to shoot. And waited… Until suddenly, one enemy soldier ran out and I clicked the mouse with speed. “Head Shot” flashed on the screen. In my spooked and panicked reaction, I managed to kill another player by a sniper shot to their head. My boyfriend, who had been watching me play, was both surprised and amazed at what I had achieved. “I can’t believe you managed to head shot him!” Neither could I. But I did it again. And again. And again. As each enemy ran out of the base, I shot those suckers down one by one. Eventually I racked up about 15 head shot kills, and even though my team lost, I felt pretty chuffed with my result by the time the game ended. “It’s a complete fluke that you managed those kills,” boyfriend said. “It would be different if I was playing you.” You know what? A count of 15 head shots is not a fluke. I played against real online players, and even though I’m a scared little wimp when it comes to online gaming, my spooked reaction gives me great aim. So boys, bring your challenges on, because this girl will bring sniper skills and prove you wrong.
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