If video games have taught me one thing in life, it’s that there will always be someone better than you at something you enjoy. Be it cooking a wholesome meal, lifting a heavy weight or two at the local gymnasium, or sleeping with my wife, there is no task too great for me to fail at.
In the world of online, history will dictate that there has forever been some international sniper git to no-scope me; some quick-jabbing, combo launching son-of-a-bitch to ‘perfect’ me and a snapback wearing, tracksuit wearing lad to out-sport goal me. To my mind, there has been no single game that I have held my own at without suppressing a deep, burning rage that in no doubt contributed to my poor mental health in my mid-twenties. Every kill is another tear I have shed.
Historically, I have been a single-player gamer. Only God can judge my performance then. From Yoshi’s Island on the Super Nintendo to Resident Evil on Playstation and Fallout 4 on Xbox One, I relish something that can immerse you in a narrative and thought-out world. A scripted environment that has an element of control and pre-established rules where I can rule as the big boy my mother told me I was when I first learned how to tie my own shoelaces at the tender age of 15. Blessed be the double-knot.
The slow descent to becoming an online loser started how it always starts – with Call of Duty. Nothing could have prepared me for what a shitstorm of slaps I was walking into. Now, the only reason I spent my human money in the first place was because this was, almost exclusively, the only game my friends were playing online at the time. First, it was World at War. Then it was Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops (yeah, I missed out on CoD 4, sue me).
All of them went the same: the match would begin, everyone on my team would perform admirably and end the round respectably, and I… was also in the team. It did not matter what loadout I had, nor from what range I shot my pixelated opponent, it would always be me who went down in the crossfire, receiving an absolute teabagging for my efforts. My contributions, no matter how minimal or how much effort I tried to offer, would see me walk away red-faced with an A for effort, which was, essentially, a participation award, like the one they gave my years earlier at school for swimming because I didn’t drown whilst doggy paddling in the shallow end. I was 20 years old.
I even went to a midnight launch of Black Ops. I don’t know why, looking back. Staying up way past my bedtime just to buy a game I would lose hours to and spend even longer being dead at. Thank god for the campaign mode that absolutely every else ignored because those sweet, sweet achievements I earned for beating it on easy really gave me a sense of belonging.
When I would head back online, I could only dream of pulling off a killstreak higher than 3. Whilst my friends would be calling out attack dogs and gunships, I was camping in a corner, whipping out mini-radars like no-one’s business. My name is Darryl, King of Sonar: Look upon my 3 killstreak, ye mighty and despair!
For the life of me, I never will know how anyone just gets good at CoD. Most first-person shooter games seem to employ the tactic of jumping and shooting at the same time. Jumping around corners, jumping over little fences, jumping over other people jumping, like kangaroos with guns, which is exactly what I imagine the Australian army is. I’ve seen a fair few war documentaries and TV shows over the years and have never seen any individual or group with military training jump-and-gun, so if you did that online, enjoy your shitty 10+ killstreak you piece of garbage, because you are a villain and a criminal.
We flash-forward to the present day and my gaming life is still much the same, but this time in the form of Fortnite, where you can shoot 99 others players whilst building up lil’ forts, like a modern day version of the Three Little Pigs. However, all these other pigs are actually wolves in disguise. Wolves with shotguns.
A normal game of Fortnite goes something like this: I skydive into the battlefield and try to land on a building/roof as quickly as I can, wondering how people who dived after me have already hit ground before I have. I hack away at a roof with my pickaxe, scavenging for any bits or weapons I can get my hands on and run away/hide as I hear the terrifying sounds of a player stomping about on the floor above. My objective now, as in any Battle Royale game, is survival. I have painstakingly watched many a gamer on YouTube own their way to first place, owing to great skill and quick reaction times, building defensive bases and having pinpoint accuracy with a precision and speed I could only dream of. They, by about 3 minutes into a game, have building materials in the 100s, and can whip up a fortified base made of brick and metal and kit it out with spike traps across 5-storeys in frightening speed.
I, on the other hand, can hide in a bush pretty well.
It is often through my own cowardice and natural born instinct to avoid confrontation, that I can survive up until the last 25 with alarming consistency. Heck, I actually even won a game one time (and one time only) by creeping and hiding from bush to bush, taking advantage of a rocket shoot-out between two more experienced players, before picking off the worthy victor with a machine gun barrage. I am a vulture. I am death.
Outside of this utter one-off, when confronted by other players, I will fire wildly, jump madly, but ultimately freeze up and forget to build wooden walls and offer myself precious seconds. Every game will end with my lackluster game rank plastered on my screen, as I am then forced to watch the reaper who tore away my brief pixelated life continue on their journey to be the champion of the round, like a vengeful noob ghost. Less than a minute later, I’ll launch myself back into another Battle Bus, destined to repeat my earlier mistakes and die again in shame, almost like my own personal Groundhog Day, but unlike Bill Murray, I refuse to learn the lessons of my past.
All I want is for my in-game avatar to learn a new dance.
I tried other online shooters, like Battlefield, Halo and Destiny and fared no better. More recently, I took to Dragon Ball FighterZ, hoping my luck may change for the better, owing for no other reason than I am a big fan of the anime series. However, like every other effort, I was humiliated by greater players, even though I tried really hard to do a non-button mashing combos. In one game, resigned to my ultimate end, I simply put my controller down next to me and watched as Ultimate Gohan and Goku Black took turns kicking all three of my roster in the dick. My opponent did not offer to meet me in a rematch.
I have been a gamer for most of my life and used to think myself of reasonable skill until I subscribed to Xbox Live. Throughout many years of trying, I have failed, died, respawned and died again, in the vain pursuit of improving my skills online, hoping that maybe I too, one day, could be a sick skills gaming YouTube boi, making my millions in revenue, have cool t-shirts and a sweet opening theme song that makes it to #204 in the iTunes charts. I know now that this will never happen and I have made my peace with that. To be honest, my monotononous, sad voice was always better suited to apologising to strangers in my customer service job anyway.
I will still play games online and I will still lose because, god damn, I look good making other people look good. My gamertag is Darryl27 and if you want to boost up that K/D ratio, I am your absolute boy.
If you want to become better than Darryl (not that hard — sorry, mate), check out some of the best landing spots in Fortnite.
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