War Stories

[The Shadow]

This is a thread for humorous gaming stories. Despite the title, they do not have to be violent; for example, if you happen to be an accountant, you can post your EVE Online stories here too. A sample, detailing a Red Orchestra 2 match I played earlier today, can be seen below:

I am playing as a German marksman on the 9th of January Square map, which features a large empty space as one of the objective territories and 4-5 large apartment buildings in various degrees of bombed-outedness. Previous to this match, one of my teammates was a guy called Ben, but he switched to the Soviet side to balance out the teams.

He is also playing as a marksman and once the match starts we both duck into different apartment buildings and start picking each others' teammates off. This generates a stalemate, because nobody from either team can figure out where the enemy sniper is (we are both firing one or two rounds and moving to a different position) and only the brave, foolhardy bots feel like running out into the open and getting a mouthful of bullet. The match has been going for about five minutes and all the human players except Ben and I are already pissed off. I actually spot Ben at a window about 180 meters away, but he leans to pick off a German bot just as I fire. The bullet misses him by about four inches and he vanishes.

Soon after that I'm on the top floor of my building, lining up a shot on a Russian squad leader. A bullet zips right in front of my face and hits the windowframe. I drop to the floor and crawl out of the room. This is the last direct interaction Ben and I have for the rest of the match, but certainly not for lack of effort. We keep chatting with each other, each doing our best to coax the other into the open. Occasionally random shots are fired at inanimate objects believed to be the enemy sniper. The battle in the street and lower apartment levels actually starts up again because we're so obsessed with finding each other.

About half an hour later, I've switched buildings. Ben and I have been decimating each others' teams and have about 50 kills each. I'm watching a Russian machinegunner creep along a wall, but he's on the far side and I just see the top part of his head bob up every few seconds. I finally get the timing figured out and fire¹, but at the exact same time I hear a gunshot from a Mosin-Nagant...very loud...very close...and behind me.

I spin around, thinking someone got the drop on me and somehow missed - and see Ben at the window across from me, about 12 feet away, slowly turning to face me. I bring my rifle up and fire...

...but I forgot to chamber my next round, and as my guy starts working the bolt, Ben charges. I sidestep while drawing my pistol, but once I turn around a Mosin-Nagant stock obliterates my jaw and starts my guy's "I-am-dead-Horatio-report-my-cause-aright-to-the-unsatisfied" stagger animation. My screen goes black and I fire two blind shots.

The newsfeed updates:

Rognvald killed Ben with a P-38
Ben killed Rognvald with a melee attack

Soviets and Nazis alike rejoice. Ben and I laugh hysterically.



¹Yes, I got him. 164-meter shot.

[DEATH]

^AWEXOME^

A good recent one of mine is Paul John (Rebecca's younger bro) and I playing some SMOKIN GUNS (Old-west shooter).

Paul John and I had been playing the game for too long at this point and had gotten quite good at it, such to the point that only the two of us were attempting (and succeeding in) bank robberies against entire teams of very-hard difficulty bots. This may or may not have been greatly influenced by our discovery of the molotov cocktail's effect on people with late-19th century weaponry.

In this particular match we were playing a Mexican city map with tall rooftops and long alleyways. We had decided on a strategy in which I would climb to a good vantage point with my trusty Winchester 1873, whilst Paul John was to creep the alleyways with molotov cocktails. Bot-teams usually stick together in a large posse, so our usual plan of action involved throwing fire on them at close quarters and then picking them off from a distance while they frantically danced about in the flames.

So I climbed to my perch and sent PJ the go ahead via the game chat, and watched him stealthily snake his way through the back alleys to the bank. Suddenly I notice that for whatever reason, the lawmen aren't dug in at the bank, but rather out on foot in a large group for us. Glancing back towards Paul John, I realize they are on collision course and only a few seconds from meeting him at the next alley intersection.

At this point there is no time to warn him so I get my sights up and assume Paul John is about to be shot 30 times or so with a lit molotov cocktail in his hands. Just as Paul John reaches the interchange, the posse runs out in front of him from the right alley way, and he instinctively reacts and tosses the molotov into the side of the head of one of them at absolute point blank range.

What happened next was amazing. Apparently this member of the posse was carrying a pack of dynamite (the OTHER disproportionately effective weapon on the game), and I suddenly see a great flash and bodies flying in all directions. Paul John is hurled rag-doll like back down the alley a good 30 feet and the interchange where they all were is now an ugly black and red stain.

The outcome is that the entire team (plus Paul John) is killed, so we won. But let me tell you, this was the funniest #$%#$ in the world at 2 AM.

[The Shadow]

lolololol oh smoking guns
Hudson and I were playing that last time I was down in Peru. Gatling guns on the roof of the church = yes

[DEATH]

Yesh, it is very yes.

There's the story of the tactical shooter we were playing over New Year's that spawned the "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUBS...no" joke, but I don't remember many details other than my trusty M14 and it's questionable efficacy.

I've got a brief one from more recently, I suppose. I've taken to playing short bursts of Urban Terror on the weekends, but I generally don't play games enough to be relatively good at this so I've chosen to adopt strange tactics. My goals are equal parts killing people/helping the team and finding semi-lethal ways to be an extraordinary nuisance to the other team, depending on how tired I am and how well the first of the two objectives is going. This sometimes gets me kicked off of servers, but at that point it's usually getting REALLY good.

I'll usually don an appropriate gamertag such as "Buttmunch", "Nadewad", "Brettocks" or "PUKE MAGNET" so as to maximize my psychological unsettling of the opposing team. Or, more accurately, self-deprecating screen names seem to generate the best expletive-laced in-game chat messages.

I use 1 of 3 weapons when I'm in maximum troll mode. I also abandon all body armor and extra weapons/ammunition, as this makes you quite a bit faster and greatly enhances your ability to ceaselessly jump around like an idiot while being shot at.

The MP5K is one of the weapons. It's small, lightweight, impotent in terms of ballistic effectiveness, has a ridiculously high rate of fire, is completely useless beyond 20 ft, and can be reloaded in like a tenth of a second. Just add a silencer + non-stop running & jumping into/out of random small areas and you have the perfect formula for making enemy medical units completely overworked. Added bonuses include engaging large groups of people, where the accuracy deficit means you can aim at one and hit 3 instead. This strategy doesn't work at all if you stop moving or actually try to kill them.

The next choice is the grenade launcher. This one is more obvious. Locate the enemy spawn point. Find an aerial trajectory where you can safely rain down indirect fire (usually over buildings). Wait for the "KICK BUTTMUNCH - SPAWN CAMPER!!" or "NADEWAD STOP NADING OUR SPAWN DIP#$%" messages to flow forth.

The final is my proudest method of subverting normal gameplay that I've discovered thus far. On UrT, I've found you can pull the pin on smoke grenades and hold them indefinitely without them going off until thrown or until killed. I've also handily discovered that running and jumping abilities with only grenades and no body armor are somewhere north of ridiculous and for some reason, if you collide with an enemy soldier with the (1)grenade pin pulled [trigger button held], (2) run button held, and (3) while in midair, you automatically kick them in the head which is worth 20% damage.

To understand what this means, you also need to know that you can wall jump in Urban Terror, so basically when you run and jump, as long as something is underneath you, you're like a human pinball and you can just keep bouncing in random directions.

The result is that I sneak up on enemy groups completely unarmored and unarmed, and then run at them and begin jumping off their heads and any nearby objects. The result (if I manage an unnoticed approach) is that they begin frantically shooting in all directions trying to hit me (often killing each other) while I kick them in the heads and when I'm finally killed, they become enveloped in smoke and are forced to abandon their position. You also have to understand a strange dynamic that occurs on UrT where teammates generally throw frag grenades into anywhere a friendly smoke grenade is dropped (the smoke matches team color). This one has gotten me kicked off more servers than the other two combined, but the resultant game chat is usually more than worth it. And occasionally, I'll get a few kills doing this, but generally I end up at something like 2:37 kills:deaths.

I wish I had a specific story, but the only one I can remember all the details of is sneaking up on an enemy sniper's nest and engaging them with my smoke-nade-hopping protocol and successfully managing to get one of them to shoot the other at point-blank with a Remington SR8 before killing me. Resultant chat: "NICE SHOT YOU #$%#$"