Never bring a knife to a gun-fight
In recent months, the guys and I have taken a shining to a popular tactical/FPS computer game called Battlefield 2142. It’s a theatre of war set over a hundred years in the future, featuring two mega-powers facing off against each other in a struggle for resources and territory. The actual gameplay takes place on the battlefield, with up to sixty-four players taking the roles of soldiers and facing off against each other online. It’s a great game for fostering teamplay and cooperation, because the best team is usually the one that’s doing the best job of working together. We’ve had an awful lot of fun playing with each other, and even gunning each other down on rare occasions, but like any computer game BF2142 has its quirks.
The game is produced by EA, and so almost necessarily there are glitches and UI design flaws by the handful. Beyond that though, one aspect of gameplay of which I’m really not a huge fan, is the ability to knife an opposing player. Don’t get too grossed out here, if you’re the sentimental type; BF2142 is a far cry from Grand Theft Auto and the like. The idea behind adding knives into the game is that if you sneak up on an opposing player and knife them, you are then (and only then) able to collect their “dog tags”, which are essentially extra bragging rights to prove that you pwnz0red that n00b FTW!!!1, et cetera. The idea is sound, but the implementation lacks something in my mind. Sneaking up behind someone and grabbing their tags is one thing, but the game’s physics allows you to also bunny hop around the map like a fool waving your knife in the general direction of the enemy, and with a little practice, more often than not you’ll end up with some dog tags to show for your (minimal) effort.
There really is nothing more frustrating than winning a hard-fought (gun) battle against another opponent or two, only to turn around and simultaneously realize that there’s a guy running at you with a knife from 50 yards away, and your clip is half-empty. Some of your bullets will hit if your aim is true, but some of them might miss because of the afore-mentioned bunny-hopping. So you end up with a guy who runs 50 yards at a full sprint, takes a half dozen bullets to the chest from a 22nd century machine gun (body armour notwithstanding), and then still has the ability to gut you in a single swipe of his 5 inch manhood compensator. Er, knife.
If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. I can handle the disgrace of being ambushed by a clever foe, waiting in the shadows until I let down my guard and start setting up to snipe off in another direction. There really isn’t that much disgrace in it, in fact. But being cut down by cold steel wielded by a clown who has magical reserves of stamina - cut down in my prime, at that! - is just something I find hard to tolerate.
There are even entire servers dedicated to knife fights, where everyone dances circles around each other attempting to slice off the other guy’s tags. I guess if they’re enjoying themselves, who am I to question it; but I can’t see doing it myself. To this end, and here I’m coming to the point of all this, I laughed like silly when I watched this YouTube video entitled Knifing 101: Volume 1. And of course, there’s the sequel entry called Knifing 101: Volume 2. It feels good to know that I’m not the only one who finds it frustrating.
