A Bitter Pill to Swallow
Last Wednesday at 7 p.m. PST (or maybe a little after 7 p.m., because we were unfortunately a bit late in setting up the whole thing), Sterling McGarvey, Patrick Joynt, Thierry "Scooter" Nguyen, and myself (Gabe Graziani) logged into Xbox Live and logged out of our previously held dignity. As Patrick was fond of saying before some of the matches, "You know, we play a lot of games, but don't really get to focus on any one all that much... also, we pretty much suck." Well, friends, the proof is most definitely in the playing, and the one thing that is clear from the sum of our wins is that we do in fact suck (at Gears of War anyway).
Do you know who doesn't suck though? Every reader we faced during last week's match. Not only did these fine gentlemen demonstrate a disturbing amount of skill at eviscerating us on the digital battlefield, but they were also both diplomatic and polite while doing so. I know, I was a bit shocked, too: manners? On Xbox Live? Strange but true, my friends.
While we dauntless GameSpy editors put forth our very best effort, we simply could not withstand the bloodlust of our faithful readers. Out of the eight matches we fought through, we didn't win a single one. Individual rounds within those eight matches went largely to our readers, and we were only able to scrabble together about four actual victories. Pathetic, really. Yet while these results could be seen as evidence that we GameSpies are somehow confrontationally challenged, I prefer to look at it from the perspective that GameSpy's readers are in fact superior gamers. At least, those are the quiet reassurances I whisper like a mantra when the night terrors drench me in the cold sweat of reality.
Horror Show
As I mentioned in the last 'Spy-Hunter column , we were taking glorious HD video of each match, which I later cobbled together into a selection of my favorite highlights from the blood bath. Sadly, although we captured every last giblet of gore streaking down the camera, we simply couldn't offer you the entire video of the carnage, because it would have been about two hours of us dying over and over again (and the file size would have been something ridiculous like five gigabytes). Also sadly, as it turns out, I'm not the greatest video editor in the universe, so despite my finest efforts the clips occur in reverse chronological order (I'll get it right next time, I promise).
Still, if you pay close attention to the video, you'll notice that there are a couple of times where GameSpy's vaunted teamwork degenerates into outright in-fighting. These are some of my favorite moments from the matches, because they illustrate our basic primal nature bent only on laying blame on someone else. The part where Scooter berates Patrick for his inability to provide covering fire is simply delicious, and trumped only by the time where I completely abandon Patrick just when he needs me most (resulting in a dressing-down of epic proportions after the fight ("Mr. Gabe 'this has nothing to do with me' Graziani").
My absolute favorite part can be found closer to the end of the video, when Sterling hides like a little girl with a naughty secret. There's simply nothing better than watching him camp behind cover, knowing full well that a full team of Locusts/readers is rapidly converging on him. Also, I get to call him a "little fool" from the safety of the dead man's chat room, which I'd never get to do to his face (you need to know that Sterling is a massive man in real life, and could easily snap me in half like a twig).
