Why I prefer to be a backseat player on Xbox Live

The AVP multiplayer demo on Xbox Live is really, really fun–for everyone but me. On Friday night/Saturday morning Mike told me to download the demo so we could pair up and play together. Normally I’d say no, but I just paid to renew my Gold account for a year and I want my moneys worth. (I also downloaded the demo to Fairytale Fights, which I’m seriously considering buying.)

We started to play and I got off to a rough start. For the first few minutes as each character I was trying to get my bearing and figure out what button did what. The Predator, Alien and Marine each have a different control set up. The Predators and Marines are somewhat similar, but the Alien is almost completely different. Fast forward to my third match, I’m now used to the level, the controls and the limitations of each character.

I hate to admit to this, but I’m going to put it out there: I used more profanity in a half hour then I have in all of 2010 playing that game. I was frustrated at my lack of skill and the fact that everyone in the match, save for Mike, was killing me from behind.

Written in my Livejournal:
I hate Xbox Live players. Mike told me to get the AVP demo so we could play the multiplayer/death match option, so I did, and it only reinforced my disdain for the players who either a) kill you from behind and b) squat in one corner and wait for everyone to walk by.

My preferred style is to face characters head on, but I will go back and forth between Sneaky and Gladiator depending on the style of the game. The innate nature of the Aliens and Predators are to be sneaky. One can be invisible; the other can crawl around on ceilings. I should have expected to get stabbed in the back or grabbed from behind, it’s what they do.

And I did, just a little bit, but after a while it got excessive. What really got to me was this: I was obviously the inexperienced player, I was obviously the dumb one in the group… and in a kill all death match, I was the easiest target. How is that any fun for the experienced player? Do people like a challenge these days? I get the feeling that they don’t.

I can admit I’m not very good at games like AVP. I still have fun playing them, in the campaigns, but I won’t be joining anyone on Live. It just means there will be one less extremely inexperienced player for the others to swarm. I will watch people play, though. I will be the backseat player that sometimes tells you what you need to do because you’re missing something. (And I’ll try to be as nice as possible about it, because that can get annoying quick.)  I will watch Mike and others play on Live, since they are actually good at it, and I’ll cheer them on and point out the stuff they missed when running down a hallway.

Maybe one day I’ll get over myself and join the millions of people on Live and suck and just not care. For now, I have things in life that overshadow the need to get my butt kicked by everyone in the AVP death matches.

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