Steve Sucks At Games

While the great masses of other gamers may be into Call of Duty or Halo, I’ve been happily rocking Mindjack with a small, but dedicated collection of online scrubs, losers, and miscreants. I love it, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

I stumbled into Square Enix’s third-person action game while researching a column about dead multiplayer arenas. The one-star game has become sort of a joke around G4’s offices, and I was hoping to find an occasional straggler still logging in to this backwoods of the multiplayer world and ask: “Why the hell are you playing this terrible game?” But when I actually gave Mindjack a fair look, I ended up liking it a lot.

Instead of strolling into a virtual ghost town or an unplayable crap-fest, I chanced into a small, but relatively dedicated community of players and a game that is quirky, weird and sort of great.

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Steve Sucks At Games chronicles my ineptitude of my multiplayer gaming and my attempts to get better using any means possible, up to and including human sacrifice.

Even nearly 20 years after its release, id Software’s Doom contains a vital message. An insistence on adherence to the two most important lessons in all first-person shooters: Know the Map and Know the Weapons.

Let’s take a trip back in time. Back to the old-school. Back to 1993*. It was a simpler world back then. There was no World Wide Web so only super-nerds had internet access. The PlayStation was still a year from even existing. Arcades were just getting Mortal Kombat 2 machines, and just about every PC Gamer was playing a little game called “Doom.”

While most gamers only experienced Doom’s single-player and were satisfied with the jaw-dropping (for the time) graphics, gameplay, and gore; there was a multiplayer component to the game. For many older gamer cats, it was the first taste of competitive multiplayer. There were big differences between then and now: 1990’s gamers had to either play over a telephone, or you had to physically drag two computers together and hook ‘em up for a LAN party. As primitive as it was, Doom’s multiplayer effectively set the tone for the next 20 years of multiplayer gaming.

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The first time you’re killed without understanding where your murderer even shot you from, it’s confusing. The second time, it’s frustrating. After that it’s increasing levels of infuriating. I’ve been sitting on my co-worker Jake Gaskill’s couch, playing Battlefield 3’s Team Deathmatch for the past couple hours, and I’m on inexplicable death number 35. Yes, I’m keeping track, and I am pissed. I take two steps, some dink shoots me, and I respawn. Two steps later, there’s a knife in my head and I’m bleeding out. This is torture.

All I want is revenge against the countless camo-clad strangers who have used me for target practice for the past hours. You’d think I could able to mete out some measure of revenge—I’m carrying an assault rifle and freakin’ grenades, here -- but I feel like I’m armed with a peashooter and water balloons. Nothing sticks. I’m at the bottom of every stat menu – my squad and the enemy’s. If my team loses, it’s because of me. If it wins, it’s in spite of me. In short: I really, really suck at multiplayer.

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