Now that my wrist has improved and I’m not wearing a brace as much, I’ve been spending the last few days getting to know PUBG‘s desert surroundings a little better. And given that part of the PUBG experience is the intensity of the final 10, it gave me a thought for this week’s Tell Us Dammit.
For this week, I’d like you to share the most intense gaming experience you’ve ever had.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be in-game, mind you. I can remember plenty of long, overnight gaming sessions at LANs or friends’ houses where people mainlined games of COD4 zombies well into the night. Intensity can also come from surprising quarters.
For instance, the very first online game I ever played from home was Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It was over the MSN Gaming Zone at the time – back in the days when automated matchmaking was rare, the domain of only a few developers – and the family internet was good old unlimited dialup. Remember those days when you needed a separate phone line for your internet, so you didn’t get disconnected every time someone called the house?
Anyway, I decided I’d give that a go after beating up on the AI mercilessly. And it went for hours. I played for about seven straight until I realised: oh shit, the internet’s going to disconnect soon.
One of the fun things with our dialup internet was the fact that there was an eight hour hard cap on how long the connection would be open. I think that was really just a limit on how long the connection could be open for, rather than a limitation of the internet itself. But if I disconnected, the game wasn’t coming back. This wasn’t a PBEM match or anything: it was live, and we were nearing the end.
So, foolishly thinking I was in a decent position, I began forcing the issue to end the game before my internet ran out. And when you’re sitting there, staring at darkness, not able to see your enemy’s every move, the waiting is the killer. So I plotted. Waited my turn. Then frantically performed all my actions as fast as possible (using my enemy’s time to think).
And then I took one step too far.
Two minutes before the timer was about to drop, it became clear how hopelessly overextended I was. My enemy’s heroes and armies began to roll in, and there was simply no answer. I’d probably lost the game about six hours prior, because I was a dumb little kid and everybody sucks when it comes to their first online game.
But there was enough time to witness my home castle get absolutely romped, only to see the flags change colour and hear the modem drop out. “Wow,” I remember thinking at the time.
What’s your most intense experience while gaming?
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