Memoirs of a Gamer: Oh. no. one. is. down.

I didn't play much Operation Flashpoint. I wanted to, I loved it, but I was a bit rubbish. When Arma was released I bought that, and didn't really play it much either. Then Arma 2 came out, and I bought it, and I didn't really play it much. The thing is, I like the idea of those games, but I can't cope with their scale.

Wait... are they human?

I do remember booting Operation Flashpoint up for the first time though. I had borrowed it from a friend, in the days of boxed copies and unlimited activation serial keys. I watched impatiently as the installation crept ever closer to 100%. I was so excited I read the manual while I waited. Finally it was done and I booted it up. I then spent the next four hours dying. Suddenly, repeatedly and mercilessly. And I loved it.

One memory sticks in my head more than any other though. The mission was to clear out a village, then move on to somewhere else and do something... okay I'm as sketchy on the details as Flashpoint was on mission scripting. After clearing the village and repeatedly trying to get the next part of the mission to trigger I finally managed to jump into the necessary truck that got things moving. 

The beauty of flashpoint was the travelling. Sitting aimlessly staring at low resolution faces stretched over a dodecahedron shaped heads. Grim frozen expressions of nothing staring back. For me these little moments hyped up the tension of each mission, knowing death was one unknown bullet away. They made my heart rate climb just a little every time.

So I was sat in the truck. I had climbed in the front, squeezed between two automatons, but not driving. The sun was setting, and dark was closing in. It was just dark enough for details to begin burring into the background. The fighting was over, we were going home and the troops in the back were sharing stilted, expletive free banter.

Suddenly two bullet holes appeared in the window screen in front of me... and I was dead. That was it. Sudden, brutal and unforgettable.