Game Rage

[FullAuto]

What game brings it on for you?

 

During one Streetfighter II marathon in the SNES days, I was beaten for the nth time in a row when my opponent had only a sliver of health left. As a Brit, gentleman, and sportsman, I of course reacted appropriately. I screamed in fury, yanked the controller out of the console, whirled it round my head and smashed it against the wall as my friends fled the room. Paying for a new controller was painless because I was still seething with anger, but paying to have the entire wall replastered (that controller was quite sturdy, it took many swings to destroy) hurt my finances a lot.

 

I witnessed another remarkable display when a friend was playing a football game where the AI's cheating grew as the game progressed, with the most obvious symptom being that when you tried to intercept an AI player with the ball, your player's direction would change by 30-45 degrees constantly, wavering left and right. This made running in a straight line an incredible challenge. So intercepting someone else and tackling them was nigh impossible.

 

This only happened erratically in the first half, but grew more and more common, especially if you were winning. 1-0 up until the 91st minute, AI striker past all but one defender. My friend struggles to get his player, wobbling as if afflicted with Parkinson's, into tackling range. He fails miserably. Computer scores.

 

Roaring "MONKEY BASTARD HANDS!" for reasons best known to himself, he threw the pad aside, charged the telly and punched it, cracking the screen. Not content with this, he shoved the telly off the shelf, to smash on the floor. Summoned by the sound of unspecified carnage, his father entered to be told "It fell."

 

He was not convinced.

[Gimli]

Man, wish I had stories like those. But I hear that's common in Britain. My cousin's aunt was in England as a maid (or was it babysitter) and the father was a real gentleman. Until the football match.

 

Can't say I ever broke any of my PC components intentionally. My old TV would occasionally black out though, so it had to be slapped or punched for the picture to return. Same with the VCR.

 

I tend to let my inner-self handle the rage.

[Slaughter]

You know that it's the "inner self" sort that shoot 15 people in schools, right?

 

I've beaten the keyboard so keys fly in all directions more times than I can remember. I've also beaten a mouse so hard it ripped on the underside and flattened. That being said, I remember other's rage better than my own from the pure joy of causing them such agitation!!! There's especially two situations I remember.

 

First was when the first Command & Conquer hit the streets. I had played it LAN quite a bit with friends (using coax cables and my Pentium 75 ), and thus knew all the dirty tricks. One summer I went to visit my second cousin, and he had played single-player and hotseat quite a bit. I warned him that hotseat wasn't exactly the same as playing human opponents, but he was quite cocky and confident in his abilities. We started playing, and clashed a with a few troops to begin with. I then scouted his base, and discovered that he had no defense in the rear part as expected. Next up was to fill a transport helicopter with engineers and fly it in behind his defense (as one always did with inexperienced players). After that it was quick slaughter...

 

My second cousin cursed harder and harder through it all, and when the humiliating defeat was an obvious fact he roared and threw himself over the table at me. I laughed so hard I could hardly sit up straight, and it wasn't the last time during our matches...

 

The second incident I remember, which was the best for me, was playing Rune multiplayer. We were four friends living in a flat while studying, and Desert Combat (Battlefield 1942) and Rune was the games we played the most. In Rune you can cut of other people the arm, and when you do they need to find food to get it back. Without the arm, they can't attack, and you end up chasing them around and killing them for the most part.

 

Anyway, in one of our matches, I was REALLY lucky. I cut off the arm of a flatmate something like 8 times in a row, and ended up killing him in the end. I also killed him in other ways several times during this extremely lucky period (we were evenly matched normally). After killing him 12 times in a row or something, he finally managed to kill me. I had heard his rage from the other room several times already, but in the bottom of a ruin he managed to kill me eventually. As I respawned, I realized I was on the top of said ruin. For some unknown reason I jumped out from the top (a leap that would normally kill me), and landed on top of my flatmate's head (killing him instantly instead of me). Next I could hear a shriek of pure rage from his room, and running. I laughed so hard I fell off my chair, and he jumped me like a roaring madman!

 

I really wish I had recorded that Rune session, because anyone watching it would have sympathized with my poor flatmate. He had so much bad luck that session it's unbelievable, and when he finally managed to kill me he was killed by my falling body a few seconds later. I still laugh when telling the story, and his face still darkens when reminded of it (and I make sure I do it whenever I remember to ).

[FullAuto]

As I respawned, I realized I was on the top of said ruin. For some unknown reason I jumped out from the top (a leap that would normally kill me), and landed on top of my flatmate's head (killing him instantly instead of me). Next I could hear a shriek of pure rage from his room, and running. I laughed so hard I fell off my chair, and he jumped me like a roaring madman!

 

That's fantastic.

 

One was purely due to piss-taking by the developers. When you complete Ghouls n' Ghosts (or is it Ghosts n' Goblins?), you're sent back to the beginning of the game, and you have to complete it again in order to see the ending. Now, it's not a particularly easy game. And this blatant embuggerance caused my friend to rip the cartridge out of his SNES, leaving the game intact but breaking the console.

 

I have also been witness to Counterstrike-induced mouse smashing, which is quite frightening.

[Gimli]

Hmmm, well I have this. Not quite game rage, but it's still funny.

 

This VHS rental place (total thieves, but that's another story) had PCs and you could play games at something like 2$/hour. One of the employees' son was there all the time and it annoyed everyone.

 

Then one day the guy got laid off for unknown reason. Came in during the night with his son and proceeded to take half the components, rearranged the keys on the keyboards and left. The PCs were soon replaced with PS1's.

[Bomb Bloke]

In Rune you can cut of other people the arm, and when you do they need to find food to get it back. Without the arm, they can't attack, and you end up chasing them around and killing them for the most part.

You missed a bit there - arms (and heads) can be picked up and themselves used as weapons. There's nothing quite like chasing someone around and bashing them to death with their own limbs.

 

Personally I've got a good dead of patience, so it's very seldom a game will aggravate me. Typically it's stuff like hardware/software failure that really gets me annoyed. Stuff that "should" work yet doesn't. I'm also fairly good at acting calm even if I'm not (though the mouse/controller in my hand might make funny creaking noises if I'm in the mood). I haven't actually broken/thrown anything yet (though I do understand that the throwing/crushing is an involuntary reflex action (usually accompanied with a loud FU- well, you know), and have had to stop myself more then a few times).

 

The things in games that really get me are when I either lose to a glitch, or the computer outright cheats against me. I don't really mind losing to humans all that much (as I'm good enough to beat most casual players at anything, while not (usually) so good that I actually care about being beaten myself).

 

The most pissed off I can remember being? NFSU1. One of the final races (which takes like twenty minutes because they have you doing that many laps versus AI who rubber band to keep up with you then turbo across the finish line in the last seconds of the race), after various attempts...

 

Coming up on the final corner, the AI pulls it's usual trick and pulls out in front of me, accelerating faster then even my turbo boosters can take me. I SLAM that Mother ****** into the said corner side on, and his car catapults up into the air, spinning as it goes. He's gone, victory is literally visible in front of me: I can see the line ahead, no more corners, no more cars in position to overtake.

 

How sweet it is.

 

Then the console crashed.

 

Anyway. I suppose this is the time for me to introduce I Want To Be The Guy. So far I've only played a quarter hour (enough time to make it half way through the second screen), though I do intend to finish it.

[FullAuto]

Commandos. Jesus Christ, actually going behind enemy lines and completing missions during WWII was easier than this game. It's harder than Bruce Lee if he was made of diamond. It's good, and very rewarding when a plan comes together, but it's bloody frustrating.

 

Being discovered for the hundredth time in a row, hand clenches round mouse. Blood pressure goes through roof.

 

Mouse starts to creak under the pressure. Vaguely aware of a snarling noise somewhere in the back of your throat. Plastic splits and cracks.

 

Relax. Try again.