elfs | Don't piss off the Omaha

Omaha and I settled down to play a new Quake4 map. Along the way of researching the map installation, I discovered a new kind of kill. There's the Humiliation (you kill someone with the chainsaw), and the Impressive (a head shot with the rail gun, not necessarily fatal) but there's also the Combination (wound with the rocket, the kill with the rail gun within three seconds).

I'd never had a combo before. So I started chasing Omaha around, going for exactly that kill. When I did it, she said, "What the Hell was that?" When I explained, she said, "You used me as your experiment! You've been pulling your shots all this time! You could kill me anytime you wanted to!"

Actually, no. I usually am better than she is, but not by very much. There are certain maps (we have over a hundred now) that really favor her style of play, too, where she kicks my butt across the territory. She's a very good camper especially when it's dark. When I learned about the Combo, I got into a very different head space, one where making the Combo was more important than beating her. Once I'd done it, I fell back into just playing the game and whatever skillset I had conjured up to make the combo just disappeared. I could not bring them back.

And I'd made her mad. She started to beat me up badly, only to make two really bad mistakes and lose two points (not win two, lose two: she succeeded in killing herself). She managed to stage a second comeback and won by one point.

I'm still trying to figure out why I became so successfully reckless about the Combo, and I why couldn't repeat the experience after I'd done it once. At one point I tried to do it, fat fingered the gun switch, and got blown apart by Omaha's shotgun while I was trying to hit her with the chainsaw at range. Which just doesn't work.

But mostly, don't make the Omaha mad.