Path of the Omegathon - Round Three
Posted by DoverAfter wandering about a bit beforehand, I ended up going to the PC Freeplay area for the third round of the Omegathon. We would be playing a fifteen-minute game of Quake III with the bottom four players suffering the axe of elimination. I believe that of all the friends and family I had rooting me to win, everyone knew this would be my most difficult round.
During my training for the Omegathon, a friend of mine got us a bunch of copies of Quake III so that we could try our best to recreate the chaos that is a twelve-player free-for-all. It seemed to go well the first week, then everyone sputtered out and I was only playing the computer and occasionally playing the guy who got the games. After the first week, he even went as far as to get us our own server to practice on. I feel bad that we didn’t use it as much as we should have, but the little playtime I had with Quake made all the difference.
When we started, I was doing well. Every time I got fragged and saw the score pop up on the screen, I was usually in fourth or fifth place. Until, that is, they had to restart the game because of the screen not functioning in the spectator area. Along with the restart, we went to a different map. After ten minutes into the game, I was only four or five frags ahead of the ninth-place player, and in a heated match to avoid elimination. A big gap separated tenth and ninth and an even larger gap divided seventh and me. Everyone was jumping all over the rankings from first to seventh. The real battle was being fought in the trenches between eighth and ninth place, and I was right in it. After I would get fragged, I’d see the current time and notice I still had a slight lead. Near the end, I remember screaming out loud for the game to "hurry up and fucking end already!" Eventually it did, and I advanced by the slimmest of margins. I think I ended up with about forty or so kills, with about five or six of them being with the gauntlet. My friends watching from outside said that I got some applause and oohh’s and ahhh’s from the crowd for my gauntlet kills.
FPS games have never been my strength, but I viewed it this way: Eighth was just as good as first. All of the omeganaut women remaining got eliminated in this round and it was down to the "elite eight". Three rounds down with me just barely getting by did very little to raise my confidence. My only thought centered around being in that group, by skill or by luck, and that I was proceeding to round four.
-Dover
