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    DF Admin Teajunkie's Avatar
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    Xbox 360 Multiplayer heroes: a celebration of people who make Xbox Live better

    In every theatre of war, a golden rule.
    For Captain Willard it was "never get out of the boat, not unless you're going all the way". For players of Left 4 Dead, it's "never turn back for the bot".

    AI-controlled characters have their uses - they're like a competence buffer, insulating the group against the idiocies of the weakest human player.
    But when push comes to oh-blimey-we're-screwed it's every man for himself, and bots aren't even men.
    You'd have to be spectacularly soft-headed to give a damn when one falls in the line of duty.

    Spectacularly soft-headed... or a hero.
    That's the explanation I've been forced to adopt by the actions of some random I met during a bout of Versus the other night.
    We were towards the end of the generally worthwhile Cold Stream campaign when Death's insidious tide (Jonty) claimed a member of our party, leaving said random, a Coachbot and I to make a break down the sewage tunnel below the waterfall system.
    Up the final stairway, a mass of common Infected. Down below, an exceedingly narked and resourceful Tank.



    I chose the lesser of two evils, rushed for the open and was immediately Jockeyed.
    The other human player did his best to assist, but by the time his head poked above ground I'd gasped my last.
    My death had not been in vain, however - as life faded, I'd managed to knock out the Jockey and most of his escort with frenzied Magnum bullets, opening a narrow window of escape.
    Granted, Special reinforcements were probably mere seconds away, but given haste, cunning and a pipe bomb or two, the other player might have a chance.
    It was at this point that the computer character went down, succumbing to the Tank's beefy fist-sacks.

    And it was then that my unknown comrade broke the golden rule.
    I watched it all on spectator cam, the desultory strains of the game's oh-snap-you-died music plucking my ear - watched as he barged uncaringly into the darkness, streamers of gore arcing from his fireaxe.
    The odds were terrible but the man put up an expert fight, dousing the Tank in Boomer juice and exploiting the subsequent outbreak of civil war to slip past.
    I watched as he knelt to gesticulate the fallen bot to its feet.

    I watched as the Charger swept through, hustling him off to a bone-squelching rendezvous with a distant cliff.
    It seemed to me he was trying to tell me something, godless, self-interested Survivor that I am.
    I was reminded of a player I met in a recent trip through Bad Company 2's empty online fastness, the player whom history recalls as "The Pro".
    He'd been the soft-headed sort, too, stepping in to shield a greener combatant from mental torture at the hands of my fully levelled-up Recon trooper.
    He may also have been the player who reported me for "unsportsmanlike" behaviour, one of the few blemishes on my Xbox Live track record.
    Unsportsmanlike? But I thought the whole point of sport was winning, Mr Pro.



    Perhaps there is Another Way.
    Anecdotes about the casual cruelty and offensiveness of the average Xbox Live subscriber are plentiful, but we rarely hear about positive behaviour, about people who go out of their way to enrich the experience for others.
    We never hear about the guy in Halo: Reach who always stops when other players express an interest in boarding his Warthog, or the guy in Battlefield who's always ready with a defibrillator.

    And that's why I've written this article, to serve as a rallying point for tales of multiplayer heroism.
    Heed the lure of the comments thread, readers - it thirsts for the milk of human kindness, to be populated with heartening stories of people doing nice things to each other in online games, rather than (e.g.) blowing a Boomer up right under your nose.

    It's often argued that in the absence of real consequences, villainy will always flourish, but if somebody's prepared to sacrifice himself for the sake of a wounded chunk of binary code, we can't all be complete arseholes, can we?

    Source
    Last edited by Teajunkie; 30th August 2012 at 09:46 PM.
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