A Slight Difference in Abilities

Games played:

Grand Theft Auto V

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Today's gaming went much more smoothly than the past few days. Thanks 100' Ethernet cable! Armed with lightning fast internet and an abundance of content, I set forth to divide and conquer.

With my girl, KM, riding shotgun, I started GTAV with some promo, resupply and goods delivery missions for my nightclub, bunker, counterfeiting, and weed operations. All said and done I made over $200,000, bought some new clothes, changed my character's hair and only died twice. At one point, whilst flying and parachuting I looked as though I knew what I was doing! Man, I felt like a G... that is until I failed to slow down enough to land my parachute jump. And again, Rockstar, thanks for underscoring my ineptitude by stamping WASTED across my monitor. Nothing better to bolster the confidence of new player than with a giant, graphic reminder that the character they've spent hours, days, weeks nurturing has been murdered by their own lack of skill.

That being said, I was feeling pretty badass when I loaded into AC Odyssey. Sticking with my thus far successful strategy of hiding in the bushes and picking off enemies one stealth kill at a time, I cleared a couple missions easy-peasy lemon squeezy. A couple hours into game time Rin checked in with me for a cuddle break. At this point I was taking out a bandit camp, sticking and moving. He offered to help show me the button-play so I could get more comfortable.

Eager to learn from a master I handed him my controller. But instead of hiding, he ran right up to the enemies and picked a fight with several at the same time. Was he out of his mind?! Alexios is only a level five! He doesn't have the health or the gear or the skill upgrades to whoop ass like a boss. Turned out that it wasn't Alexios who's unprepared for launching headlong into the fray. It's his operator.

I watched with admiration (and--let's be honest--a fair amount of envy) as Rin used Alexios to his fullest potential and slew the foes with ease. Among the defeated was the bandit captain thus achieving the mission objective in a less than thirty seconds.

"You're still new to the game, as you play more, you'll get the muscle memory to do that too. It's a lot quicker so you'll level up faster." He handed the controller to me.

"But what about the XP from killing the leftover bandits?" I asked.

"It's minimal. You get the most from completing the missions and reporting back to character that sent you."

Awesome advice. And soon enough an opportunity to assasinate the Cyclops presented itself and I was off to put this new way of dispatching missions into action. As it turned out I didn't have much choice about it anyway.

The Kill the Cyclops is part of the main story so once I got close enough to the center of Kleptous Bay, I was pulled into a cut scene where I actually taunt the Cyclops in the most alarming of ways. I won't go into too much detail but let's just say it involves an intervention into the waterboarding of Barnabas, the Cyclops's purloined obsidian eye, and a sheep's anus. Enough said.

At this point I'm yelling "WTF, dude?!" at Alexios because his desire to help a stranger and confront the Cyclops has clearly overridden his better sense. An enraged Cyclops and about a half dozen of his men set their sites on me with a quickness.

Okay, Foxx, this is the perfect time to practice what Rin just showed you.

Or not.

Needless to say my first attempt at this encounter ended with my desynchronization. At least that's a gentler way of saying that Alexios wrote a check with his mouth (and a sheep's butthole) that his player couldn't cash. Sidenote: See, Rockstar, no need to be so confrontational about it.

As the video of this debacle shows, I duck when I'm trying to strike and dodge my way into an obstacle I can't maneauver around. I got in a few good licks, but nothing capable of getting the job done. Part of this is that I am still trying to get used to the controller layout and the method of executing combos for this game. But the other part is that I simply don't have the lightning fast reflexes of twenty-five year old veteran gamer.

on my second attempt, I was able to best the Cyclops and his thugs but I had to go back to ranged and stealth attacks on one or two enemies at a time. It's not as efficient or as impressive as Rin's tactics, but victory is the goal and victory I achieved.

For now I'm just glad to be able to complete missions. I'm hoping some finesse develops as I get more experience gaming. But if it doesn't, it doesn't. I still love playing and that's what's most important.