Nil Points

Team Fortress 2 is the game I've been thinking about playing but haven't most over the past few weeks. I fired it up last night for a few hours, and reminded myself why. I absolutely stink at Team Fortress 2.

I'm not even sure why this is - in principle it should be ideal for me. I'm moderately skilled at First Person Shooters; usually play things on Hard, and my favourite ever deathmatch experience was Doom - super fast and simple with a limited requirement to exhaustively learn the maps to the depth that games like Counterstrike or Battlefield demand.

But in practice, it just doesn't quite work out for me. Eschewing the complexity of a class like the engineer or spy, my weapon of choice alternates between the soldier and the scout, depending on the map. But as the soldier my rockets never quite seem to connect solidly with their intended targets. And when I'm the scout my shotgun blasts - whilst consistently hitting their man - rarely provide the killing blow.

Oh sure, I can bob and weave about to avoid the sniper fire well enough most of the time, or play sniper when I want to spare myself the ignominy of coming bottom, but I still feel like I'm missing out on most of the joy that TF2 should so clearly be providing.

Are my reactions gradually dulling with age, or have I spent too much time away from these type of games to ever catch up with the other boys and girls, who seem to know instinctively how to land a grenade on a distant head, or baseball bat a passing goon at high speed?

Bah and double-bah! I'm going to keep at it a little longer before I finally hang up my spurs.