December 17, 2004 - It's no secret that your IGN editors like to kick around an online game or two at all hours of the day or night. The skill of IGN players in online shooters ranges from the legitimate semi-pros on IGN PC to the absolutely incompetent editors who can barely put fingers to keyboard to type up their daily stories. So on the day we challenged the team of players at Sony Computer Entertainment of America in a game of Killzone, the question wasn't would we win, but why do we always take on people who are directly involved in making the game we're using for the competition? After all, you don't challenge Kevin Garnett to game of one-on-one or make plans to challenge Justin Timberlake to an overrated pretty boy contest and expect to win.
So a series of matches against SCEA in Killzone was what we put together in a desperate effort to begin a win streak against people who make videogames. We threw together a squad of IGN staffers captained by Aaron Boulding that included Stephen Ng, Mark Ryan Sallee and David Clayman. The latter three represent the heart and soul of our cheats section and their endless hours on the sticks looking for secrets and whatnot qualifies them for competitive PS2 gameplay.
Match One put us on the Beach Head level in a Team Deathmatch clash. Starting off with Team Deathmatch proved to be one hell of a warm up for your IGN editors. It's pure in its intent and unforgiving when it comes to exposing one's lack of skill. Needless to say this race 100 team kills didn't go well for us. The skill of Sallee and Clayman kept the scores close early on but the SCEA player known only as 'viper' was too much to handle as he registered piles of seemingly instant kills. No matter weapon we used against him, he had a better one that was more deadly, more accurate and apparently always silent. We suspect viper was using a combo of shotgun and grenade launcher but we can never be sure. Check out the damage.
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The only technique the IGN team used effectively was what we like to call "grenade surprise." The grenade system in Killzone allowed for a 4 second fuse --an eternity in videogame time, especially online multiplayer. When playing competitively you're supposed "cook-off" some time on this fuse before throwing it so you can predict and time the explosion when you want it. In the grenade surprise tactic, we would simply hit the grenade button just before dying and try to drop the explosive at the feet of our collapsing bodies so it would be camouflaged. Knowing the SCEAer who just smoked us would at least pass by our remains and knowing there's no way they'd wait 4 seconds to do it, the powerful grenade explosion was a great way to get even. It didn't help us win the match since you're giving up a kill to get one (maybe) but it's the only option we had in a desperate situation.
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Check back to see how our next Killzone match against SCEA went and to see if your IGN studs can redeem themselves.
