If you’re playing in a professional gam-
ing setting, this tip is undoubtedly
worthless. The second your opponent
spots you, consider yourself three
seconds away from corpsedom. But if
you’re playing an everyday match on
the Interwebs, or even a match against
some of your more talented friends,
then you’ll need to suck it up so you
don’t suck it down. Humility is an
important part of the FPS experience.
What does that mean? Don’t go
charging off into battle with your start-
ing weapon, even if your most hated
of opponents just ran past the spawn
point. You will die. If you’re obviously
outgunned in a firefight, don’t keepshooting. You will die. If you’re fac-
ing off against a sniper who just
head-shot two of your buddies in
the face, don’t run toward him. You
will die.
Play smart. Turn tail. Run away,
and perhaps you’ll hit a teleporter
and confuse your opponent. Or bet-
ter yet, pull a Macaulay Culkin and
set a trap—run through a doorway
and immediately hug the wall on the
right. Stay put, and if your opponent
is stupid enough to just run straight
ahead, you might be able to catch
him with a quick shotgun blast to the
face. Advantage: you.It’s important to customize your hard-
ware for the kind of gamer you are.
That includes redoing your keyboard’s
keybindings to best facilitate your
fragging experience. It’ll add about
10 minutes to your prematch startup
time, but the payoff is worth it. Swap
the weapons you frequently use to
buttons more accessible to your
WSAD-style controls. And if you
indeed rock with a gaming keyboard,
then make sure you’re using its extra
input keys to their fullest potential.
If you can pick up a fancy gam-ing mouse, do
it—you might not
see an increase
in overall accu-
racy from higher
DPIs, but you’ll
likely be able to
switch your sen-
sitivity on the fly. Need a little more
machine-gun spray action? Kick the
mouse up to a high sensitivity and
let ’er rip. Camping spawn points in
Facing Worlds? Lower your sensitivity
and buzz the eyebrows off your oppo-nents. Remember, reacting to
an enemy is akin to raising the
white flag; you want to anticipate your
opponent’s movements at all times.Know When to Wuss Out
3 Gear Up
2
When trying to trap an opponent, make sure you’re
using a weapon that’s going to get the job done.
You’re in for a ride on the pain train if you don’t get
the one shot, one kill.72 MAXIMUMPC holiday 2007
how (^2) ImprovIng your pc experIence, one step at a tIme
Some keyboards
come with fancy
applications and
feature a number
of preset hotkeys.
Use them as a
base to save your-
self some tweak-
ing time!
WAITING FOR A
RESPAWN?
Here are some quick tips for your next round
of gunplay
300 Pick on the weak. That’s right. We said
it. If you’re in a 15-player deathmatch and
getting rocked by three or four people you can’t
compete against, stop fighting them. Find the
guys you can utterly stomp on and hunt them
mercilessly. They’ll call you names and hate
your very existence, but hey, you’re on the top
of the kill boards. They’re just jealous.
Be a Planeteer We might be speaking to deaf
ears with this one, but hear us out. In team-based
shooters like Counter-Strike and Shadowrun, you need
to do just that: act like a team. Fun as it may be to
entertain your dreams of becoming a virtual Rambo,
it just isn’t going to work. Like wolves, you need to
hunt in groups—use each person’s strengths to your
advantage. And get on your headset!
Dance, Monkey! Standing still and shooting
never works, but neither does jumping around
like a chinchilla on speed. Create a dance—a
few standard strafing/jumping moves that you’re
familiar with, so you can always keep your mouse
targeting trained on a player while you’re moving
in-game. Otherwise, you’ll spend half the gunfight
trying to react to your own dodging attempts
instead of your opponent’s.
talk like you Mean it Psychological warfare
is every bit as important as good accuracy. So the
next time you get that sweet head shot, feel free to let
your fellow players know just how newb they are in
your favorite combination of obscenities, epithets, and
physical gestures. It works in every cartoon; it’ll work
in your first-person shooter.
how 2 mini