Playing the game for real

So it is no secret that shooting games are by far my favorite type. It is also no secret that I can do a fairly good job at holding my own in them. However, today I got a chance to put my virtual skills to the test. One of the teens in the youth group lives on a huge farm and has a paintball gun, as does his brother. So today I went out there and played with them. We had a fairly level playing field because this was the first day any of us had actually shot a paintball gun at anyone, but they were both hunter and they both had camo, while I was wearing blue jeans and gray long sleave shirt that basically broadcast shoot me. Despite that fact, I got shot the least. Here are the following things that I learned from video game and applied

1. Stay High: We were playing on a hill, so I made sure that I was always near the top. This worked well, because I was a lot harder to hit. The two people I was playing against never quite figured this out, because on two occasions I snuck up on somebody by simply walking down hill. The first time I just fired to early, but the second time I totally had the drop on him and I probably would have been able to go for the melee attack to the back of the head, if I hadn't taken one mis-step that he heard, but I fired first and got him.

2. Stay Low: This one I picked up strictly from SOCOM where the game is spent in a pereptual crouch or crawl, however I think it is why I was hit the least, because I was usually firing from a crouched or prone posistion, while the others wer standing up. This was also helpful on the hill because if I dropped, then they couldn't hit me shooting at an upward angle.

3. Cover is important: Yes this is common sense, but it counts

4. Strafe: Yes I really did strafe back and forth to avoid being hit. In my ill-falted stealth kill, I was got in the relative open, so I strafed and it worked (though I did get hit once). However, I didn't jump up and down to avoid being hit.