“Let’s get the health and get out of here.” Speaking of which, I thought I saw some in the next room through the hole I put in the wall.
“Yeah, well they definitely know we’re here now,” Goemon said.
“Yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t have scared me.”
“Are you done?”
“Yes. Hey, a medkit!”
I picked up the medkit and initiated the healing process. It was best to have your partner watch your back while you healed but I could not resist. I figured I would find some first aid but the medkit score was like getting a bonus curly fry in with your regular fry order. Even first aid only got you to three quarters health without the aid of pain pills or some other boost. After a few long seconds, the medkit took me right up to the top, full health and a new lease on life.
“Feel better?” Goemon said from the doorway.
“Feelin’ fine,” I said.
“Good, cause I think I heard someone break a window or something down the street.”
“What’s the play? Stay here and hide? Go out guns blazing?”
“No good angles in here.”
“Mm.”
“Next door is four stories and a roof.”
“Vantage point.”
“Exactly.”
“After you.”
Our destination was close enough to keep us unexposed among the cover of the surrounding towers. When advancing from building to building in the maze of Big City, I always felt a bit like a couple of mice scurrying from one hole in the wall to the next. Just had to hope no one had a trap set up for us when we got there. From the sound of it the reigning kings of the hill occupied themselves at least a block away. That put our chances at surviving relocation at “decent.” It was hard to get better odds than that in this game.
Big City was a town of the Eastern bloc. Dozens of identical, functional, and seemingly efficient structures rose up between four and five stories around every street. The only thing more drab and gray then the tons of cinderblock that comprised the place was the perpetual desaturated haze that lingered over the sky. Maybe it was fallout or maybe it was just fog, but the game never made it quite clear. In either case, the sun was unwelcome. It was like downtown Portland made out of gray building blocks and without the variety of street food.
Despite the security bars fixed to the ground level windows, the front door remained open. I made sure to shut it behind us on the way in. The sound of the door opening worked about as good as an Acme booby trap. Even if you heard footsteps coming, you knew the enemy was not inside the house until that door creaked open.
The lower floor had been picked through already, save for some boxes of 9mm ammo and junk pistol mods. At this stage in the round, stopping to pick up an extended mag mod for a pea shooter just made no sense. I glanced in the kitchen just in case. Nothing good, so I followed Goemon up the stairs.
The corners looked clear. Meanwhile, Goemon had already selected a sniper’s window. The barrel of the Kar sniper rifle must have been a dead giveaway to anyone watching outside. Probably it was better to bet on taking the first shot rather than hiding in the corner.
“I see one,” Goemon said. “Seventy...five. Not coming this way. Heading right.”
“I wanna see.” I picked a nearby spot and switched back to my rifle. The only view the window offered was more crumbling apartments, and maybe a grocery shop of some kind with a rolling security door stuck half open. No players, though. “I don’t see him.”
“He ran inside,” Goemon replied.
“Where?”
“The gray building.”
“The one with the garage?”
“The gray one.”
“They’re all gray,” I said.
“That one’s red.”
“But he’s not in that one, right?”
“No.”
“Where’s his buddy?”
“I didn’t see him.”
“Do they know we’re here?”
“I don’t think-” Goemon dropped to the floor. “Yes,” he finished, just in time, too, because the swarm of gunfire that now attacked the ceiling would have done a number on his helmet and possibly the round bony part underneath.
“You should have shot him!” I pleaded.
“You’re right, what was I thinking,” he scoffed. “I think it was the guy I spotted. Some kind of AR probably. Can you see him?”
“No, he’s on the other side of the building. I’m going to try and peek him. I need a good angle.”
“Don’t you do it.”
But it was too late. I was compelled to do it. It was my job to do it. My duty, my sole purpose. I couldn’t just let some joker out there get away with firing in our general direction. He would think twice about shooting at us again. Actually he would not think twice because he would be dead. Because I shot him! Oh yeah, that’s good.
While Goemon crawled away to safety, I took aim out the window. I started several feet back from the edge to maximize the defensive angle. PBR was all about the angles game, see. You want to see your opponent without them seeing you. Even if you have to contort your body around so you can lean in just like so, head safely out of harm’s way, Mini rifle aimed and...nothing to shoot at. Unless the other guy decided to climb up to the second level, being that far back offered no shot.
On the bright side my own head contained no new holes in it so he had no line of sight, either. How to proceed? I could step up to the window which was the obvious choice, I just had to score a headshot first. No problem since I knew right where he was. I put my finger on the trigger and worked on breath control.
“Wait,” Goemon said. It broke my concentration.
“What. I was about to kill him.”
“Let’s go up another level.”
“Ah, element of surprise.”
“Yeah plus then we can shoot down on him.”
“I’m convinced.”
“OK go slow.”
We shuffled along the debris-strewn floor. Somehow we had transitioned from lab maze mouse to humble cockroach. Anything to stay alive, I guess, and sometimes that just meant keeping quiet. The silent slither strategy continued all the way up the stairs to the third floor.
Upon arrival the unmistakable sound of the front door opening echoed up the cement stairwell. We closed the door to our level, too, which the intruder downstairs may have heard, but would likely be unable to determine what floor we resided on. The next question became whether it was the guy we already spotted outside, come knocking for a closer look, or his mystery duo partner. Goemon read my mind.
“Stay away from the window,” he whispered. “They don’t know exactly where we are. I think it’s the guy’s buddy downstairs.”
“So the first guy is still out there.”
“I mean I don’t know. I think so. Probably.”
“That is great news. I’ve been dying to fire this thing. Wait, not dying. Itching. Yeah, that’s better.”
“Oh boy.”
I raised up from prone to knee level, careful not to disturb a loose floor tile or so much as creak a board. Goemon, perhaps realizing he could not stop me, rolled so that he faced the sole entrance of our room. So far so good. Beyond the door lay the banister and stairwell. It would be a tough shot for both of us, mine out the window and my partner’s at the enemy potentially peeking up the stairs. If he missed, we would be sitting ducks at that range. If I missed- ah, didn’t matter, no point thinking about it, I wouldn’t miss, so long as I could see him.
The glass of the window frame had been shattered long ago. I inched closer towards it. If the guy on the first floor had not been running around opening and closing doors so much, he probably could have heard the hollow-sounding movements of my boot on the wood. Instead, it gave me enough time to slide into position for the shot.
The sound from below stopped altogether as I scanned for the player outside. No signs of movement out there, either. The other duo was trying to wait us out, force us to make the
first mistake. I hated this part, especially because for all my mastery of tactics I never could figure out if we had the advantage in a situation like this. Our room was secure in that we had eyes and a gun on the only way in. But if a grenade got tossed in there with us, game over. Even without the potential explosive, anyone holed up inside a building would have to leave eventually due to the encroachment of the Blue.
A glimmer of sunlight caught my eye from around a corner in the alleyway, maybe from a scope, maybe from a pair of ski goggles. It did not matter, because they belonged to the initial target. The shot was by no means clean, but the other player remained stationary, and he was looking away from me. To take said shot, I would need to march up closer to the window for a clear line. Even from my obscured position, I could tell the shooter was focused on another window- maybe even a different floor altogether.
“I don’t think he knows we’re up this high,” I whispered, moving closer to the edge.
“Yeah? That’s good, but I’m worried about this guy downstairs. What’s he planning?”
“Dunno but he’s about to be solo.”
The sights of the Mini trembled just a bit until a breath hold steadied them. When they lined up with the helmet jutting out from around the corner of the building across the alley, I pulled the trigger and the crack of the rifle tore around our tiny room. A fine mist of blood dissipated in the air, but the helmet stayed put. I landed a shot, but missed the kill. Meanwhile, the player inside on presumably the bottom floor began a heavy sprint up the stairwell. He must have zeroed in on our location from the sound of gunfire.
“Uh oh. Upstairs?” Goemon said, standing up and heading out the door without waiting for my answer.
“Let’s go,” I replied anyway, chasing after him. The sound of two duos’ footsteps echoing around in the same vicinity would confuse things for everyone involved. All I could tell from the noise was that the guy downstairs was coming upstairs and the guy outside was heading closer.
“Did you get him?”
“Yes. No. Kind of. I shot him. He’s still alive.”
“Oh no.”
“But definitely hurt.”
“What happened?”
“I freaked out, OK? My crosshair was on his head. Maybe I needed to aim up to compensate. Or down. I don’t know how shooting in this game works.”
We barged into the fourth and final floor of the building and it was empty as expected. Goemon picked a corner and took a knee, looking towards the entryway. I chose the opposite and did the same, both of us ready to listen to the commotion best we could.
It did not take long for the telltale clink-clink of a metal grenade bouncing around an apartment floor to make an appearance. I somehow did not die of a heart attack, so I took the opportunity to look around the room in search of the noise.
“Was that...beneath us?” Goemon asked.
“I don’t see anything.”
The footsteps, now indeed directly beneath us, also became clearer. That is, they did for a second or two before my eardrums shattered. The grenade exploded, taking my sense of hearing with it and probably the dishes left molding in the sink of the kitchen one floor below. It did not stop there.
“Holy-” Goemon started.
“What, what?” I asked.
“Look at the scoreboard. BassMan, teamkill, grenade, KKKatFish.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes!”
“He killed his buddy? With a grenade? Through the window?”
“Yes!”
“Incredible. Fantastic. The best, absolutely amazing.”
“Yes.”
“We played it perfectly.”
“We did. But we still have to take out the other guy.”
“Or do we?” I asked, as another timely message scrolled by. Bassman disconnected (Reason: user left match).
“He rage quit!” Goemon exclaimed.
“He couldn’t handle the shame,” I laughed. To be fair, I did not blame him.
10
Desert Island
Two Weeks Ago
Desert Island might have been Texas. It might have been Mexico. Both of those places were much larger and probably shared the common trait of having distinct and varied topography. But I have not been to Texas and I have not been to Mexico and I am quite certain that the developers had yet to visit those places either when they made the game. Desert Island shared the classic film interpretation of Mexico and its neighbor Texas. The color palette consisted of brown, tan, café, and a smattering of beige. The sky was blue when it was not obscured by a swirling cloud of sand.
Rocks of all the sizes between pebble and boulder held fast in the wind. The paved streets needed work and the dirt roads only differentiated themselves from the surrounding terrain by the occasional tire track. Plant life had never existed there, which begged the question of where exactly the tumbleweeds rolled in from. Well, once I saw a cactus.
Desert Island was not the name of the map. The name was fake Spanish, something like Isladesierte or some other nonsense word the devs made up. We just called it that to differentiate it from the other maps. They were all islands, but this was the only desert. At least it was the only one until they released Desert Island 2 but that map is a different story.
A large part of the appeal of PBR was the initial size of the play area. The breadth coupled with the skydiving mechanic created a unique freedom of choice in how to proceed with exploration. It wasn’t free forever, with the moving Safety Circle and Blue Wall of Death eventually dictating where players had to go to survive. However, traversing the game’s map- for all of its difficulty- provided an experience that was hard to match in other, more straightforward, deathmatch games.
When the devs created Desert Island, they took the original Eastern Bloc First Island map and doubled it. Naturally with all that space to explore, Goemon and I dropped in the same spot every time. The sandy little town was called Picante and we called its outskirts home.
The size of the map sounded good in theory. Twice as much of a good thing, how can it be bad? Well for starters, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere is the worst part of the game. The entirety of Desert Island is the middle of nowhere. But landmarks do exist. There’s a church and a graveyard, a sad western town or ten, and a drug kingpin’s compound of some kind, and at least there are more vehicles to hopefully get you from point A to point B because if you fail to get one you just die from the elements of the barren wasteland. The giant, dusty, empty Tex-Mex wasteland.
The cargo drop plane cut a precise diagonal path across the scorched earth, like a pizza knife slicing through a steaming thin crust pie. The flight path made me hungry for vengeance. I needed a win soon, but I could settle for a humane end to the current dry spell of frags. Pizza also would have been fine, but we ordered out yesterday.
“We gotta get something going here,” I groaned over the sound of the roaring engine.
“I know. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” Goemon said.
“We need to stick together, I think.”
“Probably.”
“Should we drop somewhere else?”
“Absolutely not.”
We leapt out of the hatch of the plane. Spy movie physics applied during the drop phase. If you pointed your body straight and perpendicular to the ground while plummeting from the sky, you fell much faster. It was something akin to a screaming hawk cutting through the wind to catch a ground squirrel. You must fall faster to get to the ground first, to get to the weapons first, especially on a crowded flight path like this. To reiterate, shoot like a bullet towards the ground to get the guns to shoot the bullets.
By the time we pulled parachutes we could see about a dozen other players that had dropped with us. Parachutes opened everywhere, great buzzards in the distance circling the air, waiting to hit the ground to scavenge what they could. It would have been cause for major concern, except for the fact they all appeared to be aiming for the city center. Our target was located a c
ouple minutes’ walk outside the fenceless perimeter. It more or less passed for a suburb in the context of the rest of the map.
An empty sheet metal warehouse or industrial barn leaned into the dirt on the edge of the town of Picante. There was not enough graphical detail on the inside or the outside to discern it. The place had been inoperable for possibly ever. It lacked machinery, or an office, or barn doors, but it did have great loot to go along with the wooden beams that held up the structure. I always started there before working my way over to the heart of the suburb, all of five houses sitting in a circle like trail wagons round up for safety. This time around I found a backpack, a helmet, and a vest right off the bat. There was plenty more around the empty hall. I always wondered why everyone dropped into the city instead of the well-stocked outskirts.
After a couple more minutes of looking around corners I nabbed a Vector SMG. It boasted more upgrade slots than any other SMG and only lagged behind in the number of bullets it held. I hoped Goemon had made out as well as I had.
“What do you got?” I yelled as I left the rusty ware-barn-house and headed to the house circle.
“SCAR. You need anything?”
“I’m pretty much good to go. We should head over there, try and get there early.”
“Sounds good.”
We would be a bit late to the initial party, but if we hustled we could still get there on the tail end of the commotion. We had found decent weapons. All we needed now were a few decent, early kills. I was tired of dropping out of the plane, hunting for gear and never getting the chance to use it.
I poked my head in one casita and grabbed a first aid kit and a cool grip for my SMG. This must have been some kind of record for looting. That was good, because the actual town of Picante just a rifle shot away already sounded like a warzone.
The two main attractions of the city were a casino called Casino and some kind of indoor basketball/wrestling stadium. Both were deathtraps and we avoided them until most of the riffraff got sorted out. Several hotels dotted the city, and their hundreds of identical square windows could all potentially hold snipers once the round had continued long enough for everything to get settled.
Project Battle Royale: A Gamelit Survival Book Page 6