Hugging the Ground

One of the many, many reasons I have never gotten into Competitive TF2 is because I’ve always been the sort of person who can’t really get the hang of explosive jumping. I just overall suck at moving in a three dimensional space which is controlled by two dimensional movements. That sounds complicated, but it’s just a fancy way of saying that I’m crap.

That’s me being harsh on myself. I’m an okay Medic. My dodging skills are quite good. My awareness is about average. My general skill level is about average. The one thing I cannot get a hang of, something considered to be a nigh important skill for any class but even more important for defenseless Medics, is air-strafing. I just can’t do it right. This inability to be of any use in the air extends into other classes. My sticky jumps only just work and I often take unneeded damage. My rocket jumps, half of them don’t do anything, the other half send me flying upwards and then back down again.

Believe me, I’ve tried to learn. I’ve spent bloody ages on jump maps, but I can never get anywhere. Surf maps are even more embarrassing as I watch people surf by with glee while I fail to complete the first damned jump.

Normally, when I try to learn something, I somehow manage to work it out. I’ve managed to learn all sorts of stuff from sheer determination, from HTML to Greek to clay to making things out of cardboard to learning WordPress and maintaining blogs, but the various forms of air travel in TF2 still elude me. I can’t get 10 feet off the ground without a crouch-jump script and every sticky jump I do sends me flying into a wall rather than towards the control point.

So instead of learning, which is what all sensible people would do, I’ve adapted to make myself less vulnerable. I’ve become something else. A ground hugger maybe? No, because that’s not really true. What does this involve though? Lots of jumping and lots of not stopping moving. Over the years, my tactic has changed from “stand still and try and hit something!” to “move around as much as possible in two directions and try and stay alive.” When I play, I do not ever stop moving unless I’m typing something. My W key is almost always being held, except when I’m failing to do all that acrobatic stuff that everyone else can do. What else do I do? I jump. I jump everywhere, as long as there’s no Snipers around. Jump, jump, jump.

A part of me really wants to be up there with those Soldiers.

It’s probably a good thing not many people have actually seen me play. If you did, you’d probably laugh.