Online games and collaborative play

My family knows that I really enjoy computer games. I have never been much of an online gamer for a number of reasons. First, the number of idiotic, offensive, and vulgar people out there seems to be disproportionately high in online games. It's hard to enjoy yourself when people are being vulgar, rude, or jerks all over your experience. Second, it's hard to coordinate your efforts with others and therefore maximize your collaborative play. Many of the games I enjoy are military simulators of one kind or another and being able to work as a team is something I enjoy. And lastly, I didn't always have the internet for it.

It's been a blessing and a curse to get on Steam's online gaming system. A blessing because it makes it easy to coordinate getting into the same game and you can use voice chat while in game to coordinate with your friends. A curse because it makes it easy to purchase games and for the same reasons stated above. But I've found that my adult self is better at limited my playing than my teenage self was. Most of the time.

This weekend saw my Leeroy and myself playing for a couple of hours and we had a lot of fun. What follows is a list of some of the things that happened during play that were both successes and surprises that helped our enjoyment.

Any base we choose to take we did and held until the time came to take a different one.

We both got high scores on a game where previous efforts had been painful.

Leeroy succeeded in shooting down multiple helicopters with shoulder laughed anti-tank missiles. His success improved as we played.

I succeeded in shooting down a helicopter less than a second before a plane destroyed my AA unit.

We drove a dune buggy out from under the guns of a waiting chopper and were able to dodge his rockets until we got to cover. Unfortunately, he got us a short time after that - but the ride was awesome.

We had a bridge blown out from underneath us. I was able to bail out (in mid air) and parachute to safety. Leeroy wasn't so lucky.

I successfully grenaded a jeep on it's way up a hill. For all intents and purposes I wanted to hit him, but didn't think I would.

I successfully grenaded a guy without seeing where he was. I knew he was coming for us and I just got a lucky throw in.

It was a lot of fun to play with Leeroy and we're glad that we are able to play on the same side. Otherwise it just gets nasty.